I could see things that my eyes alone can’t. And so, I was passionate about biology from the first time that I started to study it. I was also fascinated with history and archaeology. I saw being a biologist or an archaeologist as my ideal job because both required the curiosity that I had to make a discovery. Both had the potential for excitement and the ability to discover something new, but in the end, I decided that biology was right for me.  

How did you decide to leave Italy and come to San Diego? 

I’ve been in San Diego for 4 years now. I love this place. Honestly, it was the dream of my life, to come from Italy and live in California. As part of my PhD program, I had the opportunity to spend 6 months outside Italy so I was looking at several labs that I could join. I first thought about a lab in San Francisco, but in the end, I decided to join a cancer research lab at the Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The Institute of Genetics and Cancer is a strategic partnership of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Human Genetics Unit (HGU), Cancer Research UK Edinburgh Center, and the Centre for Genomic and Experimental Medicine. I had a fantastic experience in Edinburgh but when I went back to Italy after discussing my PhD, I was still thinking about needing to go to California to work. I believed that I could have a well-balanced lifestyle and access to job opportunities within a strong research environment. They say that California and San Diego are perfect because they also have beaches, which help you achieve a nice balance. My other alternative was in Boston. And while I loved the research they were doing, I was not very excited about their much colder climate. In some ways, I think destiny was involved because whenever I looked at the location of the affiliation of the people authoring a paper, it was always La Jolla, La Jolla, La Jolla. And then after I checked what this area looked like, I said, “Wow, this is wonderful, I want to go there.” 

How was your science education different in Italy? 

When I went to middle school and high school in Italy, we didn’t have laboratory science classes where you could do practical experiments. We studied a lot, but only with books and both oral and written tests. I never had the opportunity to work in a lab until I went to university. My initial response for each college lab was that it was super exciting! Unfortunately, our lab sections were not very long, and we didn’t have many during the year. But to get a PhD in Italy, we must first earn both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree. And for each, we need to write a research thesis, requiring us to join a lab, follow a project, and write about those experiments.  

How did you become interested in cancer research? 

For my Bachelor’s research, I did three months of laboratory research with a team focused on cancer research. Initially, I was excited about the genetics and molecular biology focus of the work. But, for personal reasons associated with the events that were happening in my life, I grew to understand that I wanted to do science to help people. In my family, a lot of people die of cancer. I get a little bit emotional when I think about that because I know first-hand what happens to a person with cancer and how it affects their family. We were working on a tumor suppressor protein, and I had a nice experience—you can tell because I worked there not only through my Bachelor’s and Master’s programs but also for my PhD, which allowed me to see this project grow. And so, I’m (still) attached to that project, the team, and the place. Looking back, I think it was the best school for me to learn how to work in science. 

How did you learn to adapt to funding difficulties? 

In our labs in Italy, we didn’t have enough money to do the work—there were funding issues all the time. But there’s a lesson to be learned in that: when you don’t have many resources, you develop the skills you need to adapt and learn to accept the things that you can do. But to me, it made me question why we should do these experiments or figure out whom we could ask for a reagent when we didn’t have it. It was complicated. But it also gave me a push to want to do more and find a better situation when possible. You need to be able to adapt when something goes wrong. And, unfortunately, one of the main problems in science is the availability of funding: even in the best lab, there are periods when you know that the funding is going to expire, and you need to adapt to a stricter budget for a short time. And to me and where I come from, you give value to each thing, you don’t throw a thing away, and if there is an issue, you find a solution.  

What is most interesting about your current research?  

I joined this lab to work on tumor metastasis. While they have strong expertise in breast cancer, they also have subgroups that are each looking at a different aspect of tumor metastasis. My subgroup is looking at the actin-based structure that carcinoma cells form to degrade the extracellular matrix, invade, and metastasize. My project’s goals are to understand the molecular mechanisms, identify new proteins that affect this subcellular structure or the metastatic cascade, and find a new therapeutic target in the long term. What excites me about it is that this could translate into a positive impact on a cancer patient. We are still assessing which kind of cancer to focus on so that I can analyze the right kind of target, and we have resources available for that. And the project itself is interesting from a molecular biology standpoint. Also, the mechanisms of these small and highly dynamic structures are difficult to study, so having good microscopy skills is essential. We are developing good resources for live imaging and confocal microscopy in cancer cells. 

