For the most part, I was on holiday.
*cue 3-line rant about how amazing it was*
I can’t stress enough how amazing it was – obviously; New York is awesome – and how much delicious food we had – lobster sandwiches and NY pizza and (no-Turkey-for-me) Thanksgiving dinner – and how sad I am about being back in the real world.
*end rant*
But alongside the fun and leisure, I also volunteered for a science education event organised by RockEdu, Rockefeller University’s educational outreach office.
Apparently, it was surprising that I would give up half a day of my holiday to volunteer at an outreach event. But to me, it was an interesting experience, an opportunity to try out my outreaching enthusiasm in a different context, make some useful connections and most of all, a whole lot of fun!
After this experience, I’d really like to pitch a new idea: EduTourism (#EduTourism, spread the word, folks): volunteering in educational programmes while on holiday. It gives a new perspective on outreach, it gives you a good excuse to visit another academic institution, and it is a perfect way to interact with locals! Also, it makes you feel that your trip was more than just a – albeit entertaining – waste of money.
What I especially liked about the RockEdu lab, was how organised everything is. Instead of the usual format of a science education team, i.e. a bunch of volunteering PhD students and PostDocs who want a break from their research and the occasional coordinating staff member, RockEdu has a team of 5 or 6 people permanently working in outreach. They write grants, create activities, set up mentoring programmes, coordinate summer projects, etcetera etcetera. Moreover, they have a lab space that is exclusively and specifically used for science education. Instead of activities carried out in some corner between labs or in an improvised table-based laboratory missing crucial equipment or sockets, these benches are meant for education! Classes can come in – for free – and participate in a science experiment tailored for their age and level.
So I spent part of the day helping a group of 16ish-year-old AP bio students through a GFP purification process, something I myself knew about but had never actually carried out. Using blue flashlights and yellow goggles, the whole process could be followed closely, which was pretty neat. We learned about proteins, fluorescence, jellyfish, what doing a Phd is all about. We ran a gel and looked at some GFP-expressing worms as an example of an in vivo application. I thought it all was pretty cool and the students also seemed to have enjoyed themselves (while learning something, of course).
Overall, I’m really glad I took the time to participate in EduTourism, and totally hope that this will become an actual thing.
C. elegans with GFP. Image from @RockEdu (twitter)
I’ll tell you a secret. It’s not really a big secret, I think many people know. But it isn’t out there quite enough.
Here’s the secret:
Scientistsaresuperheroes.
You probably think I’m saying this to impress you, to make you believe that I am a superhero. Well, I’m not. Or at least not yet. Because, technically, I’m still a scientist-in-training. So you might say I’m a superhero-in-training. Not quite there yet.
(Side note: when does one actually truly deserve to be called a scientist? Isn’t the goal to keep on learning? Will a researcher always be a scientist-in-training? Or until he/she – I don’t know – wins a Nobel prize? #AskingTheBigQuestions)
I’ll tell you why scientists are superheroes. And I’ll do it by giving an example of one of the supervillains they are fighting: cancer.
Yes, cancer. (Disclaimer: what will follow will be both a huge generalisation, because there is no such thing as “cancer” or “the cure for cancer” because cancer is as diverse as the number of different cells in our body.)
So, if you’re like me, you might have noticed in a geeky moment that cancer cells have a number of superpowers. Officially, these are called “the hallmarks of cancer” . No, this has nothing to do with greeting cards or Kenickie’s hickeys, but are certain characteristics of cancer that can accumulate during its progression and that are typically driven by genetic instability. Like a superpower, they can originate hereditarily, through a genetic defect, through mutations caused randomly, or after exposure to a DNA-altering freak accident, including radiation or chemical exposure.
(I might have given a talk last week that was completely framed around X-men. I was called a dork. It was a good day.)
What type of superpowers could cancer cells develop?
To start with, I would argue that cancer cells could gain the power of invisibility. Often, cancer cells have the uncanny ability to “trick” the immune system to not noticing they’re there. They also cleverly evade any growth suppressors that come their way. If this is down to superb camouflage abilities, shapeshifting talents or just pure invisibility, I do not know. But it’s definitely powerful and it can definitely be used for evil.
They also possess a type of mind control (if we imagine cells have a little will and a mind of their own). They convince their surroundings to grow new blood vessels. For their own gain, obviously, because it creates a steady flow of resources. Which they can, by the way, use in different ways as the usual (but I’m not sure “changed metabolism” is such an awesome superpower unless you really start thinking it through).
