Caroline Genzale

1.0 1.0 / 5 1 reviews

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University: Georgia Institute of Technology
Department: Mechanical Engineering
Website: https://spherelab.gatech.edu/

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Total 1 Reviews

Anonymous

Bad

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AFFILIATED EMAIL

## Advisor Style & Mentorship
This woman is the most manipulative, insane, lying, and selfish person I have ever met. AND shes not a good scientist or engineer. You'll only be abused by her and learn next to nothing but bad (and sometimes unethical ie. tuning experimental data to get desired results) research practices. When her lack of work ethic, technical expertise, and morals come into question she will throw whichever of her grad students is lowest on the totem pole under the bus.  She fails to manage any and all of her grants (of which maybe there was 4? total over her 10+ year career at GT). Most have been run into the ground and she has to find graduate students to work for free on them to save face with her few funding sponsors she has. I saw her lie to MANY grad students about what project they would be working on before they joined her lab - only for them to move across the country and be totally blind sided. If you work for her, the best time you'll have (before she fires you) is when she's too preoccupied with whatever "woe is me" story she's crafting her life into at the moment to pay any attention to you. Most of your weekly hour+ research meetings will be spent waiting for her to show up (she's usually 7-30 minutes late if she bothers to show up at all), listening to her discuss inappropriate details of her personal life and bodily functions, comiserating with her regarding the patriarchy and how the men in the department are keeping her down, and trying to explain fundamental concepts of fluid mechanics and diesel combustion to her to keep your project from going totally off the rails. I have actual PTSD from working for this woman. My therapist, which I now require as a result of working for her, thinks she very likely has Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Look it up. Stay Away. 
## Expectations for PhD Students
What she tells you her expectations are are all lies. Her students most often have to enter the lab with zero senior lab members to train them, run and do all the maintenence on a combustion vessel, teach themselves how everything in the lab works, teach themselves laser and imaging diagnostics, more-or-less guide your project to stay on track (if it is at all), and remind her when reports to sponsors are due. You advise yourself, are expected to make minimal mistakes given minimal guidance, put the team on your back, and comfort her in her time of emotional distress. She's a ticking time bomb that you have to manage and be very careful not to set off. 
## Funding & Support
In this lab, ideally you provide your own funding and you provide her support. It's very unlikely that you'll get either from her for very long. 
## Research
I and the other members of the group that served with me are embarrased of the work we put out during our time there. For example: she spent at least a year convinving me to do a imaging diagnostic on a diesel flame that any other expert would have (and did) laugh at. After months of trying to convinve her it didnt work, evading her low-key pushes to tune the data, I proved to her that her method would not work. I wanted to write it into a paper just so that no one else would have to attempt this god-forsaken diagnostic again. The reviewers for this journal paper called the entire premise of the paper a "straw-man" argument it was so laughable. She will also take 6+ months to give you feedback and all she will do is hyphenate everything and make the work incredibly wordy and repetitive (she might also forget the conclusion of the work and change the conclusions to be contradictory to the body of the paper). 
## Lab Culture
If there are more than one of you at a time, you'll be trauma-bonded for life. But, you will probably leave without the degree you intended to earn, trust issues, PTSD, severe imposter syndrome, depression, anxiety, and potentially scuicidal or homocidal thoughts. Lastly, even if you manage to escape her lab she will very likely retalliate against you in whatever way she can. She has haunted me for two years now - even though I have a new advisor, she is on a "leave of absence", and I have reported it to every level of administation at Gatech. She will do things that are not in her own best interest just to spite me for quitting her group.

No, I don't recommend this PI.

Review #117

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: This is so true!
Reply 2023-12-06T06:29:48Z
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