Why do you believe so strongly in achieving a strong work-life balance? 

It’s something that I’m learning here, to have this good balance between my work and life. As I see with my colleagues who do research in academia, a lot lose focus on themselves. They are too involved with only doing science. But having a 100% science focus can result in a loss of enjoyment for both your life and your science.  

What’s next for you after you complete your postdoc?  

I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet because everything depends on how all this research right now will go. I’m still evaluating the possibility of a career in academia or sometimes I also think about the job of an editor, reviewing papers, or maybe a job in a biotech company to develop a product that can be helpful to treat patients. I need to think more about my future direction in science. I’ll be a postdoc at least until next October. Unlike in Italy, where careers in science are limited to academia and that’s it, in the US, there are a lot of different kinds of jobs that you can do with a PhD in biology: you can be what you want and change your career path anytime along the way just by a little bit or by a lot. 

How important is it to be passionate about your work? 

I can tell you that my best memories of my previous lab are related to passion. While the people were going to work and coming to the lab day after day, year after year, everyone was motivated by their passion. When this happens, it feels like there is a mental interaction, a strong connection. When that happens, you feel comfortable messaging each other in the evening to share ideas. And honestly, I would be happy if everyone in life could have this kind of experience. When you can find someone that is on the same wavelength in your job, it’s the best feeling that you can have. You know that that person thinks similarly to you. And when you interact with her or with him, the conversation can go on for hours. And while it’s job-related, you don’t think of it as work because you are talking about your passion.  

What is the most rewarding facet of working in the sciences? 

Reward is the feeling that I have when I am discovering something, and that is one of the best feelings. You can especially see it at the end of a project when you pull the story together in a publication. I also love the rewards of communicating with people and talking about science:  sharing ideas, hearing what others think, seeing how people react, and taking suggestions. I see communication as a moment of interaction with others and not as a moment where they are judging you. Because I think that science is all about teamwork, one of the best parts of this job is interacting with others that you work with day-to-day and side-by-side. Being open to suggestions from others who might be able to see something that you don’t notice can provide a new way to look at things. And that is even more rewarding.  

What is the biggest life lesson you’ve learned from your work? 

I learned that you need to be persistent, but not fixed. A lot of people in this job can get fixed on some concept and then they spend a month or year or more on it rather than accepting that it just doesn’t work. It can be difficult to separate the failure of an experiment or a negative result from who you are and how well you understand the science. I couldn’t do that during my PhD, but I’ve gotten better since then. Now I try to focus on the main goal and find alternative ways to solve issues. This fosters discovery, and that’s what I do. 

How did you decide to leave Mexico and come to UCLA? 

I was at the same university (UNAM) earning my BS (Chemistry), MS (Biochemistry), specialty training (electron microscopy; EM), and my PhD (Biochemistry). In 1986, my master’s degree mentor, who was very savvy at getting foreign professors to visit her lab, invited someone who would change my life. This man, who was in Mexico to see the World soccer games, was impressed by my hand skills, and invited me to come to UCLA after I finished my doctorate. I said, “No, no, no, I don’t want to go LA—I will be going to Germany to do my postdoc.” He came back every year to ask again. Although I had been accepted by a postdoctoral fellowship program in Germany, I was married and had a son by then. My wife convinced me that moving to Germany for a short time to then returning with no guaranteed job was risky, so I accepted the long-term offer at UCLA. I started as a postdoc, transitioned to a researcher, and then ultimately became a professor. This year, I’m proud to say I’ve been an employee of UCLA for 30 years, where I’m well recognized for my experience and dedication. 

Did you know English before you moved here? 

I knew what I heard in the movies. But my father always encouraged my brother and me to take classes instead of wasting time. So, we took some English classes when we were 12 or 13, and I think that helped me a lot. Then, at the undergraduate science level, most of the books were in English, including the very thick and famous Principles of Biochemistry by Lehninger. But even today, when I have a conversation in English outside of my field of work, I have difficulties.  

What do you think is a good formula for making progress in science? 

Our department has a tradition of having PhDs working with medical doctors. That means I’ve always had the opportunity to interact with physicians and be able to integrate the concepts of molecular pathology, chemistry, and biochemistry that I learned from basic research into the disease. It’s mind-blowing for me because early in my career things were not as intermingled: medicine was kept in one arena and science was kept in another. Now we know they cannot live or progress without the other.  

