• Interview and article by: Suchitra Sankaranarayan; Photo by:Alex P. Taylor

Quaternary geologist and paleolimnologist at Northwestern University, Associate Prof. Yarrow Axford likes spending time outdoors. Growing up in rural Maine, Yarrow became fascinated that there’s a scientific explanation for every landscape we see. An undergraduate class at Mount Holyoke College affirmed her interest in geology and she is following her passion in studying the climate history of the Arctic region using sediment from lakes.

She vividly remembers a defining moment in her undergraduate years, where in an environmental sciences class she was shown a graph with some of the earliest data from ice cores drilled from the Greenland ice sheet, showing huge swings in climate that happened many thousands of years ago. “It was a moment of awe,” she recollects. Yarrow then went on to do fieldwork in Alaska, an opportunity she jumped on immediately. Her research work then got her involved early on in studying climate sciences and she hasn’t left the field since.

Yarrow loves her job. Her laboratory and office walls are strewn with beautiful photographs from Alaska and Greenland, where she does fieldwork collecting sediment cores to understand the changes in climate over the years. “Field work definitely generates the best photos”, she laughs, “the other eleven months we’re at the computer or in the lab.” She is delighted that she can combine travel, adventure and exploration and work in places where very little science has been done. It excites her when she visits different environments and witnesses the landscapes with her own eyes to answer questions and fill gaps in scientific information about the climate history of remote places that are challenging to work in. “It feels nice to get away from email for a few weeks,” she jokes. “You’re focused on a very narrow range in your to-do list, that includes staying alive – which you don’t normally think of so much. Life in the field is simpler than our complicated day-to-day lives at home, but still there is a lot to be careful and aware of while being thoughtful and precise in science.” Her role in the field is not limited to scientific exploration; when she is expedition leader she also ensures her team is safe, well-fed and happy. In recent years, experienced graduate students have taken on that role, and Yarrow is very proud to be training another generation of polar researchers.

Being a climate scientist is hard, not just on barren Arctic terrain but also in today’s political context that threatens climate science. Yarrow has been the recipient of angry emails when her work is covered by the media but she deals with this very optimistically. “Within my community, it’s a badge of honour. We tell each other it means your work is having impact,” she says. Nevertheless, it still frustrates her when she finds herself correcting and debunking misinformation and myths repeatedly. She wishes the conversation would evolve as much as the science has over the decades and is disheartened at how the public has been convinced of alleged discord among climate scientists, on topics for which there is a strong scientific consensus.

Added to that, Yarrow is one among relatively few women field scientists in a largely male dominated discipline. She feels she is fortunate to be in her dream role as she is today. However, it took her time and persistence to get there. Through her years of graduate study, she recalls often feeling out of place in classrooms, labs, meetings and field camps where the majority of mentors and peers were men. She cherishes working with women collaborators and finds the interaction helpful in not making her feel like an anomaly. Even in her lab today, a majority of her students happen to be women, an atmosphere Yarrow believes is conducive for women to avoid that feeling of “otherness”. She shares an incident where women students helped each other out on what to expect with mundane things on excursions to Greenland, such as personal hygiene. Hearing them share quirky advice and reviews on different products made her realize how different her own graduate experience would have been in such a work environment.

Challenges exist everywhere but Yarrow keeps her spirits up in doing science. She is driven by curiosity and in uncovering the next discovery. Every new piece of data thrills her, pushing her to answer the next question in advancing climate science. She is inspired by everyone she has worked with, absorbing the little things she has learnt from the many people she has worked with. Many of her role models have been male mentors who have taught her in her years of school, but she has also had a few special senior women to look up to. “Every collaborator, women in particular, can help provide an image of how to project authority and confidence while still bringing your authentic personality to the table,” she says.

Aside from research, Yarrow likes to spend time with her family. Her time and energy are always in demand as she balances running a lab, teaching and parenting. She expresses how it was difficult to do field work when also dealing with an infant as it was not possible being away for extended periods of time and appreciates her husband for being a large force in making her career work. Answering the widely asked question – can women have it all? – Yarrow believes yes, in the course of a lifetime but realistically, not all at once. She ascribes metaphorical seasons to phases of her life and career, where in each season one has different things to focus on with new strengths and challenges. “Things I want to accomplish may not always be compatible with each other so I focus on one or two types of work in one career ‘season.’” And while she may not be able to do everything all at once, this change allows her to shift gears and keep a fresh outlook on life. As she continues to rock at science, she hopes to encourage more early-career women to disregard societal norms and pursue their intellectual passions, so that their energy can go into propelling their careers.

