Spark Science recorded on location in Washington, DC at the SACNAS National Convention. This convention is the largest gathering of minority scientists and I went around and asked the questions “Why did you become a scientist?” and “What and who supported you?”
[♪ Blackalicious rapping Chemical Calisthenics ♪]
♪ Here we go!
♪ Neutron, proton, mass defect, lyrical oxidation, yo irrelevant
♪ Mass spectrograph, pure electron volt, atomic energy erupting
♪ As I get all open on betatron, gamma rays thermo cracking
♪ Cyclotron and any and every mic
♪ You’re on trans iridium, if you’re always uranium
♪ Molecules, spontaneous combustion, pow
♪ Law of de-fi-nite pro-por-tion, gain-ing weight
♪ I’m every element around
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: This is Regina Barber DeGraaff from Spark Science. This is our “Why am I a scientist?” episode. I am on location, I guess is a good way to say it. I am in Washington D.C. and I am at the national SACNAS convention, and SACNAS is a national organization that promotes diversity in science, so it’s a really welcoming environment. But it still is a science convention, so there’s poster sessions, all that kind of stuff.
There’s tons of people here being very proud to be scientists and proud to be an overall well-rounded human being, and celebrate those differences. What I’m going to do is I’m going to interview people and ask them why did they want to become a scientist. And hopefully we’ll get some good stories out of this.
[♪ “Wondaland” by Janelle Monae ♪]
I’m here at the SACNAS national convention with Dr. Dione Rossiter, and she’s amazing. And we were both in the SACNAS Leadership Institute together in 2014. And I’m going to ask her this question—very broad question—but I want her to tell me lots of stories; tell me about herself. Why are you a scientist?
Dr. Dione Rossiter: I am a scientist because I’m good at math and math wasn’t good enough. I was always good at math junior high, elementary school (of course), high school. And I really didn’t make the connection that science was applied math until physics. And I took physics class junior year of high school and I fell in love with the applications of math. And that was really when science became exciting for me. I don’t think I ever realized, I never really understood what science was until that point. And then my world just changed instantly: the way I looked at things; the way I asked questions; the way I went around answering those questions.
And then, from there, you go to college and you have subjects that you can major in. And to me, they were the basics: English—English, math, science, Spanish. And so I chose physics just because it was this thing that I fell in love with during high school. I quickly became a little bit tired of physics because I was in a program that was very theoretical and I was somebody who liked really clear, concrete answers.
So I started doing atmospheric science to the National Center for Atmospheric Research under a program that they have called SOARS (Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science), which is a program for minority students—under-represented minorities—in any kind of science, but you work at NCAR to work with the atmospheric scientists.
I really fell in love with atmospheric science because it was another way to apply math and physics to real world problems, and answering questions that had a real meaning in terms of the environmental movement and climate change and pollution and the ozone layer. And so instead of solving theoretical equations, we were solving all of these equations that had real life applications, and really for the betterment of people across the world. And that was very exciting for me.
So I’m an atmospheric scientist—kind of, that’s my journey through science and that’s why I landed in atmospheric science. Going to grad school was really just me trying to find a great program where I could do atmospheric science. And my program had travel; I was a field scientist. It had computer science; I was analyzing data. It had a little bit of electrical engineering because I had an instrument that went on airplanes. So I was doing all of this really cool stuff as an atmospheric scientist, and that’s how I landed in cloud physics.
So my PhD is in, specifically, cloud microphysics (the small physics inside of clouds). There are still a lot of unanswered questions and these atmospheric science—specifically these cloud microphysical questions—are questions that are necessary, imperative to really understand global climate. Clouds are the largest source of uncertainty when you’re looking at climate models, climate projections. So we really need to get the cloud physics right before we get climate predictions anywhere near, really narrowing down on their uncertainty.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: What helped you become a atmospheric scientist and get you that PhD? What was the support that you had?
