Christina Zielinski

1.0 1.0 / 5 4 reviews

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University: University of Jena
Department: University of Cambridge - Department of Pathology
Website: https://zielinskilab.com/

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Total 4 Reviews

Anonymous

Bad

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## Advisor Style & Mentorship
Leadership was very weak and characterized by unrealistic expectations. (both scientifically and in terms of time). Proper guidance was minimal, and communication was often unclear or contradictory. 
When asked concrete questions, responses were typically lengthy, vague, and diffuse, often failing to address the actual issue. As a result, students and staff—regardless of their role (Master’s students, PhD candidates, Technicians)—were largely left to manage on their own.
Workload was extremely high, with a strong focus on data production over learning, planning, discussing. Interaction with other research groups within the institute was neither encouraged nor supported. The leadership style "Challenge and support" was mostly reduced to "Challenge" only. Over time, the environment negatively affected morale, confidence, and mental well-being. 

## Expectations for PhD Students
High and unrealistic expectations. Due to the lack of useful guidance, students were left to manage on their own. There was little support in project development and experimental design and establishment. Spontanous request on data presentations happended frequently. Long working hours including weekends were expected as a norm and were also necessary to deal with the work load. Most PhD students left without degree!

## Funding & Support
Overall financial research funding was very good, she is very good in story-telling. However, conference attendance and networking opportunities were mainly reserved for the PI; students were rarely supported to present their own work. Employment contracts were often shorter than initially indicated, and extensions required significant administrative effort by the employee.

## Research
The research topic itself is interesting, but the overall scientific direction was inconsistent. Instructions frequently changed from one day to the next, making it difficult to meet expectations. Experiments were largely self-designed and self-established by students and staff, with little strategic input or follow-up.
Little emphasis was placed on thoughtful, realistic data analysis and critical interpretation, and insufficient time was allocated for these crucial aspects of scientific work.  Lab meetings focused heavily on polished data presentation rather than discussion, troubleshooting, or scientific reasoning  and often lasted several hours without constructive outcome.

## Lab Culture
The atmosphere among lab members was friendly, collaborative, and very supportive and peer support helped compensate for the difficult environment created by the PI’s leadership. However, due to high student/staff turnover, no consistency was given, knowledge got lost and established workflows were interrupted. There was no real lab culture.

No, I don't recommend this PI.

Review #690

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: Can agree on every word. I heard she left Jena now, one could only hope the same things won't happen in University of Cambridge - although I highly doubt.
Reply 2026-01-09T18:56:46Z
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Anonymous

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## Advisor Style & Mentorship
Her advisor style is based heavily on micromanaging and keeping people in the lab on their toes by being unpredictable. As an example: You have a meeting with her, plan an experiment step by step. You do everything as she says. Next lab meeting, she will end up saying she never told you to do that, and everything you did was wrong. If your research is not producing the results she wants, you will end up getting in personal conflict with her. She will push your boundries until you are completely drained. One of the hardest things to navigate for many people was, even if you quit by yourself, she makes effort to make sure that your future career will be in trouble. Unfortunately, it doesn't end when you leave.
## Expectations for PhD Students
PhD students are expected to work 24/7 and produce technically flawless data that fits to hypothesis on their first try. This is particularly challenging, considering there is no proper training in the lab. All students are expected to perform all the techniques perfectly from day one. When you start in this lab, statistically, you are more likely to end up not getting a degree. In my knowladge, during the lab's long history in different cities, only one person who she primarily supervised managed to finish their PhD. As long as she can produce a publication, what happens to the students is inconsequential for her.
## Funding & Support
She is skilled at acquiring grants, so funding is very good. But that doesn't mean that you can freely access the reagents or equipment you need. If she doesn't personally like you (which eventually happens to everyone), you might end up waiting months for her to approve your request for a chemical or an antibody. 
## Research
In this lab, experiments are not performed to find the truth, but rather to provide results that confirms what she thinks is true. Negative results are not welcome, she simply refuses to acknowladge or discuss them. If you are presenting a result she doesn't like in a laboratory meeting, she starts playing with her phone, rolling eyes or sighing, and you end up getting scolded at in front of the whole lab. Bioinformaticians are constantly pushed to produce data that fits the narrative. Every aspect of the projects are micromanaged, there is no room for individual ideas or intellectual freedom. 
## Lab Culture
Lab culture is constant turnover of people. People don't stay long enough to create a culture.

Since output of her lab is very good, I wouldn't be able to not recommend people to not to go there. But I would encourage serious consideration and through research before joining.