Next one: excessive self-multiplication. You know, like Multiple Man. Cancer cells just keep on making replicates of themselves. Until they take up so much space that they don’t have any room anymore, which brings me to the next power…
Cancers sometimes spread out. Certain cells, known as metastatic cancer cells, have the ability to walk through walls (or in reality, evade through cell layers to get into the blood stream and hitch a ride to some other part of the body that might have some extra living space).
And then finally (I might have skipped over a few hallmarks, though) and in my opinion, the scariest superpower: cancer cells can, and often do, acquire is the power of immortality. They find a way to resist cell death. Usually, the body is amazingly good at catching the rotten apples and getting rid of them, but a cancer cell is able to resist. It is immortal. Really difficult to kill. Which is really something to be scared of.
Which means we need to assemble our own team of superheroes to the battle. And that is exactly what is happening. Every day, a team of scientists, in reality just undercover supers, go to work on a whole range of things. Discovering new functions for proteins and unraveling their function in cancer. Discovering new diagnostic techniques. Discovering new ways to model cancer. Discovering new drugs. Discovering ways to battle that one evil in the best way possible, by assembling their expertise, their powers and working together towards that one same goal.
Even Nature, a prominent scientific journal, thinks scientists are superheroes.
Go science!
From Nature 525, 305 (17 September 2015), doi:10.1038/525305a
Short people have long faces and
Long people have short faces.
Big people have little humor
And little people have no humor at all!
And in the words of that immortal buddy
Samuel J. Snodgrass, as he was about to be lead
To the guillotine:
Make ’em laugh
Make ’em laugh
Don’t you know everyone wants to laugh? (From “Singing in the Rain”)
It’s really hard to pick a fav song from “Singing in the Rain”, so I won’t even try. But for the purposes of this post, I quoted the first bit of “Make ’em laugh”, you know, that song where Donald O’Connor hyperactively sings and tap dances and slapsticks and runs back and forth on (and through) the set. If you ever feel down, and don’t have the time to watch the full movie, watch that scene. It might not make you “lol” but it will bring a smile to your face. Or at least it always brings one to mine.
That wasn’t going to be my point actually. I wanted to talk about how suddenly science is becoming the subject of comedy.
I guess for me it probably started by watching reruns of QI with Stephen Fry. British panel shows are a strange thing, usually disguised as a quiz but no one really cares about winning, it’s just about getting famous people, mostly comedians, together to talk and joke about certain topics, and in this case that includes anything that Stephen finds quite interesting. Quite. I like Stephen Fry. I like random interesting facts, and this was a show where I felt like I was learning things – quite useless bits of knowledge – and being entertained at the same time. Years later in Belgium a similar show originated, Scheire en de Schepping, random science facts and cool little experiments (walking on water was one wonderful example) and to top it all, the “totally arbitrary winner designation round”. Just to point out that it was not about the quiz aspect at all.
In any case, science and nerdism is the new cool, and a new source of endless jokes. Just think about The Big Bang Theory, or at least the first few seasons if it pains you to think about it now; laughing at and with physicists and engineers has become very popular.
Another example, this year at the Edinburg Fringe Festival (a ridiculously elaborate comedy festival that is held in Edinburgh every August, for almost a whole month), I was astonished about how many shows were describable as “nerdy”. Mathematics, physics, biology, computing, geekery, … They have all become the subject for the next generation of comedians.
I have played my own little part, by participating in a Bright Club event. Bright Club is an initiative run by Steve Cross, that has spread out over multiple cities in the UK – and one in Brussels as well, actually – that allows academics to climb up on a stage to deliver an eight-minute set of stand-up comedy inspired by their own studies or work. It’s incredibly scary and fun to do, and it’s amazing to hear how “boring” academics, the ones you image spending their whole day behind a computer or in a laboratory, can be extremely funny.
That’s the thing; scientists are people too. They come in all flavours and colours and some of them are quite humorous. Moreover, they have an infinite range of subjects they can talk about, and they will never run out.
“Research is never going to stop, so you’ve always got new material. The universe is an interesting place – and it’s always going to be.” (Simon Watt)
So don’t be afraid to approach a scientist once in a while. Have a chat. They might be shy at first, but who knows, they might turn out to be extremely funny once you give them the chance. Don’t we all just love to laugh?
