Dr. Marder has devoted a career to being a tireless advocate for junior scientists, with endless encouragement for trainees who experience discouragements. Her first rule of mentoring is “listen to my trainees”, and she does. Trainees wrote of her dedication in getting to know them as people, to understand their desired career paths as well as their strengths and talents, in order to design tailored training plans and guide them towards becoming the best possible versions of themselves as scientists and professionals. Dr. Marder insists that all trainees, right from the start, understand their measurements, analyses and what statistics does and doesn’t bring to the table. Equally important, Dr. Marder emphasizes science communication, ensuring all in the lab can clearly explain what they are doing and why. This fosters not only education on many different levels (“you don’t understand it if you cannot explain it clearly”) but fosters great respect among trainees doing highly divergent projects, with highly divergent intellectual interests, as each trainee gains an understanding of how and why others do what they do. Trainees lauded the lasting value that was instilled in them by Dr. Marder to always pay attention to the raw data, and approach science ethically and with joy. Many trainees expressed the opinion that Dr. Marder is the best mentor they have had and/or likely will ever have. Dr. Marder's research examines how circuit function arises from the intrinsic properties of individual neurons and their synaptic connections, with a particular interest in the extent to which similar circuit outputs can be generated by multiple mechanisms, both in different individual animals, or in the same animal over its lifetime.