Dr. Dione Rossiter: So the support I had to become a scientist and to finish graduate school and really to be a successful scientist came primarily from all of the mentors that I had met throughout my life. Mentorship played such a huge role in my success. Family as well, but it’s hard to have—it’s hard when your family doesn’t know what it’s like to be a scientist or to be a—they’re not academics; they’re not scientists. Well, like my dad is an engineer. He is a scientist. But it’s a little different in the academic way. My dad is a white man and I am a brown woman. So there’s challenges that I was faced with that he definitely never met. So there was that.
And then there was the getting the PhD thing, which nobody in my family knew anything about. And I really had surrounded myself with people that loved me and that wanted to see me succeed, and that would bend over backwards and do anything it took, really, to be my brace. You know, they were there when I was having a hard time. They were my support staff.
I had a lot of people I could lean on. And sometimes that’s hard because if you’re not doing what your team (your mentors) think you should be doing, it can be a little bit—you don’t want to burn bridges, I guess, and you don’t want to let people down. So there’s almost like a positive and, in some ways, a negative to having so many people support you because you want to make everyone happy. But I think without them, I would have never really been successful.
One story—there’s actually two times in my life when I thought I was going to not—one time I thought I wasn’t going to finish my undergraduate degree. I was a junior, and I was so stressed out and I was having so many anxiety attacks that I ended up at one point dropping all of my classes. And I thought that I was a college dropout and I thought I would never graduate, even with an undergraduate degree. I didn’t think I was going to graduate. And I was thinking to myself, “What can I do? I’m going to be one of those people without a degree!” And now I’m here with a PhD.
So it’s good to know that even people who can be successful have these doubts and struggle with that. Of course, I reregistered in all my classes the next semester and I graduated, but there was a moment in time when I didn’t even know what the future held for me in terms of getting an undergraduate degree.
And then I struggled a lot between college and graduate school because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to get a PhD in. I was struggling with going to school in atmospheric science or in science education. I talked to a lot of people, and they helped me through that, and I decided to get my PhD in science because that was going to lead me—it was really going to open doors, open a ton of doors. I was definitely going to be able to find a job doing education/outreach/promotion/advocacy—whatever I needed to do—as a PhD’d scientist. And that is true.
What I do now is I am a project director at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, also known as “triple-A S.” We’re the largest general science society. So instead of the American Physical Society or the American Chemical Society (these are subject-specific societies), and we are a general scientific society (so we accept all disciplines), and including—we work closely with policymakers; we work closely with artists and people in the media (journalists)—really for the advancement of science for all of society.
That’s one of our missions—one of our mission statements, I guess—our overarching mission. We’re a nonprofit so we have a lot of public programs that really, again, serve the scientific community—the entire scientific enterprise—and then also bring science to the people. And then the other—working in education or communication are these things—really any way sciences touches on people’s lives. The other thing we are is we’re a publisher of Science magazine, which is the best journal in the world, so they say. Yes, along with Nature and Cells. It’s a high-profile publication. So I love what I’m doing.
I work on science communication and I work on science outreach and engagement and diversity issues, and women in science and minorities in science. And I work in the Education Directorate. I love it. I run a fellowship program that places scientists in news outlets to work as reporters. So we’re really bringing science to the media outlets. Not that there’s not science—well, in some media outlets, they have a very small scientific beat. Either nobody’s writing science or maybe somebody will write a little bit of health. And then also we work for places that have lots of science writers, like Discover mag or National Geographic. And these are publications that primarily are made up of all scientists or science writers. So it ranges the full gamut of having either zero scientific news articles or having a lot of scientific articles published.