Some time ago, on my usually waste-of-time website, I found a post about the first female engineer. As a female engineer – let’s not go into whether that’s self-proclaimed or not – , I naturally wanted to find out more.
First, it seemed necessary to find a definition for “engineering”.
As so many other words, engineering is derived from Latin. It can have originated from either – or perhaps both – ingenium or – and – ingeniare. As the word ingenious might hint, the first means something in the lines of cleverness, though I’ve also seen it translated as talent; the latter means to devise (according to wikipedia, I had more trouble finding the word through other sources). The stem of the word seems to resemble ingenerare (to implant) and ingenere (to instill by birth). Therefore it seems that the word initially meant something along the lines of having a natural talent for something but slowly evolved to coming up with clever tricks or solutions to solve a certain problem.
Nowadays, the current official definition of “engineering” is (according to Engineers’ Council for Professional Development):
The creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilising them singly or in combination; or to construct or operate the same with full cognisance of their design; or to forecast their behaviour under specific operating conditions; all as respects an intended function, economics of operation or safety to life and property.
Hmmm, that’s one of those sentences that I still haven’t completely grasped after reading it three times and then I usually just give up. Let’s give that definition another try then. According to my understanding (and self-proclaimed experience), engineers aim to design (or invent, or optimize, or improve) something by the application of scientific and mathematical principles. This something can range from materials, instruments, software, living systems, you name it; basically anything that you can imagine inventing or improving on.
It differs from science mostly due to the fact that sciences aim to build on knowledge starting from predictions and hypotheses about the universe (or, anything).
If this not making much sense… Well, probably this comic by Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal does a better job on describing the essence of engineering:
So, I guess you can say that engineers are more interested in applying scientific knowledge to whatever they are working, while scientists are more aimed at acquiring said knowledge. In my opinion (and again, “experience”) the distinction between the two is not always very straight cut, and a lot of people are more somewhere in between, say applied scientist, or scientific engineers, or engineering scientist (though that last one sounds more like someone trying to create a race of super-scientists through genetic engineering). I also think it’s quite obvious that both (or all people on that spectrum) need each other to achieve progress.
Nevertheless, my post was going to be about the first female engineer. Because whichever way you look at it, women are still underrepresented in these fields, even if the situation is already much more balanced than it used to be. It also strongly depends on the type of engineering. For example, while there are about 50% of women studying bio-engineering or architectural engineering at my formal school, only 15% of engineering (that later splits into mechanical, civil, chemical, biomedical, computer, and mathematical engineering) consists of female students. Perhaps “us girls” just need some role models?
The first candidate-rolemodel, and the “first female engineer” according to that post I mentioned, is Elisa Leonida Zamfirescu.
Elisa Leonida Zamfirescu
Elisa was born in 1887 in Romania, in a quite engineery – yes that is a word, stop it red squiggly line – family. Her grandfather, on her mother’s side, was an engineer and so was her older brother Dimitrie. I imagine her as a child inventor, a bit like Violet Baudelaire, who did not give up after being rejected from engineering school (School of Bridges and Roads in Bucharest). No, she just applied to other schools, and in 1909, she was accepted at the Royal Academy of Technology Berlin. Three years later, she graduated, and started her career in geology laboratories back in Romania. She passed the war years (World War I) in the Red Cross, around which time she met her husband, Constantin Zamfirescu, a chemist. She spent her engineering career leading several geology labs in the Geological Institute in Romania and teaching physics and chemistry. Her contributions include her role in identifying new resources of coal, natural gas and copper. She worked until she was 75, and died in 1973.
Despite her contributions to the world of engineering, Elisa was not technically the first engineer. Alice Jacqueline Perry, an Irish cailín born in 1885, graduated a few years before. Her family sounds very well educated; her father was co-founder of the Galway Electric Light Company as well as county surveyor for the County Council and her uncle invented the navigational gyroscope (two of her sisters also continued into higher education, by the way), Alice was quite a mathlete, or would have been if they had those in the 1900s.
Alice Jacqueline Perry
She received a scholarship to study at the Queen’s College in Galway in 1902, where she pursued a degree in engineering. She graduated in 1906, with first class honours. Alice was the first female engineering graduate in Ireland, the UK, and in my understanding, the world. A month after her graduation, her father’s death caused her to take up his position temporarily for County Council, making her the only woman to have been a County Surveyor – basically a Council Engineer – in Ireland. She moved to London in 1908, starting a job as a Lady Factory Inspector. She moved to Glasgow in 1915 (and seemed to have continued an inspector job there as well). In 1921 she grew bored of engineering, and started writing poetry (eventually publishing seven books of poetry). She was heavily involved in the Christian Science movement, and moved to Boston headquarters in 1923, where she worked until her death in 1969, about a month after the moon landing.