By Rosemary Huggins

Dr. Kay Macleod is known for her pioneering research into autophagy and mitochondrial dysfunction in cancer.  Now an Associate Professor and Chair of the Committee on Cancer Biology at the University of Chicago, Kay created a pathway to success that was uniquely her own. Growing up on the islands of north-west Scotland, Kay’s childhood embraced daily encounters with nature, around shoreline rock pools and forests near her home. This strong affinity with nature feeds Kay’s scientific passion to this day. But Kay’s career-defining moment came when a TV program featuring Bob Weinberg, the renowned MIT cancer biologist, aired around the same time that Kay’s grandmother died from ovarian cancer. A healthy non-smoker, the cause of her grandmother’s ovarian cancer was unknown. This opened Kay’s eyes to the scientific challenge of trying to understand what causes cancer. Bob Weinberg’s explanation of oncogenes and how they drive cancer intrigued Kay and made her realize that this was the scientific endeavor she wanted to pursue.  High school teachers recognized Kay’s inquisitive mind and pushed her towards a career in medicine, which was expected for young students with strong grades and an interest in the disease. But when applying to college she realized, “It’s the science of medicine that’s more interesting to me than patient care.” Kay ultimately decided to study molecular biology at university. Her education and career have taken her around the world – after earning a Bachelor of Science degree with honors at the University of Edinburgh and her Ph.D. at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, Kay ventured to the Pasteur Institute in France for post-doctoral research followed by a highly productive post-doctoral fellowship at MIT. Since 2001, Kay has carried out innovative cancer research in her own laboratory at the University of Chicago. Her experiences throughout her career provide significant insight for young scientists.

Know what you need – and what you don’t.

Kay’s experience as a young post-doc at MIT made her acutely aware of the importance of the research ecosystem in promoting great science. “The thing about MIT that is very empowering is that there are so many spontaneous interactions. You get into the habit of talking to lots of super smart and creative people, resourcing what you need when you need it and working on the latest crazy idea that turns out to be golden.” Even when you are not an expert in a certain field or familiar with a particular technique needed to advance your research, in a good scientific ecosystem, expertise is around you in colleagues willing to collaborate. “Don’t be limited by lack of knowledge. If you want to do something, go talk to people with that knowledge and figure it out!”

Another lesson Kay learned from experience is that time is a key commodity to be guarded preciously. No matter what phase of your career you are in, we are constantly approached with requests to take on additional responsibilities. Serving on a committee, volunteering for an organization, teaching an extra course – there are many tasks we can take on to supplement our career goals. While these can be extremely rewarding, Kay advises that it is critical to know when to draw the line and say no. Kay notes this may not always be the easiest thing to do. “It’s so important to only do things you have time to do without negatively impacting your research or activities important to your own success and career development.”  Don’t be afraid of disappointing others: “You’re not helping yourself or the group you’re working with by overcommitting to stuff. And once you have certain responsibilities, it’s often difficult to unburden yourself of them.”

Follow where the research leads you.

Kay highlights the importance of following what you are passionate about and appreciating the unexpected result – even if this leads you off your original research course. The central goal of Kay’s lab when she first started out as an independent PI was to understand the role of the RB tumor suppressor in cancer. Her lab defined BNIP3 as a RB target gene that, in contrast to published work at the time, was acting to promote mitochondrial turnover (mitophagy). Over the next few years, Kay’s research pivoted away from the RB tumor suppressor to investigating autophagy and mitophagy. Now, as a leading researcher in the field of autophagy in cancer biology, this unexpected direction has paid off. “I like that you can change things up in science. If you just keep studying the same thing forever, it’s not as exciting nor does it have the potential to be transformative.”

Kay draws on her own experience when giving career advice. If you do feel stuck in a situation – whether it be your career, your institution, or your research project – Kay emphasizes the importance of regular self-evaluation and identifying what works for you, what the alternative options are and not being afraid to change. “You usually can tell when something’s going to work out or not, and knowing when to move on and not keep pursuing a bad idea, an unsuccessful project or sticking with a less than the stimulating environment is a critical skill to acquire.”