[♪ Janelle Monae singing “Wondaland” ♪]
♪ Early late at night
♪ I wander off into a land
♪ You can go, but you mustn’t tell a soul
♪ There’s a world inside
♪ Where dreamers meet each other
♪ Once you go it’s hard to come back
♪ Let me paint your canvas as you dance
Dr. Dione Rossiter: One story I like to tell that’s one of my favorite stories about me struggling was I was a third year PhD student and I really wasn’t happy—and I wasn’t happy because I really couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel and I knew I wasn’t going to be a bench scientist, and I wasn’t going to be a professor, I wasn’t going to be in academia, because that’s not what I wanted. But when you’re in that environment, you can’t really see outside of those walls because you’re there to be an academic, and there’s really not a lot of opportunities to explore careers outside of that. There’s not a lot of encouragement to do so.
So I felt really alone and I felt really isolated. And I wrote a five-paragraph essay about why I was going to drop out of graduate school and I sent it to my advisor. I wrote a career suicide note. It was very hard to do and I cried a lot, and I really was going through a hard time doing this and dealing with this and coming to this decision. And I sent it to my advisor.
And I’d like to segue and say that before I went to grad school, I got my scuba diving certificate. So I got scuba diving certified. It’s terrifying. And I was in day two or three or something and I was in the shallow part of the ocean where I was getting certified. And I freaked out. I was having panic attacks; I was having a lot of anxiety; I was scared; I couldn’t breathe; I felt like I was suffocating. And I motioned to my instructor that I wanted to come up, and my instructor popped up and I popped up and he said, “What’s going on?” and I said, “Listen. You can keep my money but I’m freaking out. I’m really not comfortable with what I’m doing, and I’m going to quit this certification program. But again, you can keep my money and it’s cool. So have a good life!” basically.
And he looked straight at me—straight in the eye—and he said, “You’re 12 inches underwater.” And he put his mask back on and he went down. And he—there was no sympathy in his voice. There was no “You can do it!” He looked me at the eye and he said, “You’re being a joke. Just get under there! You’re fine!” And I was really taken aback and shocked that he had no care that I—showed any kind of concern for my wellbeing. But I went back underwater and I finished certification and I am scuba diving certified.
And when I sent that letter to my advisor, he called me in his office and he looked at me and he said, essentially, “You’re 12 inches underwater.” Well, he basically said, “No, you’re fine. You’re going to survive. You’re great, you’re smart, you’re competent, you’re worthy” and “Get back in there and I’m going to support you, and you need to do what you need to do to be happy. Let’s figure out what will keep you here.” And he asked me, “What do you want to do in life?” And that was the first time anyone really had stopped to say, “Is this your path?”
And I said, you know, essentially, “No, I’ve never wanted to be an academic. I want to go into communication and policy and advocacy and just being excited about science and getting other people excited about science.” And he said, “Okay, well then we need people like you and we appreciate people like you” and “Get back in the lab and get your PhD,” you know, and basically, “Suck it up!” And I’m so grateful that he did that. I look back and I think, where would I be?
I’m sure I would be fine and I’m sure I’d be great, but I have a PhD and I owe it to those people who really, really pushed me and really didn’t let me not believe in myself. Because I think that that’s always the one thing standing in people’s way, especially women and minorities. Just having doubts about where you should be or who you are and what you’re capable of. And he knows that I owe a lot to him. Those experiences, I think, a lot of times people gloss over. You know, they say, “Oh, Dr. Rossiter. What was all of those little pieces and all the people?” You know, this wasn’t my PhD; it’s his PhD. It’s all the mentors that came before him and after him. They all play an equal role.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Thank you. That was—I think we’re going to end there, because that was beautiful.
[♪ Janelle Monae singing “Wondaland” ♪]
♪ Dance in the trees
♪ Paint mysteries
♪ The magnificent droid plays there
♪ Your magic mind
♪ Makes love to mine
♪ I think I’m in love, angel
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Alright. So I’m still at this wonderful inclusion D.C. conference, was is amazing. And I’ve met a lot of people, and one of the people I’ve met (kind of again, because I met him before at the past SACNAS conference) is Richard Galvez. So I’m going to ask you the same question that I’ve been asking everyone else: why did you become a scientist? And I’ll let you introduce yourself—like what your job is—and then you can answer the question.
