Having been promoted to Associate Professor in Glial Biology in 2023, Dr Daniel Fulton elaborates on some of the key advancements and challenges he has encountered throughout his career.
“My career has been something that’s been responsive as opposed to following a grand plan. I’ve been spontaneous a number of times, learning to identify and take opportunities. I feel I’ve followed an unusual course.”
Daniel completed his undergraduate degree in Zoology and was interested in exploring a PhD in Behavioural Ecology. While searching for opportunities related to animal bevahiour, he was drawn to a PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Sussex to investigate cellular mechanisms of learning and memory. Despite not having a background in neuroscience, Daniel was inspired by the work of the group and how it related to his own interests in animal behaviour.
“I thought, wow, this is amazing science. Neuroscience introduced a mechanistic aspect to the study of behaviour that was missing in the behavioural ecology I had been studying at the time. The idea of understanding the brain, looking inside it, and observing physiologically, how neurons are connecting together and how they're processing information and controlling the animal's behavior, is fascinating.”
After the completion of this PhD, Daniel carried out his postdoctoral research at UCLA, meaning a relocation abroad to California.
“I knew that I wanted to seize the opportunity, but it was quite scary because it was a completely new and different environment, and I didn’t know anyone over there. You have to be willing to take that risk.”
Moving to California allowed Daniel to develop his expertise in electrophysiology, while networking with a diverse group of neuroscientists. These interactions led to an opportunity to transfer his skills in electrophysiology to a different area of neuroscience, mammalian glial biology. At this time, glial biology was undergoing a rapid expansion as neuroscientists began to recognise the important contributions these cells were making to brain function. This was a challenging move, as Daniel’s training to date had focused on invertebrate neuroscience. However, the move worked out well and based on his work studying oligodendrocyte physiology he was awarded a Senior Fellowship with the Science City Research Alliance (2010, joint between the Universities of Warwick and Birmingham), followed by a Marie Sklowdowska Curie Career Integration Grant in 2011. These fellowships enabled Daniel to return to the UK to pursue independent work at the University of Warwick, before joining the University of Birmingham in 2013 when he was awarded a Birmingham Fellowship.
At Birmingham, Daniel has continued his research into glial biology, securing industrial and European funding to explore mechanisms related to myelin formation, training PhD students and postdocs, publishing research papers, and helping to establish the Birmingham Centre for Neurogenetics, for which he is a co-director. At the same time, he has become committed to education, taking on leadership of neuroscience modules and academic integrity for the Biomedical Science programme, and more recently taking up the role of CMH Lead for Academic Integrity, and co-leadership of the new MSc Biomedical Sciences. He is passionate about helping students to develop.
“It's a very enjoyable and rewarding experience. In education, you get instant feedback from your students, seeing that your students are learning and developing and succeeding.”
Building on these experiences in educational leadership allowed Daniel to develop his career in a new direction and in 2023 was successful in his application to be promoted to Associate Professor utilising the Birmingham Academic Career Framework promotion criteria.
“The great thing about academia is it offers a lot of different areas to develop yourself in, whether it's leadership in research or leadership in education. You just have to put the time in to identify your areas of interest, build your networks, and learn to collaborate with other people.”