These may seem like quite ordinary lives, but I can only imagine the challenges Elisa and Alice might have faced as female engineers in those days, just as female scientists or female doctors had a whole stream of male criticism and prejudice to swim up against.
I assume that there were some female engineers before 1900, though perhaps not with an official engineering degree; after all, inventors have been around forever and it is no great leap of imagination that some of those inventors were women. And you might argue that we don’t really know any famous female engineers because they haven’t contributed anything major, but I will argue back that a lot of progress happens in little bits and every little contribution has been necessary to get to those major leaps. (Come to think of it, I don’t think I can name any great engineers off the top of my head.)
As there are quite some great female scientists, there are some great female engineers, and naming the first ones is only the start of a long list, that I am positive will grow longer in the future. Perhaps one day, I’ll find my name on that list. (I doubt it, but it can’t hurt to be ambitious, eh.)
We live in exciting times. Technology that novelists and script writers could only dream of, now exists without us being amazed about it every single day. We have computers, that make immensely complicated calculations and simulations for us all the time. We send people into space and leave them there for months. We can talk to someone on the other side of the world with a simple click on a green phone logo, we can even see them if we want. We use the touch of our finger on a screen to control our devices. We ask our phone questions and it talk backs to give us the answers. We are able to step into virtual reality without getting nauseous. We send out cars that can drive themselves to map our streets. We are able to manipulate single genes, single molecules, single atoms.
Seriously, how are we not amazed every single day?
With all that has been achieved up to now, I can’t help but wonder: “What’s next?” Which crazy science fiction technology will we turn into reality tomorrow? Will humans soon be inhabiting another planet? Will some one create a working lightsaber?
Will we ever be able to travel through time?
I’ve dreamed about this. Not literally – though maybe I have, I just never remember my dreams so there’s no way to tell – but conceptually. I love reading about it. I love watching movies about it. I love having discussions about the paradoxes it could create. But in the same way that I know the dinosaurs in Jurassic park aren’t realistic, I know it cannot and probably never will be real.
See how I said probably? Did you notice that spark of hope?
To start with, there’s the way my friend (oh wow, his last post is also about SciFi!) states that he’s travelling through time and space at a constant forwards speed, as we all are. So in that sense, we’re all travelling through time, slowly. More interestingly, by travelling through space at a high speed, one would be passing through time at a different speed than others, because the space traveller would have aged less than anyone who had stayed on earth. This idea is called the twin paradox (recently used to explain how Luke ends up being younger than Leia, even though they’re twins) and is due to time dilation, an aspect of special relativity where time slows down when moving at near light-speed speeds. (If you ever have the chance to ask Lieven Scheire to explain special relativity to you, don’t miss it, it’s genius.) So we are able to travel through time at different speeds, and essentially travelling little bits into the future, and renders me hopeful that more sophisticated time travel could be possible.
How would this work? It’s amazing to think that when we look into space, we’re actually looking back in time. Could it ever be possible to travel back in time as well? (I would think that if we’d like send people to travel through space beyond our solar system, travelling through time could be a prerequisite, that is if we want to actually have the same people coming back to tell us what they’ve seen.) Extrapolating from time dilation, we could imagine that travelling at a speed faster than light would allow time reversal. Unfortunately, we don’t even have the technology to travel as speeds close to the speed of light. And that’s not even mentioning that “faster than the speed of light” is not really a thing. (For now? <– See that spark of hope again?)
Another option would be travelling through wormholes, which is a connection between two different points in space time. Unfortunately, we’re not really sure those things exist, so that’s not really a possibility either.
Or perhaps we could build an infinite improbability drive, or a ship that moves time and space around us while remaining stationary. Or have a space ship that’s actually a living creature that propels us through the wibbly wobbly timey wimey thing. Or, I don’t know, a time travelling car?
But if it was up to me, I would tackle time travel differently. I would use a bath tub to travel through time, and incidentally space. (And a friend and myself came up with this idea before that movie about the hot tub time machine came out!)
See? Proof!
I guess for now I’ll just have to stick to fiction and keep on dreaming…
… and all it takes is for someone to show it to the world.
