Prospective PI, great reputation but bad health

[AjjA]

I just met this great PI, his work interests me so much, his personality fits with mine. However, he is old - 70s  - and seems to be in miserable health. I like to be in his lab, but would he be around until I'm done? That question would make me lose sleep for the next five years

Edited August 21, 2016 by AjjA

[Bioenchilada]

Is he still taking students? A lot of older faculty tend to just hire post docs or don't take new students at all.

Edited August 21, 2016 by Bioenchilada

[fuzzylogician]

Is he the only one in the department who you would be interested in working with, or is there a backup in case something happens? This is a high-risk/high-reward kind of situation, and I personally tend to be risk-averse because the consequences of failure are too high. Keep this in mind as well: you don't immediately stop needing your advisor's support once you've graduated, if you want to stay in academia. You still want your advisor to use his/her connections to put you in touch with other researchers who are potential collaborators or who might be hiring a postdoc or TT faculty. And you will still want your advisor to write you LORs for jobs and other things. This will go on for several years; you can guess how many based on the average time it takes someone to get a job from when they graduate. So I would personally not take this kind of risk. He may still be around 10 years from now and be active and supportive, but what do you do if not?* 

* Not that this helps, but this can happen to anyone, not just with older faculty. Someone close to me recently decided to leave academia after her advisor (45yrs old) died in an accident, leaving her without a strong LOR for job applications. This kind of thing can be devastating. You can't do much about it, but the one thing you can do is cultivate multiple relationships as backups for each other and not rely on any one person too strongly. 

[blc073]

I agree with the above comments. 

Your advisor will be integral to your success for up to the next twenty years. He or she will obviously help you get through your PhD, but after that he or she will be your go-to person for networking and general advice well into your career. For a typical PhD, he or she will help you through graduate school (5-6 years), guide you through your post-doc (3-5 years), and be a form of support while you pursue tenure (6-10 years). That's 14 to 21 years. I would avoid a PI older than 65.