What’s the most stunning change in the sciences you’ve seen?  

Most recently, with the pandemic, we saw the development of the mRNA vaccine. I never thought this would be possible with the science we were doing in the 80s and 90s. But, because of the necessity and the funding that became available, we had vaccines and therapeutics available in months rather than years. That’s a big jump. Many other amazing things are happening right now. For example, integrating artificial intelligence into the picture and seeing what we can learn from the “connectomics” Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative to study the brain’s structural and functional connections between cells. With all the changes and multidisciplinary aspects, I know that I must reinvent myself to keep up. I’m not scared—I’m excited because I always go for the challenge. But the electron microscopy techniques that I learned early in my career are still relevant. Sample preparation is still essential. Some distinguished professors tell me that I have specific skills to handle tissue samples so well that it makes me unique. I’m like the French chef or sushi master who brings something special to the table.  

How would you describe what you do in 30 seconds or less if someone met you on the elevator? 

Briefly, I am a scientist. I do research in hearing to help people hear better. And then, if they have the time to listen, I will tell them more about my current research. I study the histopathology of the human ear, trying to discern the molecular basis of disease. We teach residents, medical doctors, medical students, and undergrads how the ear is organized. The ear is one of the more marvelous architectures in your body and it affects hearing and balance. Our ears suffer damage as we are exposed to noise, chemicals, antibiotics, and more. I focus on understanding how hearing is affected. For that, we rely on a temporal bone bank (National Temporal Bone, Hearing, and Balance Resource Registry) established in 1960 by the National Institute of Deafness and other Communication Diseases (NIDCD), with access to an archive of 12,000 temporal bones from human donors with different diseases. We can do different types of analysis from DNA to proteomics, immunocytochemistry, or electron microscopy to better understand how different situations affect the ear. For example, we have a collection of samples from people with noise-induced hearing loss and from people who received a cochlear implant. We are trying to create a three-dimensional model from hundreds of thousands of slices so that you can see the normal ear compared with the pathological ear under different conditions and think that we can do that in 5 years.  

What are the primary causes of hearing loss?  

The problem with hearing loss is that almost everything causes damage. The 30,000 cells we are born with are tiny and begin to decay around age 20. Continuous noise exposure is one unavoidable reason you will lose hearing. Loss can also occur if you have an infection that requires the use of antibiotics effective against gram-negative bacteria. Even a common drug like aspirin (salicylate) can affect the inner or outer hair cells. Genetics is also a factor: people can be completely deaf at birth or express the defect with time. Deafness severely affects the ability to communicate, propagates brain shrinkage, and can lead to neurodegenerative diseases. There’s so much more to learn.  

What do you see yourself doing in another 5 to 10 years? 

Science develops at such a fast pace, and I am expanding my horizon outside of balance and hearing. I’m beginning to study the retina and the sensory olfactory system. In 2020, I worked on a review on the loss of smell (anosmia) associated with COVID-19 that ended up being one of my most popular papers with about 16,000 downloads and 60 citations. Recently, I was invited to participate in the BRAIN Initiative because of my EM skills (transmission and scanning electron microscopy). I also want to learn about artificial intelligence. I believe I should continue diversifying my portfolio. I will be happy to continue my research and teaching for 10 or 15 years more while I’m still in good shape. 

What is the most rewarding or challenging facet of your research? 

Among the rewarding things, people are extremely supportive of you, your discoveries, and what you are contributing to science. On a personal level, I enjoy finding new details in the cells using the electron microscope and mentoring students. I like teaching and motivating students to do more. One of my MD-PhD students tells me that his interest and accomplishments are because of me. That’s the kind of thing that is the best food for a scientist. It helps offset the main challenge we must face as a public university that is reliant on grant funding. But if you are in this game, you learn to be prepared for rejection, to be persistent, and to provide new ideas. This is everybody’s challenge, not only mine. 

What do you enjoy doing outside of the lab?  

Here at UCLA, we have one of the best programs in martial arts. I began taking classes when I was 50 after I was mugged and needed to learn how to defend myself. I earned my Black Belt in karate after 7 years. I also took classes in Muay Thai, which is boxing from Thailand that uses all your limbs. But my passion now is dancing the Argentine tango. This is one of the most beautiful dances in the world but also one of the most difficult. If you come to my lab, you will hear the tango. It also helps me with personal development because these dancers are professional high achievers. You must be very elegant; you must learn the steps; you must maintain your posture. Sometimes I get new ideas for my research while I’m dancing. I do what I can to come back fresh every day to the same room I’ve been coming to for 30 years. I am fortunate: I enjoy my life, my job, and my work, and I still love what I do. I’ve found ways to release all my stress in healthy ways. 