Review #689

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Anonymous

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## Advisor Style & Mentorship
Leadership is poor and irrationally driven by her intrinsic need to produce results supporting particular pre-made conclusions. Her mentorship is pressurizing students and to blame them publically for her supervision mistakes. She makes up false facts to threaten students and to make them insecure.

## Expectations for PhD Students
Constant confusions about experimental strategies. One day she expects to perform particular experiments, the other day she complains about you doing these experiments. No clear hypothesis. Micromanagement par excellence. The majority of students have either been fired shortly before end of their probation time (holding back until the last minute of probation time) or they left voluntarily early.

## Funding & Support
She is greatly funded.

## Research
Most of her data was acquired by assistent scientist, which receive coauthorships on her papers (mostly bioinformatic assistents making an additional income along their study). Many contributors have not been named at all.  Bioinformatic analyses were overinterpreted and presented to serve the main message of a publication. Poor controls to experiments. Data "curation" to serve a great story rather than to dicover the trueth.

## Lab Culture
She creates a very toxic environment by playing lab members against each other in eye to eye conversations. Publically critisizes her students for performing particular experiments, which she demanded in the first place. Makes up false facts about a general institutional environment not supporting specific students. She claims that all students (>20 in 3 years) she kicked out for the reason to not following her leadership, to harming the reputation of other students and to creating an unfruitful working atmosphere.

No, I don't recommend this PI.

Review #688

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Anonymous

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## Advisor Style & Mentorship
In my experience, the advisory style and mentorship were very poor. Meetings were frequent, but mostly not helpful. Discussions focused mainly on short-term results and not on a clear project goal or plan. Feedback was often very harsh and confusing. Contradictory statements were common. For example, we agreed to use method A, but once results were shown, it was said that this should never be done and that method B should be used instead. When switching to method B, the same thing happened again. This did not only concern methods, but also the general project direction and goals. There was no consistency in supervision. New ideas were introduced almost every week, without the possibility to follow one direction. On the long run, this made doctoral work very difficult. Workload expectations were high and not realistic. Even though students worked very long hours, it was never enough. Students were often told that they were lazy or “not doing anything,” which was not true. A clear doctoral structure or schedule was never clarified. Students did not know wann they would be able to graduate, and in my experience no doctoral student graduated from here and most people eventually left the lab. The situation was so bad that the lab moved to a different city and I learned that same thing happened in the new place too. 

## Expectations for PhD Students
Expectations for doctoral students (MD and PhD) were unrealistic. New students were expected to perform very complex experiments and produce high-quality data without enough training. Proper training was not provided. Expectations were the same for everyone, independent of position (doctoral student, postdoc, technician, or student assistant). Because everyone had too much work, real supervision was missing and people were mostly on their own. The PI often said that experiments were “easy” and “fast” and called everyone lazy and that they are not doing anything, which created constant pressure and lowered people confidence.

## Funding & Support
The lab had very good funding, and money for reagents and equipment was usually not a problem, it was the only good thing about the lab. However, due to the lack of structure, this funding did not help research progress. Experiments were often planned just because they were possible, not because they were necessary for the project. This created extra workload without clear benefit. Funding was also not used to support young researchers. Conference visits for students were very rare. Most conferences were attended only by the PI, while students stayed in the lab. Many students never had the opportunity to present their work. 

## Research
Research was not derived from hypotheses. Projects were based on changing ideas and directions, often on a weekly basis. Because of this, many experiments produced negative or unclear data, which was not valued. Instead, lack of progress or only negative data was blamed on students. Students were told that they were not productive or had not discovered anything. Due to the constant changes, it was not possible to follow up on results and build a structured project. People worked on many topics at the same time and finished almost nothing. Only published projects were started years earlier by other people and later continued by different lab members. 

## Lab Culture
The lab culture was very stressful and unhealthy, toxic. Public criticism of lab members was common, and negative comments were often made in front of others. This created fear and insecurity. People worked very long hours, including weekends, and rarely took vacation, but this did not reduce criticism. Many lab members felt constant stress and anxiety and lost confidence in their abilities. High turnover made the situation worse, because the work of people who left was taken over by those who stayed. Due to workload and pressure, the lab war very isolated. Collaboration and networking were limited, and work-life balance was basically not existing, people had not social life, only work and sleep. Overall, I would strongly advise future students to be careful and to speak with former lab members before joining (many of them are listed on the website as lab members, but they left long ago). This environment was traumatising for a lot of people, so be careful about your decisions, take care of your mental health.

No, I don't recommend this PI.

Review #687

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: She created the most toxic environment I've ever experienced.
Reply 2025-12-16T07:55:23Z
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Christina Zielinski

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