Be brave and bold in science.

“Have confidence in yourself, don’t ever doubt yourself. Don’t imagine hurdles for yourself, and if you want something badly enough and are willing to put the work in to get it, there’s nothing going to stop you.”

By Rebecca Sturey

Deborah Nelson, PhD, professor with the Grossman Institute for Neuroscience, Wednesday, May 13, 2015, on the University of Chicago campus. (Robert Kozloff/The University of Chicago)

As I rounded the corner, I uncovered the lunch area where the Nelson lab assembled. Smiles were apparent on everyone’s faces, and the warmness of their interactions seemed to emanate from the table. This moment stood in stark contrast to the barren, institutional hallways only feet away. When people discuss mentors, they often list their successes and awards. To me, this would be a horrible injustice to Deborah Nelson. A plaque, an award, or a series of grants cannot capture her greatest accomplishment. She is a living reminder that a brilliant mind and a kind soul go beautifully hand in hand.

As our labs jointly studied exosomes, a relatively unexplored field, our paths crossed multiple times. In less than a month, I witnessed her spearhead a campaign for the best equipment available. She successfully instigated the development of a beautifully crafted website to the benefit of all labs involved in exosome research at The University of Chicago. With a particularly insightful touch, she volunteered to make food arrangements for our budding exosome meetings to help catalyze our community. In a world dominated by objectives, deliverables, and deadlines, her seemingly dichotomous combination of sensitivity and intensity remains an indisputable trademark.
Her perspective and approach are no doubt a by-product of her career path. She fought hard and patiently for the opportunity to exercise her scientific independence. Her postdoctoral advisor gave her a perspective that fuels her to this day. “In a world in which women didn’t build things, women didn’t head conferences, they weren’t strong investigators, it was [Dr. Frederick Sachs] who told me: ‘Debby you can do this. There is nothing magic about it. It just takes time.’”

Deborah began her pursuit of science after falling in love with physiology and anatomy. Interestingly, she never felt pulled towards being a physician. Instead, she knew she wanted to focus on personally interrogating the molecular association between physiology and anatomy. She completed her PhD in Physiology at UCLA, and then two postdoctoral positions, one at the Universitat des Saarlandes in Germany, and the other at SUNY Buffalo. In 1985, she came to The University of Chicago. Here she opened her own lab and applied her expertise on ion channels with broad applications to diabetes, neurodegeneration, cystic fibrosis, innate immunity, muscle excitability, and epithelial transport of molecules. “When I was in graduate school, people worked on the same thing their whole life. When I finally got my own lab, I knew I couldn’t do that.” True to character, her lab has recently begun work on exosomes. This was largely prompted by her entire lab’s scientific infatuation with them and their future career interests. Deborah Nelson feels that her lab is an extension of her family, and that science is at its best when personal relationships are used to promote effective communication.

“I’m not capable of putting in 12 hours a day and having the people around me at a distance. I think you really need to handle people as you want to be handled. [People] need to feel safe in their environment: to tell you that something is not working, to tell you that they feel uncomfortable about something, to tell you that they have needs. You can’t just sit in a room and read a bar graph and know whether it is right or wrong. I don’t think I could do [science] any other way.”

Due to her decades of experience, I knew I was in for a treat when I asked her what advice she would give to future scientists. I was not disappointed. She was unabashedly straightforward. I was immediately humbled by her love of science and her personal sacrifices to the field.
“You have to have passion. You have to care about it in a way that almost everything can go to the side. You have to be intrigued enough by the question to get up in the morning and think about it. When your feet hit the floor, you think about it. When I was a graduate student, if you became pregnant, you had to leave graduate school. And so, it was two decades later that I realized that all my colleagues had families. I think you have to be willing to be flexible. You have to see your way to changing pathways, recognizing new techniques, handling your ‘small business’ in different ways”

As a true scientist and mentor, her dreams are humble and magnanimous. She has a longstanding hope to see science become a community that increasingly supports each other and has open and effective communication. In particular, she expressed that her most pressing goal is to equip the members of her lab with the proper tools to move forward and to ensure that they are “well on their way to a happy career path.” Well, with a caring, inspirational role model such as Deborah Nelson, they are undoubtedly in good hands.