What message do you live by? 

Bruce Lee, the martial artist said, “Absorb what is useful. Reject what is useless. Add what is essentially your own.” And it applies to a science career. You will have bad experiences and good experiences. Always keep the best for you. Learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of others. 30 years in, coming from Mexico, and already old, I am surviving this environment. Competition is hard, but it’s the same for everybody. Having mentors helped me. And now I have students who are so smart, with MD-PhDs, and I try to learn from them. I think that my best advantages exist because almost everyone that I asked for help has provided it. 

What first got you interested in science? 

I’ve been nurtured by a series of mentors that I’ve been incredibly lucky to meet since the fourth grade. And when I say mentors, I mean all my science teachers who recognized my inclination toward science and encouraged me. They would prod me to do a little bit more until it got to the point where they couldn’t hold me down—I couldn’t learn things fast enough. I had well-educated, thoughtful teachers at every step of the way who encouraged me to go just a little bit further. For example, I attended a Catholic elementary school in Oregon where my first significant mentor was a nun who not only taught science but also progressively taught evolution. And while I didn’t recognize the significance of that at the time, I realize now just how unusual and fortunate that was. 

How did you know that neuroscience was the field for you? 

My high school psychology class had a teacher with a PhD. I have no idea what possessed her to teach high school in a public school district, but she did, and I was glad for that. Her background included studying dopamine homeostasis, specifically treatments for schizophrenia. At that time, I didn’t know what neuroscience or neurobiology was, but she saw and encouraged my interest. I soon recognized that everything that I was doing, everything that I was interested in, fit very neatly into that category. By the time I finished high school, I was dead set on neuroscience, and I still follow that path, studying dopamine homeostasis in both the brain and the peripheral immune system, currently in the context of Parkinson’s disease (PD). 

When did you learn to analyze and understand scientific literature?  

I had a professor at UF for a summer course who taught us how to dissect scientific literature. We met three hours a day, five days a week, and read ten papers each week. Until then, literature seemed too intimidating for me. Her systematic teaching methods enabled me to access and understand the world of scientific knowledge. I learned that scientific papers were not made to be read from start to finish or to be immediately processed. Today, I rely on three read-throughs to understand a paper: I note the abbreviations in the margins in the first round, rely on all those letter and number combinations in the second round to start making sense of it, and then analyze and annotate the figures so that they’ll tell their own story.  

How did you generate all the publications you needed to defend your PhD thesis this year? 

My PhD mentor told me from the get-go: “I expect my students to publish one paper a year for their entire graduate education.” Since I had no idea how realistic (or unrealistic) that was, I didn’t question it, kept my eye on that number, and did just that. I realize now that was more than what most mentors expected. But in retrospect, I’m grateful for that. Because every chapter of my thesis was a published paper, it simplified putting my thesis together with a lot of copying, pasting, and formatting.  

What do you want to do after your PhD is complete? 

My goal has been and continues to be to stay in academia to be an independent principal investigator (PI) with an independent lab and students. Because my project is so heavily involved with primary samples from PD patients, the only place I can do it is where I have access to those patient samples. The only places that can rival the clinical-basic science teamwork we have here at UF Gainesville are Texas and the Netherlands. That gives me a strong rationale for wanting to stay here, and with so much work to be done with the potential for a myriad of spin-offs, there is room for me to continue this line of investigation.  

How would you concisely describe the research you do? 

It turns out that peripheral immune cells express the same protein markers that are expressed by the dopamine neurons that are affected in the brains of PD patients. As these neurons degenerate in a person with PD, immune cells in the blood change their expression of tyrosine hydroxylase and dopamine transporter proteins. This paves the way to identify potential biomarkers, monitor treatment efficacy, and develop new treatment therapeutics.  

Is it challenging to get funding in your area of research? 

