Watch the 60‑minute seminar session with Prof. Lea Winter and Prof. Ping Mu (watch video here with NetID).
OCS invited two accomplished Yale faculty members to demystify the fine points of faculty offer negotiation. On April 4, 2025, Lea Winter (Chemical & Environmental Engineering) and Ping Mu (Urology, Yale School of Medicine) shared firsthand strategies for evaluating—and confidently negotiating—tenure‑track and lecturer packages in the biological sciences and engineering fields.
During this session, the speakers explored:
- Anatomy of a faculty offer: salary bands, start‑up funds, facilities commitments, teaching loads, and timeline to review.
- Benchmarking & preparation: how to gather data, leverage mentors, and frame negotiation points persuasively.
- Negotiation tactics: sequencing requests, handling counter‑offers, and maintaining a collaborative tone with department chairs and deans.
- Dual‑career & family considerations: relocation support, spousal hires, childcare, and visa timing.
- From candidate to colleague: their personal journeys from doctoral training to building successful independent labs, and lessons learned along the way.
About Prof. Winter
Prof. Lea Winter is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at Yale University. She received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Yale in 2015 and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Columbia University as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow in 2020. She received postdoctoral training as a Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT) Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale in 2020–2022. Her research focuses on electrified processes at the food, energy, water, and climate nexus, including development of sustainable and circularized processes for conversion of greenhouse gases to chemicals and fuels, green nitrogen fixation to fertilizers and nitrogen-based fuels, and transformation of contaminants in wastewater into useful products while recovering fit-for-purpose water. Dr. Winter is a 2024 Beckman Young Investigator Awardee, 2024 DOE Early Career Awardee, and 2022 Caltech Young Investigator Lecture Series Awardee.
About Prof. Mu:
Dr. Ping Mu is an Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of Urology at Yale School of Medicine and a member of the Yale Cancer Center. His lab focuses on uncovering the molecular mechanisms driving resistance to targeted and immune therapies in prostate and other cancers. Ping earned his Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from Weill Medical College of Cornell University, followed by postdoctoral training under Dr. Charles L. Sawyers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. In mid-2018, he established his own independent laboratory at UT Southwestern as an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Biology. His remarkable contributions to the cancer research field led to his rapid promotion to tenured associate professor before moving his lab to Yale.
This event was co-hosted by Hao Xie and Qi Yan, McDougal Fellows at the Office of Career Strategy.