By Shi En Kim

Can a woman pursuing a career in physics ever lead a normal family life?

“No,” was the answer a young Kathryn Levin received from a female physicist mentor-figure. Suddenly, this high schooler with big dreams was brought down to Earth to face her unfortunate reality: sacrifice family to follow her passion for physics or dash her career calling to attain fulfillment at home. It was an impossible choice, so Levin chose the impossible. The smart, headstrong, and resourceful young scientist entered college and leapt towards a future that she would build—a future in defiance of the grim expectations for women in the physical sciences. She was going to have it all.
* * *
I make my way down to Professor Kathryn Levin’s office just as she is wrapping up a discussion with a graduate student on some of their latest research results. She spies me not long later and saunters over with the remnants of excitement on her face. Clearly, it was a fruitful dialogue with her mentee, and she loved every minute of it.

Professor Levin is an award-winning professor of physics at the University of Chicago. She and her research group model atomic superfluids—fluids with zero viscosity when cooled to near absolute zero temperature—and exotic superconductors, solids which can technically carry an electrical current indefinitely with no loss in energy. Her enthusiasm for physics remains robust, even though she has been a professor for over 30 years. Very few women dare venture into a field as esoteric as hers, let alone one with such meager female representation. Even Professor Levin recognizes this. She is one of only three female faculty members in the department’s research subfield of condensed matter physics.

Also, she is happily married with two children. From all appearances, she has reached the highest echelons of physics yet not compromised her dreams to have a cozy family of her own, defying the predictions that her physicist mentor-figure made all those years ago.

As Professor Levin regales her story to me, I am not sure which I find more astonishing: that her own physicist father discouraged her from following in his footsteps as she was growing up, or that she was still headstrong enough to pursue physics despite such overwhelming negative feedback. Nevertheless, she insists she succeeded because of the negative advice as they sharpened her drive. She graduated top of the College of Letters and Science at the University of California Berkeley, then went on to graduate school at the prestigious Harvard University. She humbly claims that her path of becoming a physics professor is one of serendipity. Her secret to success in academia? ‘By exceling in the moment,’ she declares. ‘Life is not plannable. I only really wanted to do well in research, I never had a step-by-step plan.’

As an engineering graduate student at the University of Chicago, I came to know Professor Levin from taking two of her physics classes. One of them was Advanced Condensed Matter Physics. Besides me, the professor was the only other female in the class. Since taking her class, I have exponentially come to admire female scientists—especially the physicists—who stick it out in academia. It takes courage and a mental fortitude to overcome the barriers for entry, to ignore the dearth of women and the blatant male majority, of whom a woman like me can easily slip into fears of being left behind.

But women are usually on par with their male peers, despite the more prevalent lack of confidence in women, Professor Levin points out. Gender has never been either a measure or a proxy for personal and professional success, even in physics. She is truly the embodiment of this philosophy. Her pet peeve is when women are judged at a different standard than men are when it comes to boosting female representation in science at all levels. According to her, women and men can and should compete on a level playing field.

Nevertheless, Professor Levin emphasizes that it is important to have a strong emotional support network to counter such fears of the contrary, especially in graduate school. Even higher up along the academic ladder, she feels that overall, there is a sense in the wider community of tenured female professors of being underappreciated and marginalized—which women, particularly senior women, have to overcome. She pays tribute to her friend the late Professor Debbie Jin from the University of Colorado, who was her own source of encouragement and strength.

Outside of the field of physics, Professor Levin enjoys playing the piano recreationally. She suspects that music and physics go hand-in-hand somehow, as if both interests involve the same part of the brain. Still, her greater love will always be physics. It is palpable in her approach to research, in the people she surrounds herself with (her husband and one of her children are, unsurprisingly, also physicists), and even how she interacts with her group. She is definitely more involved in her research group’s projects than most other researchers I have seen. Her group is free to pop into the office whenever they want; there was one member who dropped by during our interview. The whole process of research to her is an emotional roller coaster, but she wants to stay as an intimate participant of these ups and downs. Physics she regards with a treasure hunt mentality, in a way that she will never be tired or jaded. Even several decades after setting foot into academia, she still shows no signs of stopping—or slowing down either.

