November 3, 2025
Mentoring Connections shares conversations of pairings in the Office of the Provost’s Faculty Mentoring Program.
This edition features Dr. Edward Lobariñas, Professor of Speech, Language and Hearing in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and Dr. Kirupa Suthakar, Assistant Professor in the same department.
Lobariñas was on the search committee that recommended the hiring of Suthakar, who had been a postdoctoral scholar at Harvard University and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
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Dr. Edward Lobariñas:
“Kirupa was on our radar for a couple of years. I think we have a fantastic environment, and we thought she would be a great addition to our department. Then I was asked if I would be her mentor, and of course I agreed. We just hit it off right away. We have a lot of shared interests.”
Dr. Kirupa Suthakar:
“It’s been fantastic to have Ed as a mentor because I think he started mentoring me during the hiring process. It just goes to show that a mentoring relationship isn’t something where you’re assigned a mentor and you suddenly have this connection. It’s something that you have first and you build together because you need to be able to communicate with each other. We were able to communicate first as people before we engaged in this formal relationship.
“That’s how I’ve always felt mentoring should be. It shouldn’t be this job you’re doing, but rather a desire to nurture someone you see potential in.”
EL:
“Kirupa is really easy to mentor because she engages and also is very open. That really helps me be a better mentor.
“The transition from postdoc to tenure-system assistant professor is a huge leap because now you have committees and teaching and students and evaluations and graduate students. You go from being really successful at your craft to almost being like a small enterprise or small business owner where you have to wear many hats.”
KS:
“One of the biggest things has been realizing that there are so many different aspects that I thought I had considered. But until I was in the thick of it, I didn’t realize what they actually entailed. It is insanely reassuring to have someone to guide you.
“Sometimes I think about the mentoring relationship like sports coaching. There’s so much success that you want your athletes to have, but you can’t do the work for them. You have to guide them to the best work they can do. That’s why the relationship is so important.”
EL:
“A lot of it, from my perspective, is ‘Do this, not that.’ A lot of things are interesting but not important. We’re going to prioritize the things that are the most important for the tenure process.”
KS:
“We in academia tend to be overachievers. I definitely want to do a lot, but I also want to do what I do well. I would much rather do a few good things phenomenally than everything mediocre. It’s been an interesting time with all the new tasks hitting my plate.
“Postdoc is considered a training position. It’s not infinite – there’s an amount of time. This is the complete opposite. This is the position that could become my home. I don’t want my trajectory to shine really bright and then fizzle out.”
EL:
“I think our teaching styles are similar, so that also is a facilitator. I think we’re a good home for Kirupa. I think she’s going to be really happy here.”
KS:
“We’re coming up on three months, which seems absurd.”
EL:
“Three months! Yesteryear, she was a postdoc. Now she’s an assistant professor.”
KS:
“You don’t get to an assistant professor job after a couple years – you put in a hard slog and are constantly looking at the end goal. I’m not from the States. I’m from Australia, and I’ve been here for almost a decade. I never would have imagined that this is where I would be, but I’m grateful to be here. I think it’s the right place for me. I’m glad you said that, and I agree.”
EL:
“She had that NIH postdoc. That’s like a gold standard. She was in a fantastic situation.”
KS:
“I was very purposeful about taking the two different postdocs. Each of these moves, people have asked, ‘Why did you do that?’ Before NIH, people would ask, ‘Why didn’t you just stay at Harvard?’ But I want to forge my own path. I want to have my own trajectory. I don’t want to stagnate.
“I just follow my gut a lot of the time. That’s not to say there haven’t been hardships. There have. There always will be. But I take them as opportunities to learn. An easy trajectory means that when something hits, you don’t know what to do. But when you have all these loops and sideswipes, when something hits you in the future, you’ve already built the resilience. You’re primed to be able to take the problem, assess it and figure out the best way forward.
“That, I think, is what fundamentally research is all about, what academia is all about. It’s about making the little pivots at the right point to make sure that you can complete it.”
EL:
“That’s what made you a competitive candidate, too.”
KS:
“I went to NIH in the middle of the pandemic. I spent over a year not being able to go into the lab and do the experiments.
“As much as I like comfort, I also like challenging myself. I need to always push a little harder – ‘Can I do that? Yeah, I can do that.’ A big part of success is being willing to fail.”
EL:
“Bringing in fresh new ideas with people who are adventurous, who are willing to take a chance, that to me has been just amazing. With Kirupa, it’s like, ‘Oh, we got one more. That’s great. That’s great for us.’”