During my time as a PhD student, my supervisor was a father figure — perhaps an easy role to accept, as he was about the same age as my parents. Now I find myself supervising half a dozen younger colleagues, some of them undergraduates, others seeking a PhD. The age difference between us is a matter of a few years, not decades. With my own undergraduate memories still vivid, I wonder what wisdom I can offer. Mentoring as a young researcher has its own challenges, including a lack of experience and some major conflicts of interest.

Behavioural experiments constitute much of the work we do in our lab, and requires a group effort. Without eager students running tests and collecting data, postdocs and faculty members would have no time to publish results. But the students of today are the scientists of tomorrow: we all share responsibility for their training. Collecting data is just a small part of that, and I feel compelled to involve them in proposing ideas, designing experiments and interpreting results, no matter how difficult that may be.

The greatest challenge is to teach them how to be independent thinkers; particularly for my students, who have spent years in an Italian educational system in which conformity is often prized and inventiveness disparaged. If scientists and others aspire to develop 'knowledge societies', we need to stop creating production-line researchers who follow the latest hype without hesitation. Instead, we need to start training scientists as intellectual leaders, charged with envisaging how society should change. I hope that this will happen, even though it does not fit well with the 'publish-or-perish' scenario.

So what advice should I give to my students? They first walk into our lab with eagerness and trepidation, awed to enter a research facility and to be entrusted with scientific responsibilities. I remember feeling the same. But I also know that, after years of uncertainty and scrambling over hurdles, only a fraction of them — the best, I hope — will make a living in research. As for the others, the chances are that their scientific training will not pay off outside academia. I fear that they might put their careers in jeopardy by chasing the same dream as me — a full-time position in research — while neglecting to consider alternative job opportunities.

That raises another concern: my own ambition. Still a postdoc myself, I'll probably find that the most talented of my younger colleagues will become my competitors. If so, I'm hardly in a position to offer impartial advice, no matter how pure my intentions are. With so many tangled responsibilities and loyalties, I think that candour is the best response. Never paint the future in false colours, never neglect talent, never promote mediocrity, never hide your own agenda, always assess students honestly, and let them chart their own career course. With luck, one day they'll remember us, if not as good fathers, then at least as decent older brothers.