Towards the end of her interview, Professor Levin reminds me that she has to attend a farewell party of a group member and needs to leave soon. Before heading to the event, she enthusiastically hurries to her graduate student’s office for another brief discussion on her research. I watch in admiration as Levin responds to the beckoning of the treasure trove of physics, to ‘excel in the moment’ once again.

Somehow, I know that she would have made her high school physicist mentor-figure and her father proud.

By Suchitra Sankaranarayan

Corinna Raimondo, a senior compliance specialist for the Office for Research Integrity, Northwestern University, is passionate about doing science professionally. Corinna, who has a PhD in physical chemistry followed by 2 post docs at Northwestern University decided to follow her call and pursued a role helping research integrity in academia. She works tirelessly to ensure the research conducted at Northwestern has integrity

I met Corinna in the classroom where she was my instructor for a non-credit, mandatory course called Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR). Her passion and vocalism about the rectifying the wrong methods in science was loved by everyone in class. Corinna with her frank nature while teaching brings a certain level of “sass” into the classroom environment. My earliest interaction with Corinna was her saying, “I know it is a Friday evening and we have this class, but there will always be food.” keeping us upbeat.

Corinna hated not being able to fully understand the world around her. This motivated her to develop an active interest in science beginning with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in chemistry at the University of Genoa (Italy) followed by a PhD at the Institut de Science et d’Ingénierie Supramoléculaire of the University of Strasbourg (France). Her early research focused on the synthesis, characterization, and application in devices of light-sensitive nanomaterials. Determined to stay in academia and pursue professorship, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the chemical and chemical engineering departments at Northwestern University, studying the synthesis and application of nanomaterials in the most diversified fields, ranging from pure electrochemistry to cell biology. She did her second postdoctorate in the chemical engineering department at Northwestern University where her main focus was developing novel heterogeneous catalysts for epoxidations and carbonylations.

While working deeply in laboratory settings, Corinna began to see the imperfections in the system of academic research and sought a professional figure to help her do something about it. When she was writing her proposal for professorship; Corinna realized she had to make a change in the system. The turning point came when Corinna attended an RCR class and learned of Research Integrity Officers (RIOs). Her interest piqued, she decided to pursue it diligently by taking up teaching assistantships for such courses and spending nights studying relevant literature to assimilate as much as she could about the field of research integrity. She was awarded the Mirzayan Fellowship that enabled her to discover how federal agencies worked in implementing scientific integrity in academia and industry. While initially confusing, Corinna calls it an incredible experience that allowed her to meet wonderful people in the field she was interested in. Post the 12-week stint, Corinna was interviewing for jobs. “The fellowship allowed me to meet so many incredible people and finally to land the job of my dreams. I feel incredibly lucky.”, she says.

Today, as Corinna sits working in her office, she carries a number of responsibilities on her shoulders. She facilitates proceedings in cases of misconduct at Northwestern University. “As a compliance specialist, I do my best to make sure that the procedures in place are applied promptly. The research misconduct process is complicated and lengthy and needs professionals to make sure it is managed the best way possible, keeping confidentiality of the parties involved and assuring the integrity of the institution.”, she explains.

Having an extensive research background has helped Corinna perform her job to the best of her abilities. Her curiosity, eagerness to learn and having a “scientist eye” are attributable. As a person who is meticulous, realizing that perfection isn’t always easy to achieve was hard but her humility enabled her to understand and admit her mistakes serving an opportunity to grow and progress.

In addition to this, she is passionate about teaching RCR to students. She wishes to explain correct research conduct and dealing with ethical dilemmas to younger scientists and trainees, such as myself, giving students the kind of mentorship she yearned for during her research days. “I wish I had such class when I first started working in labs. If even only one person, thanks to the knowledge from the class, is helped to make a difficult decision and to act with integrity, then my job is done.”, says Corinna.
As a woman, Corinna feels women are sometimes perceived as “distractions to male colleagues”. She is optimistic that the gender balance in academia is improving and is a strong advocate for equal treatment of the genders. Supported by a beautiful family of a husband and two children, she loves spending any free time with them. She aspires to reach greater heights in her career and also make some time for theatrical acting, an old hobby.

Once a scientist and now a promoter of science, Corinna is happy that her hard work and sacrifices have worked out to bring her to the present high point in life. Taking an unconventional route after being in traditional academia has not been easy but her zeal kept her motivated. She says to those interested in following a similar career path, “Don’t choose it because you need a job, do it only if you feel passionate about it.”