Whenever you open a new chapter in a disease-related field, there’s resistance to overcome persuading the reviewers that what you’re studying is real, that it’s worth studying, and that it has implications for human disease. For example, we faced quite the uphill battle to get our paper published earlier this year in Nature’s npj Parkinson’s Disease. Since it’s been published, we have been getting offers for collaboration and support left, right, and center. But until then, it was crickets. There seems to be an activation energy threshold that must be passed before that kind of support becomes feasible. Up to this point, we’ve been working with local and private foundation grants. That being said, I’m always surprised and gratified that we’ve been able to put five publications out so far, even without a major grant for this line of research.  

Do you believe that your research has benefited from having access to human blood samples rather than translating from an animal model?  

We took a different approach to start. Typically, neurodegenerative disease research starts in an animal model with an aspect of the disease that it reproduces faithfully. Researchers characterize the aspect and find an effective treatment for it in the animal species. Unfortunately, when one tries to transfer this treatment to humans, it often doesn’t work as planned. To avoid that pitfall, we started with human subjects to identify the phenomenon, verified that it was real and happening in the patient population of interest, and then worked backward to two separate, validated mouse models. We have been able to look at potential communications between the dopamine regions of the brain and its neurons that are dying in PD, as well as connections between those regions and the peripheral immune system. This helps us be doubly sure that what we see is due to the brain, the periphery, or both. Now, we’re figuring out the mechanism that links the loss of dopamine neurons to changes in dopaminergic markers on the peripheral immune cell and the best way to translate this into PD patients in the clinic.  

What practical applications have you been able to develop from your research? 

We found blood-based markers that are traditionally associated with dopamine neurons, cells that are dying in the brains of PD patients. These markers were thought to only exist in the central nervous system (CNS), the brain, and certain neuronal populations. It turns out that peripheral immune cells (specifically monocytes) express the entire set of dopamine signaling machinery. In PD patients, these markers are dramatically upregulated and increased at the time of diagnosis but fall back toward baseline levels after successful treatment. We identified a potential blood-based biomarker for PD that can be routinely tested. To get this to market, we will need to meet FDA regulatory requirements to make sure that it’s safe and can reliably and accurately measure the biomarker. Performing all those steps usually take about five years.  

What is one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?  

My original undergraduate lab mentor and principal investigator (PI) at UF was instrumental in keeping me on track. He had this way of getting me to see what was happening versus what I was hoping would happen. My undergraduate education was affected by an illness that progressively worsened and took a long time to diagnose, with doctors who repeatedly told me that it would resolve in just two weeks. My mentor said, “Adithya, you’ve been trying this approach for four years, and it hasn’t worked. What makes you think you’re going to get better in the next two weeks?” With his support, I took a two-year leave of absence from my undergraduate program to figure out my health issues. By leaning into my scientific inclinations, I was able to self-diagnose the condition as autoimmune disease. I found the right specialist, confirmed the diagnosis, and got treatment. Within a year, I was back on my feet. But it took a scientist encouraging me to think like a scientist to make that happen.  

“Since I didn’t have any of the specs required to apply to medical school, I was just looking for anything where I could be paid and do something “science–y”. I found this internship program that introduced me to full-time bench work…doing it now, I realize that I really like it. I realize now that my vision of justice could be even broader than being a doctor and treating an individual in a place where they don’t have access to healthcare. I could be doing research that impacts potentially thousands, millions of lives.”

When Jina began her internship in the program at UNMC in 2019, she had no experience in the lab. That was intimidating, but her supportive teammates took the time to encourage her and make sure she was learning everything she needed to know. They taught her that mistakes happen and experiments can be repeated. There also were challenges along the way that someone with more experience in the sciences might not think about. For example, not only did she not have the fine motor skills to manipulate pipettors (a skill that came with practice), but she also had no idea how to make figures for publications. However, surrounded by a supportive network, she learned that she didn’t have to draw her mouse from scratch but could use software for that and other symbols needed to visually describe her experiments. She also didn’t need to reinvent curve-fitting or other mathematical analyses but could rely on software to render publication-quality graphs. 

“Yes, my pathway has been a little bit complicated. But I caught up on coursework and bench work during my internship. And now, as of August, I’m officially in the UNMC master’s program. Having completed all of the core classes, I will only need to attend seminars and work on my thesis project. And since I already had a year to get a head start on that as well, I’m hoping to finish that up soon.”   