Pursuing a career in research involves more than working in a lab or sitting behind a computer all day, it also involves disseminating results and promoting the research. Within the scientific community, communicating research happens through the publication of papers and participation at conferences, but it is equally important to engage to the general public through outreach activities. Part of my PhD project includes participating in outreach, and I have to say I’ve quite enjoyed the projects I’ve been involved in so far (even though I’ve actually not done any outreach yet, just preparation of). Therefore, a bit of internet ramble on outreach. 1. What is outreach?
In this context, I guess outreach can be defined as raising awareness on a certain topic, such as science or academic research. It involves disseminating information about that topic to the general public and people outside the field to increase understanding and interest. Additionally, it could help engage children to the field. Outreach tools would include advertisement leaflets, newsletters, stalls or exhibitions in community centres, university open days, and the organisation of lectures and workshops at schools. Just to give a few examples. 2. Why even do research?
There is a discrepancy between how science is communicated through media and the actual reality of the research. Increasing the understanding of the topics of research, how research is done and how results are generally interpreted can perhaps help solve this problem. Additionally, outreach towards primary and secondary school pupils can perhaps shed a light on how research works and open up prospects of future studies and jobs. Research isn’t at all like the science you learn in school, and it can help get a few nerds enthusiastic about pursuing a career in science by showing them what’s in store. 3. Does outreach actually have an effect?
Let’s hope so. I’m sure there’s numbers out there, but I don’t know how to find them. And as I haven’t actually participated in any events yet, I can’t draw on personal experience. But even if all outreach does is raise awareness, I think that’s already a worthy cause. And if I can get even one child enthusiastic about science, I would consider that an accomplishment. “Did you know you can actually walk on water, if only you add enough cornstarch and turn it into a non-Newtonian fluid, isn’t physics awesome?” 4. My favourite outreach project
I guess it all started when I was 17 and went to the university open days. I already knew what I wanted to study, it wasn’t a hard choice, but had never considered anything further than the 3 year bachelor. Something a master student told me that day just stuck. She was studying nanoscience and when we asked her why, her answer was something along these lines: “It’s just fascinating. You know how the universe is infinitely large, well the nanoworld is sort of the same, just infinitely small.” And I could never get that out of my head.
An extract of my motivation letter to do my own master in nanoscience:
“I have always been fascinated in the aspect of infinity: the infinity of the universe, the infinite amount of atoms inside it, and the infinite amount of even smaller particles we’re only just beginning to understand. I have read several books on astrophysics in my spare time, for example “The Universe in a Nutshell” by Stephen Hawking, and have come to understand that there is a great analogy between the infinity of the universe and the infinity of what happens on atomic scale. The study of the infinitely small is a field that is particularly intriguing to me.”
I got in and 3 years later I was asked to get involved in a project linking images from outer space to images of “inner space”, i.e. the world inside a cell. Think about it, haven’t you ever seen a picture of a cell and though that it looked like a far away galaxy? Or noticed that certain patterns and structures seem to reappear at every size dimension? It’s almost uncanny how images on such different size scales can look so alike. As an example, some time ago I came across the following image on my second favourite waste-of-time website:
The images on the left are representations of “the Flower of Life” as described in Sacred Geometry. The images in the middle are of structures in outer space, the images on the right depict multiple cell divisions.
I guess it suffices to say that I didn’t need much convincing to get into this project.
So, the Outer Space Inner Space (OSIS) project makes the link between the macroscopic world of outer space and the microscopic world as viewed through a microscope. We (a bunch of people from different schools within the University) are planning to convert the Mills Observatory seminar room into a platform for multimodal and immersive engagement. This will include a room-filling presentation screen to show images of the macro and micro cosmos, and space for workshops and exhibitions. It will also feature human-computing interfaces, ensuring that all audiences can experience and interact with the presentations. Within this framework, we also plan to organise activities within the International Year of Light. We have already started setting up an exhibition that aims to teach the general public about the principles of optics, and how this can be used to look at both things that are very far away as things that are very small. As my supervisor once pointed out: there’s not much difference between trying to look at something very small or trying to look at something very far away. A lot of principles in astronomy are being applied to microscopy as well, such as adaptive optics. And to throw in another quote, this one’s by Oliver Heaviside:
“There is no absolute scale of size in the Universe, for it is boundless towards the great and also boundless towards the small.”