By Ankeeta Shah

Anindita (Oni) Basu, Assistant Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and Assistant Professor of Genetic Medicine at the University of Chicago, is far from what the average person pictures when imagining a scientist. This is because our perception of what a scientist should look like has been shaped by gender biases that are entrenched in popular culture and the media. Nevertheless, Oni and her female colleagues are gradually changing the status quo. They represent the diverse array of scientists who are building an equitable and fruitful environment for the next generation.

Oni is the type of scientist young research trainees should aspire to become because she is invested in diversifying science in terms of who can get involved and what skills and experiences they can bring to the table.  Oni has “changed fields many times” but continues to “find ways to use old skills.” For example, with her extensive background in physics and genomics, she developed Drop-Seq, which is a technique that combines cutting-edge microfluidic droplet technology, massive molecular barcoding, and single-cell RNA-Seq, allowing her lab to categorize cell types in complex tissues.

Instrumental mentors from the beginning.

Oni moved from Kolkata to the United States for her undergraduate education at the University of Arkansas. Initially, she decided that she wanted to study computer engineering because it was the early 2000s and everyone she knew was doing computer engineering, especially her Indian peers. While she liked computer engineering, it was not something that really captured her imagination.

Eventually, Oni did find her true calling. During her second year of college, she was encouraged by the chair of the physics department to pursue physics because she seemed excited about it. Ultimately, she went on to conduct undergraduate research in physics and was certain that she was going to be in physics for the rest of her life. Oni gives credit to her instrumental mentors for their investment in her interests, claiming that “I am only here because of all the mentors I have had throughout my career.” 

Find the right people, and fruitful science will follow.

Enamored by physics, Oni went on to pursue a Ph.D. in Soft Matter Physics at the University of Pennsylvania. During her postdoctoral fellowship at the Broad Institute, she was intrigued by microfluidic devices and wanted to study complex fluids. However, early on, she unintentionally dived into genomics.

Her PI at the time outlined a collaborative project in genomics that he suggested she consider participating in. Oni recalls, “It was not so much the project that I liked, but the people.” She described how the biologists she had spoken with and ultimately worked with had broken down the problem into “simple words that a physicist could understand.” She appreciates that the effort was truly collaborative — everyone brought their own skillsets, repurposing them for the task at hand. Now, genomics is the “gift that keeps on giving.”

Since Oni arrived at the University of Chicago in 2016, her interdisciplinary work has attracted a wide variety of individuals to her lab, all from different fields — genetics, chemistry, immunology, engineering, and biophysics. She appreciates her students, describing them as genuine, creative, and inquisitive. “It takes not only what their background is,” she remarks, “but also their interest going forward that makes them fit for a project.”

Forward-thinking science.

“Growing up in India, or even in undergrad, we never thought about these things,” Oni says when describing the systemic bias against women in science. “Suddenly, you see this, and you ask, where did that all come from? Was it always here? Was I just not paying attention?” She notes that “it gets harder as you go higher up.” Oni observed this in subtle ways — she was the only girl in her physics group. And she also saw it in more dramatic ways — she was appalled hearing the stories of women her age “shrink and cower,” when dealing with some conservative hiring committees in academia.

There is no defined solution to gender inequality in science, according to Oni, but “talking about it, being aware, and making other people aware definitely does help.” Oni devotes a lot her time to outreach efforts aimed at getting girls interested in science. For example, she is involved in the Science Careers in Search for Women in which she speaks with students, which she describes as “bright and precocious kids,” about her scientific career. She notes that over the years of mentoring high school and college girls she has seen that “a lot of women are losing interest in science in high school. In middle school, science is cool for everyone. Suddenly, there is a divide.” Therefore, in terms of outreach, she believes that high school-aged girls definitely need more attention.

“The women that came before us in science did a lot of work to get where they were and to allow us to get to where we are,” Oni says, “and we shouldn’t take that for granted.” By consciously going in for more managerial or committee duties and leadership positions, women can continue to have a say. Oni believes that “what the women before us have done that is important, and we cannot say that things are getting better now and sit back. It is not just that we will not progress, but we might regress.”

