Lixin Fan joined the National Cancer Institute’s Small-angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) Core within the Basic Science Program at FNL as a senior scientist in 2014. SAXS is a powerful technique used to study the structure of materials at a nanoscale. By directing X-rays at a sample and analyzing the scattering pattern, SAXS provides insights into molecular shapes, sizes, and conformational changes, helping researchers understand structure-function relationships. This non-destructive technique is particularly useful for investigating dynamic processes, interactions in solution, and structural variations of biomacromolecules in their native environments, making it an essential tool in structural biology and drug development.
She trains users of the SAXS core, supports their research projects, performs experiments, and analyzes data for collaborative projects. Additionally, she is the primary operator of the SAXS and is responsible for maintenance and troubleshooting issues.
Over the last decade, Fan trained 56 young researchers from the National Institutes of Health and academia to apply SAXS to their research. Since joining the FNL, her contributions have led to the production of 119 peer-reviewed publications by SAXS Core users, including 58 publications co-authored by her trainees.
Fan’s education began with a bachelor’s degree in physics from Beijing Normal University in China, as well as a master’s degree in condensed matter physics. She earned her Ph.D. at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and served as a post-doctoral fellow at the Argonne National laboratory in Illinois.
Importance of mentoring
Throughout her career, Fan’s mentors taught her critical lessons in her approach towards research and scientific inquiry.
“My mentors have inspired and taught me the importance of approaching research with curiosity and being very objective, persistent, and patient,” Fan said. “You have to be persistent to do scientific research, and not give up easily. When you meet any problem, just work. Work hard to get over the obstacles.”
Her mentors were also firm believers in multi-disciplinary collaboration, and a willingness to work with others across different fields to share knowledge and work towards bigger goals.
“Research should not be pure physics or pure biology,” Fan said. “When we share knowledge together, we can do something really great.”
Fan puts these lessons into practice with her work and passes the knowledge to her mentees. She described mentoring as one of the most important and rewarding things you can do as a scientist, because of your impact on mentees careers’, but also their impact on your own.
“They [mentees] give me a different angle or view of things, and sometimes that’s really inspiring. This is an alternative learning process, where they learn from me, but I learn from them too,” she said. “I really enjoy sharing my knowledge and experience with people, and mentoring allows me to do such knowledge sharing. I transfer my expertise to other people and enjoy seeing them grow, so they can pursue their own research and make their own discoveries. Witnessing mentees grow professionally and contributing to scientific discovery is incredibly rewarding.”
Fan’s advice for anyone who may be interested in becoming a mentor is to create a supportive environment, give constructive feedback, and teach mentees a proper attitude toward research. Additionally, Fan emphasized maintaining curiosity and an open mind throughout all steps of a research project, and the importance of considering multiple perspectives.
“To make a good publication, you can’t just look at one side of things,” Fan said. “When we collaborate together, we look at the bigger picture.”
