Foreword -- PART 1: Basic considerations -- 1. So do you really want to pursue research? -- 2. What's in store: The brighter side of medical research -- 3. What's in store: The darker side of medical research -- 4. One degree of separation -- 5. Choosing and working with a mentor -- 6. Identifying a research niche you can call your own -- 7. Useful Definitions -- PART 2: Research Foundations and Structures -- 8. The Institutional Review Board: Do's, Don'ts, and Nevers... -- 9. Animal Care and Use Committees -- 10. Research beyond humans and vertebrates -- 11. Hiring Research Staff -- 12. Strategy and Tactics: Running a Successful Laboratory -- 13. Everything you ever wanted to know about collaboration Part 3: Successful Paper and Grant Writing -- 14. Writing a successful research paper. I-Up to the point of submission -- 15. Writing a successful research paper. II-Revising, resubmitting, and post-acceptance tasks -- 16. Funding: An overview -- 17. Where to apply for funding: making the right choices -- 18. Writing a winning grant application -- 19. Grant budgeting -- 20. Grant writing: Pearls and lumps of coal -- 21. Research Training, Fellowship, and Career grants -- 22. Grant review from the inside -- 23. Interpreting your reviews -- 24. To resubmit or not resubmit and how to do it -- Part 4: Good presentations, conferencing, networking, and other useful tools -- 25. The art of good presentation -- 26. Effective conferencing -- 27. Networking in the 21st century -- 28. Conflicts of interest -- 29. Scientific conduct and misconduct: what is right and proper, what is not, and what is somewhere in the middle -- 30. Article review and reading: being efficient and as thorough as you need to be -- 31. Patents -- 32. Working with industry -- Part 5: Career choices and life lessons -- 33. Jobs in biomedical science: seeking, landing, and changing -- 34. Academic Promotion and Titles -- 35. On being a mentor -- 36. Yardsticks of success -- 37. Research Life Lesson #1: Everything takes longer than you think, so plan for it -- 38. Research life lesson #2: A person's research is endlessly important to them -- 39. Research Life lesson #3: Balance, timing, cycles and seeing the big picture -- 40. Research Life Lesson #4: Your career is an ultramarathon, not a sprint -- 41. Conclusion: Nothing satisfies like meaningful work -- Acknowledgements.