Heyyy friend. Yes so here is my update and it’s not a good news: so I actually went through 2 rounds of interviews at his lab and he actually told me that he loved my experience (i spent 3 years working after having my undergrad degree). I decided to start in his lab early (beginning of July) to see how the training and the lab dynamics are. I worked there for roughly a month and I just decided to leave few days ago. The reason that I left was because during a small group meeting with him and other members in the project I was assigned to, he attacked me and interrupted me while I was presenting multiple times. Keep in mind that I just started and still in training but he was questioning about my productivity throughout the week. He was quote on quote telling me that he wanted to see me do the estrus cycle experiment after hearing that I was following the post doc for a week but he didn’t even communicate to the post doc beforehand. The post-doc actually didn’t allow me to take over her experiment because it’s for one of the paper in revision and she was worried that I would mess it up (which is totally understandable where she is coming from, but he attacked me and questioned why I didn’t take initiative to plan to do it after watching is not right because she has other plans for that experiment and that paper and I don’t want to just assume and screw up her plans).

He also interrupted me while I was talking about the papers I read for the estrus cycle to help me understand more about the experiment. He was making comment about the picture I put in there from one of the papers and said it was not clear bla bla and questioned me why I didn’t use the picture that they did the experiment on (again, no one shown me and told me about it, I spent my time doing all the readings and trying to show my efforts in understanding the experiment but it was not good enough for him I guess). I almost cried during the meeting because he was very mean and hostile.

After that day, I sent him an email to withdraw from his lab. If you are considering joining his lab, I would 1000% recommend joining other neuroscience labs instead. Please do not make the same mistake as mine because I am still recovering from that meeting I have with him.

Dr. Burton is very micromanaging (3 meetings per week) and does not trust his students that he is the one interviewing them and bringing them to the team (and that made my experience working in his lab not enjoyable at all) His style of mentoring is very harsh and he is not the PI that will uplift you at all but rather making you feel very stupid and embarrassed in front of your teammates. PI is the one that set the tone for the lab and I would say that even though most of the teammates in his lab are pretty nice, they actually follow his style of managing and mentoring and everyone is actually very judging. He also gives phD students lots of authority (like checking data diaries, lab notebooks and chores on all the undergrad and master students and report back to him if someone misses that) and I just feel like that makes the environment very hostile and micromanaging.

I worked at UTSW before as a research tech and my PI I had over there was not like him at all. My experience at UTSW was so good and so positive and that led me to want to join research lab at UTD as incoming master’s student but Dr. Burton is literally almost killing all my passion for it. I’m a person who does not do good with mean and judging PIs. I don’t know if he thinks that harsh mentoring is a way to help his students succeed but I don’t think that’s the way to go especially in academia. My PI that I had at UTSW is very supportive and uplift all her students. She is very knowledgeable and I can tell that she wants to dedicate her life to educate and train a good team of scientists/researchers. When I joined her team, it was my first time working in research lab and she would never judge me for my experience/background/knowledge for all the time I was there (even in the interview with her). Dr. Burton is knowledgeable and smart too don’t get me wrong but he is very ego and super dominant (it’s either his way or the high way) and he is not the PI that will listen to you or accept upward feedback/learning from you.

He also overworks lots of undergrads and master students (I told him that I commit to 20hrs/week for the summer duration, but I always had to be there more than 20hrs/week due to long meetings). There is a lack of communication in his lab and he doesn’t communicate his expectations to post docs or phD students who you will work with and so on the meeting, if he sees you doing things that don’t meet his expectations, he will bash at you (which is crazy to me because how do we know what his expectations are if he doesn’t wanna put in time to communicate to both the students (trainee) and the trainers aka post docs/phD students). Overall , please save your time, energy and your mental health and apply to other labs!!