Joseph Ayoob is a Professor and the Vice Chair for Trainee Affairs in the Department of Computational and Systems Biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The main thrust of Dr. Ayoob’s work has been to design and implement innovative training, mentoring, and educational efforts for students and trainees at all levels. This includes a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program called Training and Experimentation in Computational Biology (TECBio) that has been continually funded since 2010 and a tailored research and enrichment CompBio Academy summer program for high school students started in 2011 that is a part of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Hillman Academy, for which he is also the Associate Director. His calling to the world of mentoring and mentor/mentee training was sparked by the exemplary mentors who helped shape his career path in such a positive way. Dr. Ayoob has been a CIMER Principal Facilitator since 2022 and has also been recognized by the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) as a Mentor of the Month and as an NRMN Master Mentor.