I’m involved in a few other outreach projects as well, this blog might be considered as one of them I guess, though I’m not always – not to say hardly ever – talking about science or my life as a researcher. I’m involved in another project, in which we will try to organise a lecture series on the topic of “Science of Sci-Fi movies,” exploring the reality and feasibility of science and technology that appears in science fiction popular culture, and hopefully proving that some these nerd’s dreams have the potential to become reality. Finally, next month I will be participating in a “Bright Club” training, in my own small effort to prove that scientists can be funny too.
End of internet ramble.
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This post is based on an article that I’ve written for the PHOQUS newsletter that will be published soon, I have therefore plagiarised myself and apologise for anyone who has or will read certain sentences and ideas twice. The quote in the title is attributed to Carl Sagan.
Sometimes, when reading a biology paper, I have to refrain myself from bursting out laughing. Biologists, and more specifically geneticist, come up with the most ridiculous names for genes. Not that I’m complaining, it brightens up even the most boring of papers (though sadly not all names are funny). Here’s a (very!) small selection as an example of biologists’ sense of humour:
Really Interesting New Gene (RING)
The lack of inspiration for naming this gene is in itself quite funny.
Sonic Hedgehog
This was the first funny one I’d come in contact with; at first I just thought I misunderstood the speaker. But it’s a real gene, that when mutated causes fly embryos to be covered with spike-like structures, and thus look like a hedgehog. It also gives the fly supersonic powers.
Don Juan
A gene present in sperm cells of male fruit flies. It makes them extremely sexy.
Dissatisfaction
A gene involved in many aspects of sexual behaviour, apparently not the very useful ones.
I’m not dead yet (Indy) In reference to a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail,when mutated this gene causes an increase in the lifespan of fruit flies. The flies live forever unless swatted.
Van Gogh
In zebrafish, a mutation of Van Gogh results in tiny ears – wait, fish have ears? In fruit flies, a mutation of this gene causes the wings to develop a wing pattern that apparently looks like Starry Night.
Tinman
A mutation in Tinman in mouse embryo results in no heart and the desire to feel love.
Casanova
The result of this gene mutation in zebrafish is that they are born with two hearts, making it a incorrigible womanizer.
Spock
So zebrafish really do have ears, though with a mutation in the Spock gene they end up being pear-shaped. And possibly slightly pointy. It is unsure if the mutated fish are also confused by human emotions, though it is reasonable to believe that most fish probably are.
Callipyge
Sir Mix-a-lot would just love this one. A mutation in this gene results in sheep developing very large hind ends, or “beautiful buttocks” (callipyge in greek), and increased twerking abilities. You got buns, hun!
Dracula
When zebrafish with this mutation are exposed to light, the fish die due to their blood cells bursting (yuck). You probably can kill them by running a wooden stake (or toothpick) through their heart as well.
Brainiac
Fruit flies with this mutation have increased development of brain cells, causing them to realise that a closed window is not an exit.
Cheap date
Give a few drops of alcohol to flies with this mutation and they’ll appear drunk. I’m not sure how many drops it takes to get a wild type fly drunk, but apparently Cheap Date flies are more sensitive to alcohol. They’ll probably be okay with eating some cheap garbage left overs as well, further reducing costs of a date.
Ken and Barbie
Flies with this mutation lack external genitalia. They also have unreasonably small waists and plastic hair dos.
Halloween Genes (including disembodied, spook, spookier, shadow, shade, shroud and phantom) Mutations in Halloween genes cause flies to grow scary, abnormal exoskeletons, giving them instant status as spiderman nemeses.
A few more honourable mentions: Armadillo, Bagpipe, Bag or marbles, Grunge and Teashirt (fly), Jelly Belly, Seven up, Snafu, Wishful Thinking, Slamdance, Slowpoke, Smaug, Stardust, Grim and Reaper, Shaven Baby, Kryptonite and Superman, and Swiss cheese. If I ever discover a gene (very slim chance), I will do my best to come up with something original, but with all that out there, it will be a challenge.
Extra note: Not only biologists have a sense of humour. There is a theory in physics called “The Hairy Ball Theorem”. Don’t worry, it’s about not being able to brush coconuts (What?). And I’m sure there are more examples out there.
I’ve mentioned a while ago that I’d write a post focussing on how to win a Nobel Prize. Recently, a 10 simple rules paper (something I mentioned in that same post) was published on that exact subject, reminding me that I should step on it and write already.