By Claire Stevenson

A great role model

When Kari Barlan came to The University of Chicago for her post-doctoral work, three things jumped out: she was enthusiastic, had a great sense of humor, and a powerful drive for discovery. She had a post-it on her desk that said “discovery demands risk” and she meant it. She started by taking on a project and techniques that were completely new to the lab. But she wasn’t just a wide-eyed risk taker, she had impressive organizational skills and professionalism that helped ensure her success. All this combined to make her a great researcher and role model for trainees in the lab.

Before coming to The University of Chicago, Kari was no stranger to the Chicago scientific community. After her undergraduate degree at Oberlin College, Kari came to Northwestern University as a technician in Sarah Rice’s lab. She continued there for her doctorate work in Vladimir Gelfand’s lab before joining Sally Horne-Badovinac’s lab at The University of Chicago.

Moving beyond academia

After publishing her post-doctoral work in an exciting paper that advanced the field of collective cell migration, Kari was deciding on her next career move.  Although she started preparing for the academic job market, Kari wasn’t totally sold on academia. She said that she often felt like, “I was alone on my own island,” working on something that few others cared about, and wondered if this was the best way for her to have an impact on the world.

During this time, her work was attracting attention, both in her field and more broadly. Her publication had piqued the interest of the show Tell Me Something I Don’t Know, hosted by Stephen Dubner, best known for the book Freakonomics. This show brings in researchers to share interesting findings with the audience. Kari’s research focused on collective cell migration, which is essential for many processes including embryonic development, wound healing and cancer metastasis. She was interested in what enables collectively migrating cells to coordinate their movement. Her work elucidated a new paradigm for signaling between migrating cells and received much praise in the field.  However, after a few calls with the producer, the show decided her work wasn’t interesting to them. It was discouraging to hear that an audience of people yearning for groundbreaking discoveries wouldn’t find her work meaningful, but this harsh realization came at an opportune time. It reinforced her feeling that she wanted a career where she felt like she could have a larger impact, and she realized that she didn’t want to be alone on her academic island anymore.  She emphasized that she’s not denigrating academic science, but says, I was, “struggling to find my place in the larger world.”

This realization lead Kari to her current position as Senior Scientist in Functional Genomics at Abbvie, a pharmaceutical company in the northern suburbs of Chicago. She is part of a team that develops new CRISPR-based technologies that can be used to identify and develop potential drug targets. She is motivated by the potential that her platform has to help other biologists make discoveries. Every researcher wants to know the mechanism behind their disease of interest, and she feels that if she can develop a platform to help them gain that understanding, it has the potential to have a broad impact. When comparing her current position to academia she says, “in industry I can work with a lot of people and make a lot of progress quickly toward a tangible goal, even if it doesn’t result in a specific drug, you are able to move things along at a good pace with tangible results.”

Being a woman in science

Reflecting on how men and women are treated in the workplace, Kari has noticed some obvious gender differences over the years. One in particular is the different assumptions made about male versus female colleagues, not about one’s scientific ability, but about their interests. For example, she doesn’t get included in the same number of internal meetings as her male colleagues. And if someone wants an answer, she is not necessarily the first person they come to, even if she is qualified to answer and is working on something closely related. To combat this, she finds herself, “constantly trying to advocate, to ask to go to those meetings, or to set them up,” if a team is being formed she’ll stick up for herself to be included on it, she believes it is important to not get passed by. This is part of what makes Kari a great role model for all young scientists and professionals. Sticking up for oneself is not easy, and seeing someone have the guts to do it is inspiring.

Advice for your next career move

Kari has one big piece of advice for young scientists:  Thinking ‘I’m only a fly geneticist’, or ‘only a developmental biologist’, is very limiting. As scientists, “we develop skills that we don’t take credit for,” but which are highly valuable in any workplace, such as “self-motivation, organization, planning, leadership.” A lot of what we do is, “translatable into lots of different jobs, not just academics, you’re more than just a PhD… the key is knowing how to sell your skill set and spin what you’re able to do.” In terms of helping trainees decide on their next step, she said that you never know what’s going to happen, but any path you take will help you develop new ways of thinking and learning, all of which have fundamental value.