Richard Galvez: Okay, so my name’s Richard Galvas. I’m a postdoc at Vanderbilt University. I wanted to become a scientist, I guess, ever since I was in high school. I thought it was pretty interesting to, basically, just ponder about the mysteries of the universe, really, as cheesy as that sounds. I basically investigated about as far as you can go.
I read a pretty interesting book, Time Traveler—and I mean, it’s a fiction book, but it definitely piqued my interest into it. And ever since then, I’ve been studying, I don’t know, relativity and quantum mechanics and all these things. And then cosmology, eventually, is what I did my PhD on. And now I’m continuing to study, essentially now string ablation and neutrino physics, basically anything that will tell us about the early universe or dark matter or anything of that nature.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: How old were you when you read Time Traveler?
Richard Galvez: I was, like, 14 years old? Yeah. So I’ve always known I wanted to be a theoretical physicist ever since I was 14.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
Richard Galvez: But I didn’t actually know how to do that or how to get there. I actually didn’t even—I didn’t know any theoretical physics. I mean, I had no idea what that meant.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: But you knew you wanted to be it? How?
Richard Galvez: Yeah, that’s right, yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: How?
Richard Galvez: I don’t know! I just thought it was really interesting, so . . .
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: But, like, who taught you what a theoretical physics was. Like, what is the first time you heard that term?
Richard Galvez: So, after I read that book, my high school class—we went to a field trip to the library (like, the public library), and I didn’t have too much interest to be there really. But I did—so, I went to one of the computers and just looked up “time travel.”
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Richard Galvez: Yeah, so anyway from there, it took me basically to relativity; to a part of the library that was actually a physics part. At that point, it was kind of astonishing that it was actually something that was taken seriously, that it was an actual serious study. And then I saw, basically, Albert Einstein all over it. And it was surprising to me; it was like, “Oh okay. That’s why he was famous; because these equations are actually taken seriously.” And from there, I learned about special relativity. And I mean, I was in high school then so I didn’t really know what that meant, but later I learned about general relativity, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory—stuff like that.
I learned a lot through popular science books at the time.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff:
Richard Galvez: And then eventually in college and everything, I learned more about, you know, the technicalities.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah. So, I’m going to ask you the same question again that I asked the other scientists: what kind of support did you get to get you to the point where you are now? And then, tell me what you actually are doing now or have done in grad school and undergrad—well, grad school and postdoc. We can talk about that.
Richard Galvez: Alright. So in the beginning, I can’t say I had too much support. I think, basically, my family pushing me and saying, “Go to school. It’s a good idea. You should get an education.” So I studied physics, naturally; I picked it as a major, even at a community college when I started. I went through with that. I actually got an AA in physics. I transferred to a four-year school for an international university where I did a bachelor’s in physics. And at that point, I started to learn that going to grad school was actually a paid thing. So I actually, I was worried for a while, kind of, how one could afford to pay for a PhD if it took, you know, six years or whatever.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Richard Galvez: On that was pretty cool. But I guess I started getting most of my support from my friends and everything when I got to the four-year school. Yeah, I would say pretty much then. And then when I started—when I got into graduate school—when I went to the PhD program at Syracuse University, I met a lot of people there, that really kind of helped me out and supported me through everything.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Richard Galvez: But for the most part, I think from the beginning, it was kind of, like, a self-propelled thing. So I eventually ended up basically working in inflationary cosmology and writing that for my PhD. So the point is that in the very early universe—so, like, around 10-42 seconds immediately after the beginning (as far as what we call the beginning)—there was an exponential expansion of space. Really, the universe went from essentially the size of an atom to about the size of an orange in basically an instant. And then after that it continued to expand, but at a much slower rate.