And so, even though she sometimes felt like the “lowest one on the totem pole,” her scientific village of colleagues and mentors helped make sure that she had all the tools she needed. And now she applies these skills to her project: a multi-generational study on the effects of intergenerational opioid exposure (oxycodone) and the potential to mitigate these effects with a therapeutic approved for insomnia (suvorexant. And, after just a year in the lab, she passes that recently acquired knowledge and experience to the high school interns that rotate through the lab in the summer. She takes pride in the knowledge she’s acquired to confidently teach them microdissection, RNA isolation, DNA synthesis, and RT-qPCR techniques. And, in this role of mentor and teacher, she finds joy. 

“…after I finish my masters, I’ll study for the MCAT and apply MD/PhD or MD programs. And, while I might not do bench work forever, I would love to teach…I’ve had mentors who are so great, kind, and caring towards me, I want to give part of that back…it’s rewarding to have someone learning from you, and it’s also been really good for me because it reinforces all my skills…I have to be good enough to teach someone else how to do it.”   

Throughout this major shift in a new career direction, the ongoing support of her parents has been invaluable. They taught her to pursue her interests and passions. Overall, Jina feels fortunate to have wonderful, supportive people standing next to her. She hopes to be able to turn the support she’s been given into advocacy, compassion, and care in pursuit of justice for those who need it most as she moves forward.  

When Marna started her position in dermatology, she realized that she needed to augment her academic training in botany and plant physiology with a better understanding of the animal (and human) side of the equation. Fortunately, she has never been shy (or “maybe even a little obnoxious”) about asking others for help to learn the things that she needs to move forward. This fervent curiosity fostered strong skills in hard-core protein biochemistry and expertise in advanced microscopy imaging techniques (confocal, multiphoton, second harmonic generation, EM). Over the years, she processed a plethora of skin, hair, and cancer samples and developed a reputation for being able to do nice imaging and making collegial connections throughout the university, including entomologists with interests in tick-borne diseases. These connections proved to be invaluable when her teenage son fell ill and was eventually diagnosed with a vector-borne disease and offered the impetus to redirect her research toward the relationship between vector-borne disease and skin.  

“…a lot of the researchers studying vector-borne infections have some kind of personal tie: either they had it, a parent had it, or a loved one had it. For me, it was my son. When he was fourteen, he got very, very ill. A colleague of mine had heard a talk by a veterinarian at a meeting about Bartonella, an infectious bacterial agent, and the effects of cat-scratch disease. And she said, ‘…it sure sounds like what your son has.’ At that point, I had literally been to fifty doctors with my son, and no one had a clue…So I called that vet, had my son’s blood sample analyzed, and soon learned that it was screaming hot with Bartonella…that is what drew me into the field.”   

Vector-borne infections that can be transmitted to humans and other animals by mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas are becoming more common. Traditionally, malaria has garnered a majority of the limited government funding for vector-borne disease research. Now, adding the emergent priority of COVID-19, it has become harder to find support for the Borrelia, Bartonella, and Babesia studies that interest Marna. Funding instead comes from philanthropic organizations and special initiatives, like the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation, the Global Lyme Alliance, and collaborative partnerships like the One Health Initiative, which relies on the expertise of scientific researchers, physicians, nurses, veterinarians, epidemiologists, and related professions. The Cohen Foundation supports her research on Tissue Analysis: Improving Detection and Understanding Pathogenesis in Lyme and Tick-borne Disease. 

“I started looking for Bartonella, and I found it repeatedly in the skin, seeming to be associated with the collagen fibrils in the dermis. I strongly believe…that the skin may act as the primary reservoir for these bacteria., and because they cluster into biofilms, they become metabolically inactive and unresponsive to typical intervention. Antibiotics, which typically work on an enzymatic process—like building a cell wall—are ineffective when the bacteria are dormant…We’re in the infancy of understanding the impact of biofilms and how they can modify the response of antibiotics.”   

The work being done by Marna and her collaborators has framed a new picture of what happens to an infectious agent thought originally to affect only the blood and how it can produce other untoward effects throughout the body in short- and long-term scenarios. It becomes essential to understand how to target and disrupt the bacteria that cluster into biofilms as a means to improve treatment options for persistent vector-borne diseases and to learn more about the role that these pathogens may play in other diseases. Recently, Marna and others have found Bartonella in human melanoma lesions, which adds studying the potential implications of pathogens on cancer to her “to-do” list. Other list items include her plan to create reliable diagnostics, advance the understanding of persistent infections, and foster the relationships needed for insightful, collaborative solutions.  