By Pallavi Sirjoosingh

Dr. Rebecca (Becky) Toroney took to biochemistry during her undergraduate years at Franklin & Marshall College. While working under Prof. Ryan Mehl, she helped develop a novel method to increase protein stability using UV cross-linking by incorporation of photoreactive unnatural amino acids. Following undergraduate studies, she decided to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry. In addition to her interest in all things scientific, Becky was encouraged to pursue graduate studies by a mentor at home. Her sister, Rachel, who at that time was attending graduate school at Johns Hopkins University, gave Becky the behind-the-scenes on what “graduate school entails”. The state-of-the-art research facilities were great but it was talking to her eventual thesis advisor and mentor, Phil Bevilacqua, that convinced Becky to join Penn State, “He was enthusiastic about his research, and encouraged me to work with him over the summer before I joined graduate school”. Even though her summer research project was focused on studying pKa shifting using NMR, Becky decided she wanted to be closer to molecular biology, and her thesis work was focused on the different structural features of RNAs responsible for regulating protein kinase PKR.

It was in Phil’s lab that I met Becky. Her persistent attention to detail, a quality that also makes her a great scientist, was evident in her meticulous lab notebooks, well-organized lab bench, and a desk that would be the envy of Martha Stewart. One of my earliest memories of Becky is asking her for a plasmid, and watching her retrieve a 10X10 excel spreadsheet map of her sample box to pinpoint the exact location of the tube – I still aspire to this level of organization. In graduate school, I watched and learned from Becky mentor a fellow graduate student, and benefitted greatly from her advice during group meetings and random lunchroom conversations.

After finishing graduate school Becky decided to continue academic research. While attending the ASBMB conference in California, Becky saw a talk by Prof. John Staley at the University of Chicago. Becky wanted to pursue her postdoctoral research on a topic different from her graduate research work, and “splicing was an interesting and established field, and John’s research was unique from Phil’s”. After speaking with Prof. Staley, Becky realized that the research project may entail more genetics but it helped that Prof. Staley “was trained as a chemist”, and that she would still have a “foot planted in chemistry”.

During her tenure at the Staley lab, Becky earned the prestigious NIH Ruth L. Kirschtein NRSA Postdoctoral fellowship, and a postdoctoral research grant by the Chicago Biomedical Consortium, for her research on the U6 snRNA’s role in the spliceosome disassembly. Early on in her scientific career, Becky had watched her graduate school mentor tackle the pressure of obtaining scientific funding. She decided that the responsibility of having “multiple people’s careers and livelihoods depend upon my ability to obtain tricky research funding” was a source of stress that she wanted to avoid in her professional career. Following the completion of her postdoctoral research work, Becky decided to join Abbott Molecular as a Senior Scientist taking on a completely new challenge.

Early on at Abbott, Becky became part of the research team involved in validating a real-time qPCR based assay that helps detect specific mutations in the IDH2 gene in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The diagnostic assay is a companion to the drug Idhifa (enasidenib, Celgene) that is used for the treatment of adult patients that have relapsed or refractory AML, and both the drug and the assay received FDA-approval recently. Even though she thoroughly enjoyed the intellectual vigor of her academic research work, being a part of the developmental team for this diagnostic assay with direct consequence to the lives of patients, was an extremely gratifying experience for Becky.

When not in the lab, you can find Becky running along the lakefront path on warmer days (she recently completed a half marathon), watching opera at the Lyric, playing the Game of Thrones theme-song on her cello, listening to live music at the Millennium Park, or surprising an unaware friend by her in-depth knowledge of Star Trek.

Fortunately, Becky says, she has not suffered from any obstacles in her research career because of her gender, but she has observed female scientists struggle trying to “maintain a work-life balance” more so than their male counterparts. Her advice to graduate students – “don’t get pushed into working on a project you’re not that interested in- it might make for some uncomfortable conversations with your PI but it’s worth taking ownership over your work”, and “select an advisor who is interested in helping you become the best scientist you can be, not just one who churns out a lot of great papers but only thinks of the people in his/her lab as data collectors.” Becky’s love for science has guided her to different research areas and settings, and she says that loving science doesn’t mean “you have to pursue a traditional academic career path”. She says a large number of trained scientists follow a “non-traditional” path. Becky is not just a scientist but a proponent of science too, and believes that “we need more scientists who want to interact with the public and, especially policymakers, or who want to craft that policy themselves.”