So that initial expansion is what’s called an inflationary error of the universe. And that’s actually used to be able to explain the large-scale structure of the universe that we see. At the largest of scales, you see this weblike structure of dark matter distributed in the the universe, and ordinary matter follows it along through gravity. So relativity, in a sense—general relativity—it’s a theory of gravity. Basically it descales at cosmological scales. That’s the dominant source of dynamics.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: The phenomenon.
Richard Galvez: Yeah, the phenomenon. What governs the dynamics, really.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Richard Galvez: So what’s interesting about general relativity and gravity at that level is even during times—you know, 10-42 seconds after the Big Bang—general relativity was the dominant theory. And probably, in a sense, you have to have some quantum aspects to it. And these are things we don’t really understand right now. But at least at a classical level, we understand general relativity pretty well. I mean, it’s one of the most exact theories that are known right now, anyway.
So I think we study science mostly because we want—I mean, sometimes I go to bed at night and it just bothers me to think that we don’t know what dark matter is. You know, we have ideas what it is. But okay, yeah sure, it makes me a nerd, right? Whatever, get out of here!
[laughter]
But the point is we’re so close. Yeah, it’s 95% of the matter of the universe. Everything we know is basically 5% of the matter in the universe. You, me, airplanes—basically all the physics that anyone would learn in a freshman-level or sophomore-level class, thermodynamics—everything: this is 4.8% of the universe. So I don’t know, that’s enough to drive my curiosity. So really, it’s just a curiosity that I keep on following until, for—I don’t know—as long as you can follow it, I guess.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I think until you I die.
[Richard laughs]
Richard Galvez: I guess until you die!
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I think that’s what scientists are: they ask questions until they die.
Richard Galvez: That’s right. I mean, I’m most certainly going to die with questions in my mind. I actually come up with questions faster than I can answer them, you know, and that’s like the bane of my existence.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Richard Galvez: I couldn’t possibly answer them fast enough.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Richard Galvez: I just don’t have enough resources.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: But there’s some kind of joy in asking the question. I think as scientists we like asking questions, and sometimes we’re okay if 1 out of 50 are actually answered.
Richard Galvez: I mean, when one is answered, that’s like euphoria, right?
[laughter]
Richard Galvez: It’s like, “Aha! I know what dark matter isn’t, now.”
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Richard Galvez: It’s like, “Aha!” At least it’s like another, a little bit of the piece of the puzzle.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right. Yeah.
Richard Galvez: Yeah.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And it takes, I think—I don’t think it’s a special kind of person; I think you’re trained to be that kind of person. Well that’s good. Thank you for talking to me.
[♪ Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ♪]
♪ Take me back to Wondaland
♪ I gotta get back to Wondaland
♪ Take me back to Wondaland
♪ Me thinks she left her underpants
♪ Take me back to Wondaland
♪ I gotta get back to Wondaland
♪ Take me back to Wondaland
♪ Me thinks she left her underpants
♪ The grass grows inside
♪ The music floats you gently on your toes
♪ Touch the nose, he’ll change your clothes to tuxedos
♪ Don’t you freak and hide
♪ I’ll be your secret santa, do you mind?
♪ Don’t resist
♪ The fairygods will have a fit
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I am here with my SLI alum (SACNAS Leadership Institute) of my friends, that we spent a week together learning about—I don’t know, what did we learn about at the SLI? Leadership, there we go, there we go! That’s one of the things. So I’m out here at breakfast in D.C. and I’m here with fellow scientists. We’re going to talk about why they wanted to be scientists.
Kristy Duran: My name is Kristy Duran. I am from Adams State University, which is a small university in southern Colorado. I am an associate professor there. I became a scientist, I think, mainly because I was exposed to undergraduate research when I was at the University of New Mexico, and I had amazing mentors and realized that this is something that I could do. And it was basically discovery every day. I just, I loved it and I was hooked.