So, here we go, inspired by conversations with friends and that paper I just mentioned (1), some guidelines on how to win a Nobel Prize.
Eat chocolate and drink milk. It has been suggested a few years ago that the suspicious relation between the number of Nobel Prize winners in Switzerland might be related to chocolate consumption (2). Obviously, as a Belgian (though the chocolate consumption of Belgians seems to be suspiciously low) and chocolate fiend, I found this very interesting. A follow-up study suggested that the consumption of milk (3) might also play a role, something I don’t expect to be a problem either. In the end, both articles were more of an illustration of how correlation and causality can easily get mixed up in (amateur) statistics, rather than encouraging people to stock up on milk and coco. Eating habits aren’t very likely to increase your chances of winning a Nobel Prize, but one can hope that loving chocolate can’t hurt…
Correlation between Countries’ Annual Per Capita Chocolate Consumption and the Number of Nobel Laureates per 10 Million Population (2).
Correlation between countries’ annual per capita milk consumption and the number of Nobel laureates per 10 million population (3).
Choose your contacts wisely
Nowadays, most Nobel Prizes are won by a group of 3 people. Additionally, most science is done through collaborations nowadays. Different backgrounds, expertise, points of view and even different disciplines mixed together, provide for good science and innovative discoveries. So collaborate, but not with too many people. If you’re not yet in a position to collaborate (I assume that’s easier once you’re a principal investigator), choose your workplace wisely. Perhaps working in the same institution or even directly in the laboratory of a Nobel Prize laureate and gain from his or her experiences, will provide you with the inspiration to win your own Prize. For example, 9 staff members of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory in Cambridge have won Nobel Prizes. And if you can’t find such a position, another strategy is to pick your family wisely. Sometimes children of Nobel Prize winners go on to win the prize themselves, as has been shown already seven times. But since choosing what family you’re born into isn’t exactly practical, perhaps consider marrying a prospective Nobel Prize winner, as four married couples have won the prize, as was the case for the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine last year (1).
Serendipity. A topic I have brought up before but sheer luck, or a certain degree of serendipity, seem to have an effect on your chances of winning a Nobel Prize. Andre Geim and colleagues were messing around with some scotch tape and that led to a Nobel Prize, and penicillin is a similar example. Sometimes things going wrong are not such a bad thing. Often great discoveries are made “by accident”. If your experiment doesn’t go as expected, perhaps it’s time to re-analyse: is it through faulty protocols or maybe because of wrong assumptions. Challenge everything you do, ask questions, and if something cool and unexpected happens, maybe this is something worth looking in to?
Life sciences are the bomb.
The article (1) mentions that Biology is the field in if you’re aiming for a noble prize. There’s still so much to be discovered in biology, and it’s forever changing (evolution, my dear Watson). It often needs interdisciplinary approaches, making it easy to do collaborative research (see point 2). And there are two Nobel Prize categories you can aim for, so more chance!
Just have fun.
But most importantly (and strongly emphasised in (1)), don’t aim for a Nobel Prize. Science shouldn’t be about winning prizes or aiming for fame. Science and research are about curiosity, wanting to know how the world works, finding solutions that can help humans and the earth, and most of all, about having fun. You should be in research because that is what you love. If you feel a great sense of accomplishment when you successfully finish an experiment or make a beautiful and informative microscopy image, if you squeal like a fan girl when you read about novel scientific breakthroughs, if you make plans with your friends to do “Friday afternoon experiments” (yes, that’s doing research just because you want to), then go into research. Perhaps you’ll win a Nobel Prize one day. Probably not. And who cares, you’re doing what you love.
Related to that, Switzerland is great. In the week I’m busy busy busy working, in the weekends I feel like I’m on holiday, riding on boats on Zürichsee and whatnot. In this country where people actually stop to let you cross the road or hold tram doors because they think you’re trying to catch it, I feel quite at home. Maybe it’s because of the wonderful weather and the delicious chocolate, but the first weeks have been great. I think I will enjoy my time here.
A view of the Alps and the lake of Zürich (taken on the lake!)
References and Inspirations:
(1) Roberts RJ (2015) Ten Simple Rules to Win a Nobel Prize. PLoS Comput Biol 11(4): e1004084. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004084
(2) Messerli FH (2012) Chocolate consumption, cognitive function, and Nobel Laureates. N Engl J Med 2012; 367:1562-1564. doi:10.1056/NEJMon1211064
(3) Linthwaite S, Fuller GN (2013) Milk, chocolate and Nobel prizes, Pract Neurol13:63. doi:10.1136/practneurol-2012-000471
Last weekend I moved to Basel for a two month impersonation of “guest researcher” in a nanobiology lab.