Parthiv credits all the fantastic biology educators throughout his life as positive influencers, from elementary and high school teachers to university professors and research mentors. As an undergraduate at St. Joseph’s College (Bangalore University, Bengaluru, India), he studied microbiology, chemistry, and zoology. He discovered his passion for neuroscience and developmental biology during his master’s education at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda (Vadodara, India). He later earned a PhD at the National Brain Research Centre (Gurgaon, India) in developmental neuroscience. In 2012, he began a postdoctoral fellowship studying cerebellar development and disease at Seattle Children’s Research Institute (Washington, US). He was promoted to Research Scientist in 2019 and still works in that same lab at Seattle Children’s, continuing his research and looking forward every day to his time at the bench.    

“While some of the differences observed between human and animal models are subtle, the rest are striking. When we began looking at the developing human cerebellum, we found several significant differences in histological and pathological patterns between the mouse and human, and in fact between non-human primates and humans, as well. These differences have become significant in the context of human disease.”     

Working under the expectation that brain development was fully conserved among species, neuroscientists have relied upon mouse and non-primate species as viable animal models of human disease. However, recent studies in closely related human and non-human primates have unveiled significant developmental differences, evidenced by histological and pathological pattern data. In 2015, Parthiv and his colleagues were able to gain invaluable access to human cerebellum samples for research purposes, ethically acquired from autopsies in collaboration with pathologists around the world. Since each sample can only represent a single snapshot in time, it remains difficult to study a human development continuum. Instead, developmental clues are revealed one at a time until enough data is available to solve each puzzle.  

“I like doing my own microscopy because it’s under the microscope where you make discoveries. In 2019, we published a paper in Science where we described histopathological differences between the developing human and mouse cerebella. Many of those differences were identified under the microscope. For me, the microscope is like what a stethoscope is to a doctor. I spend most of my time in the microscope room, and that is an essential part of my life as a researcher.” 

Because developmental issues in the brain early in life can be linked to brain defects and diseases that arise later, Parthiv knows that it is essential to learn as much as possible. He studies abnormal development of the cerebellum involved in the rare, congenital defect or malformation known as Dandy-Walker Malformation. He also is examining how developmental origins might be implicated in medulloblastomas, highly malignant pediatric brain tumors. He hopes to see the knowledge gathered today in laboratories culminate into better translational medicine diagnoses, treatments, and outcomes in the future.   

“Multitasking has been a bit challenging. As you gain more experience and get promoted, your responsibilities increase. Then you have to balance benchwork with funding acquisition… I like being a Research Scientist because I want to do benchwork for the rest of my life as a researcher… I want to continue making those discoveries.”

Having benefitted from great teachers and mentors who provided different forms of mentoring throughout his life, Parthiv finds satisfaction in passing along the skills and knowledge he acquired along the way to the next generation. He sees that students in the process of learning end up asking insightful questions that might not have otherwise crossed his mind. This kind of shift, which temporarily reverses the flow of wisdom from the student to the mentor, can set the stage for the development of an enduring and mutually beneficial relationship. For the students who see the joy he finds under the microscope, it very well could lead them into their own lifelong journey, filled with wonder and discovery. 

Amy earned her BS in Biology at Biola University (La Miranda, California), ultimately went on to study gastric ulcer repair during her PhD studies at the University of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, Ohio), and spent her postdoctoral years focusing on gastrointestinal epithelial cell biology and physiology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (Nashville, Tennessee). Without a timeline, it may seem that Amy followed a straight path toward a science career in academia, but after her undergraduate degree, she spent several years exploring the best pathway forward. This included a few jobs followed by a stint in law school for a career in patent law before veering off with some soul-searching, backpacking adventures that helped her decide that graduate school in the sciences would fit her better. A year ago, Amy began her adventure as an Assistant Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC; Charleston, South Carolina), building out and growing her lab to support her investigations into gastrointestinal and liver epithelial cell biology and physiology. 

“After college, I took a year off to work and try to figure out what I wanted to do. I taught outdoor science with the Orange County (CA) department of education and worked at Costco. I then went to law school, thinking that I wanted to do patent law, but decided I really didn’t want to be a lawyer. I quit law school and backpacked through Australia and New Zealand before deciding to pursue a PhD in 2010. It was a bit of a circuitous route to get where I am. I just finished my first year as an Assistant Professor with my own lab, a research scientist career development award (K01), a lab technician, and a grad student on rotation. I’m on track to publish the results of my research at MUSC soon to use when I apply for my first research project grant (R01). I don’t think anyone quite prepares you to be an Assistant Professor, so there’s a lot of learning as you go.”   

When away from the lab bench, Amy spends time envisioning experiments before putting them into play in mouse models or organoids that she prepares for tissue staining to visualize perturbations in protein function. While some essential equipment and consumable orders (tissue processor, refrigerator/freezer, cell culture matrix) were delayed during the early setup of her lab because of supply chain issues, her lab space is operational, including a cell culture room and a small break room, and is staffed by an enthusiastic research technician and a grad student on rotation.  

At Cairo University (Cairo, Egypt), Abdel earned a Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Sciences degree in their school of pharmacy and graduated at the top of his class of 1,500 students. He was recruited to work as one of the first teaching and research assistants in their Clinical Pharmacy Department, new at the time, and worked in that role for four years. As he studied master’s level classes, he realized that pursuing research in Egypt at that time would be difficult and instead decided to pursue his PhD in the US. Armed with strong test scores, he applied to a variety of schools in Utah, Iowa, and California, but ended up in Augusta, Georgia after considering his aspirations for a program that had clinical and research aspects, the academic needs of his wife (also a scientist), the cost of living, and other aspects of life. He thinks that they made an excellent choice. Being able to find Egyptian friends helped make the transition better and the city of Augusta was small enough to navigate easily. Plus, the graduate program at the University of Georgia, where he earned his PhD in Clinical and Experimental Therapeutics, and his academic mentors were supportive.

“I have two older sisters who also do gastrointestinal research. We’re in the same arena, but, because of the breadth of the field, we each can play to our diverse strengths to specialize in our own research. My eldest sister, Mindy, is a microbiologist, so she does microbiome and gut-brain research. Amy, the ‘middle child,’ works on congenital diarrheal diseases and looks at ion transport. And I work on enteric viruses. It’s fun to have a family support system and great for networking, because I meet those who know one of my other sisters or confuse me with one of them because of our strong familial resemblance. There is a seven-year age difference between the oldest and the youngest, putting me a little further behind them career wise—they are both assistant professors at the Medical University of South Carolina—and I’m in my third year as a postdoc.”

Kristen admits that she initially was not intentional about the application process for advanced studies after completing her BS in Biological Sciences (Biola University, La Miranda, CA), and was not accepted into a graduate program on her first attempt. Since Kristen had realized, after her first experiences in research as an undergraduate (in Mindy’s lab), that research was the right path for her, she planned to reapply. After working for a time with kids as an outdoor education teacher, she refocused her efforts, and was accepted by the Systems Biology & Physiology PhD program at the University of Cincinnati (Ohio). As a bonus, both her sisters were conducting research there at the time, having chosen that location because of their high regard for its gastrointestinal research program. When she was looking for postdoctoral opportunities, she saw that the resources available to her in Houston, specifically in the Baylor College of Medicine, and her potential PI’s interest in viruses as the right match for her. What sealed that deal was the enticement of having a sister nearby for support, and by then Mindy was working in Houston.

Yee Ming felt a strong affinity for biology early on. When she left Malaysia to pursue her undergraduate degree at the University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS), she had a full scholarship awarded specifically to international students and a plan to study psychology. Instead, she found that she preferred to dig deeper into the brain itself, earning a BS in Behavioral Neuroscience, Psychology and Neuroscience. After applying to various graduate programs, Yee Ming chose the University of Illinois (UI) at Urbana-Champaign to continue her neurobiology research in the laboratory of a young investigator, specifically so she could learn everything needed to eventually run her own lab. This fall, four-and-a-half years later, she’s defending her PhD thesis: Assessment of the Impact of Early Life Trauma, Changes in Estrogen Signaling, and Neurotoxic Molecules in a Mouse Model of Multiple Sclerosis. She confesses that the scope of her thesis is broad, covering endocrinology, immunology, pharmacology, and materials engineering of neurons, and relied on a circle of experts in different departments at UI. Knowing that successful advancement in the sciences relies on collaborative communication and efforts of specialists in different disciplines, Yee Ming intends to foster this approach throughout her career.