Before I even get to the point, I want to say that Basel is awesome. Except for the evening I arrived, the weather has been the perfect example of “Spring is in the air” and Basel’s traditional emblem and guardian creature is a Basilisk. First of all, this city has a guardian creature. Second of all, this creature appears in one of my favourite books (I was going to say in my favourite septology but I’m pretty sure that’s not a word, so I decided to refer to Newt Scamander’s Fantastic Beasts and where to find them instead). A quick look at the various statues scattered around the city – most of them spouting water – as well as the wikipedia page – I’m such a professional -, taught me that unlike my expectations of a giant snake living in sewage under girls bathrooms, a basilisk looks more like a dragon with a bird’s head. It does still have Medusa-like statue making abilities or killing-at-a-glance powers (depending on the source) and a weakness for weasels/Weasleys. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure the emblem of Dundee involves dragons and that of Scotland in general has a unicorn. I sure know how to pick my magical creatures. (That of my home town is a boring old swan though…)
In any case, moving to a new lab, albeit for only two months, reminds me of one of the things I love about being in science (as far as I can call my current career “being in science”. A friend of mine basically covered this same topic in her blog recently and I’ll probably just plagiarise repeat some of what she said, but one of the things I love is moving around for conferences, lab visits or even just a new job (as I have for my PhD) to not only explore the world but also explore the minds of all the amazing people I encounter. I might be because I’m still quite young (no need to settle down yet), adventurous at heart (always moved around a bit) and get amazing opportunities (an international and interdisciplinary PhD), but I also believe that the future of science lies in international, collaborative and interdisciplinary research. Also, it’s surprisingly refreshing to pack all you basic needs in one suitcase and just step on a plane.
The thing is, I’ve heard disconcerting stories about research groups not willing to present unpublished work at conferences in fear their ideas will be stolen. Or people naming collaborators as reviewers when submitting papers, while steering clear of their competitors. Science seems to exist in an atmosphere of suspicion and nepotism (though I like the Dutch word vriendjespolitiek – literally friends politics – better) where results and ideas are only shared with collaborators but hidden from competitors.
Of course there’s merit in a bit of healthy competition, it drives people to be ambitious and bring out the best in themselves, but as it is becoming increasingly clear that science is no longer a one-man’s-job (though my friend that I mentioned earlier is well on her way of becoming a homo universalis), I am supporter of more collaborative and open science. I for one have had great ideas by conversing with other people, inside and outside my field of research (and so we bring in the aspect of interdisciplinary research as well). Bouncing ideas off each other, seeing different points of view and geeking out during lunch breaks brings out the best of us, or at least of me.
Well, in any case, I am glad to be here in Basel, these first few days have already been amazing and mind opening and I’m sure there are many more inspiring moments to come.
I’ll leave you with this quite funny looking basilisk. It doesn’t have any jet black scales or horcrux-destroying fangs, but I’d still not look in the eye…
Nerds have been making an uprise for quite some time now. Seth Cohen from The OC was maybe the first one, or was it Freaks and Geeks that started it all? But in times of The Big Bang Theory and hipsters copying the big glasses look, it no longer can be denied;
Nerds are cool.
Actually, I would like to rephrase that. Even though nowadays the term “nerd” or “geek” don’t have that much of a negative connotation anymore, and I acknowledge the awesomeness of Dr. Who, Harry Potter or Star Wars franchise, I would like to focus of a specific type of nerds. So lets say this:
Science is cool.
Admittedly, I may be prejudiced. But the popularity of science shows, ranging from sitcoms to panel shows and Facebook science feeds (such as ifls), only back up my claim. The internet is full of science nerds with artsy hobbies, trying to find an outlet for their nerdiness.
There’s someone who knits dissected animals, like this mouse from aKNITomy:
There’s someone who makes stuffed organs (iheartguts):
And yes, I chose these examples because they’re loosely related to my own research (and I not-so-secretly incorporate them into my presentations), but I just wanted to point out that the gap between the general public and the science community is decreasing. And therefore it becomes more and more important to provide channels for communicating science to the general public in a clear and correct manner.
But talking about hyped science journalism would just make me rant for another 1000 words at least, so I’ll leave that for later…