Diana Azurdia: Hi, I’m Diana Azurdia. I work at UCLA. I’m the Associate Director for the graduate programs in biosciences. I am a trained biochemist. I became a scientist because I was really, I really loved the process of discovery, and I felt that science should be accessible to everybody and that it should not be locked away in the elite journals; that people like my grandmother should have access to it. So I really want to make science available to everybody and I think it’s about equity.
Ricardo Ramirez: Okay, my name is Ricardo Ramirez. I’m an assistant professor at Utah State University in the biology department, and I’m an entomologist. And actually, I didn’t know whether or not I wanted to get into science. Initially, I was actually going to go into music. And so I played saxophone and alto, actually. And I played baritone sax in, I think, between freshman to junior year of high school. So as I went into the university, I was like—well, I went and played. I did have a little scholarship but it was sort of a decision in my life in determining: do I want to be musician or do I want to do something else? And I did like science, but I didn’t know if I wanted to get a job in science.
But one thing I did like was animals, so I ended up joining the pre-vet program at New Mexico State University where I did my undergraduate and master’s degree. And while I was there, the department head had asked me whether or not I was interested in taking an integrated pest management course because there’s a lot of insects and arthropods that attack animals—I mean, fleas, ticks. And so that’s actually where I ended up getting a start in entomology, from taking this one course and really, that kind of drove me more into the sciences and to be interested in entomology.
Ester Sztein: Hello. My name is Ester Sztein and I work at the National Academy of Sciences and I’m Assistant Director of the Board on International Scientific Organizations. I didn’t start like this. I started like a curious child. I saw science from very early on as a way to understand my surroundings, and I decided to be a botanist when I was about seven years old looking at the plants in the balcony of our house, and being curious about them.
We were talking a little bit about inspiration earlier on before this was turned on, and I would think that—my parents are not scientists, but my brother is an MD (a medical doctor). And I think he, in a way, was my inspiration to go into science. And there are many ways to be, of being a scientist. And you can be a scientist in the field; you can be a scientist in a lab; in a biocontainment lab; or looking through a microscope or a telescope; or you can be a scientist like I am a scientist, because what I do all day long is enable scientists here and abroad to collaborate, to interact, to advance science globally.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So I want to say, though, I didn’t know what an entomologist was until my daughter watched Backyardigans, which is a preschool show. And there was an episode where Pablo was an entomologist. And I just had my baby seven years ago, so you can imagine when I actually discovered what an entomologist was—so, somebody who studies bugs. I’ll do that for our listeners.
I just want to take a quick poll. Who here—and so I’m sitting at a table with five other scientists—who here has parents who were scientists? You did?
Diana Azurdia: Yes, my mother was a chemistry teacher.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Your mother was a chemistry teacher. So out of six scientists that we have here, only one of them had one parent who was a scientist. And I think that’s kind of important for our listeners to know, that scientists don’t just breed scientists or lawyers don’t just breed lawyers. And I mean, yes, that happens a lot. But just because your parents were not scientists doesn’t mean you’re, like, doomed for life. Which, I kind of thought off and on for a long time in undergrad.
[Regina laughs]
[♪ Janelle Monae singing “Wondaland” ♪]
♪ Dance in the trees
♪ Paint mysteries
♪ The magnificent droid plays there
♪ Your magic mind
♪ Makes love to mine
♪ I think I’m in love, angel
♪ Take me back to Wondaland
♪ I gotta get back to Wondaland
♪ Take me back to Wondaland
♪ Me thinks she left her underpants
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I am here with my good friend Dr. Chi-Chi Nnakwe. I’m going to ask her the question I’ve been asking everyone else: why are you a scientist?
Dr. Chi-Chi Nnakwe: That’s a question that many scientists ask themselves at some point in their career, and then they have to keep asking that question. So I guess you have to think of it in a couple of different ways. What is your background? But then also, what are your orientations and how do you think? Right?
So my background is in molecular biology and I study cancer biology. I first hit the science bug somewhat in high school, but when I went to college, I really enjoyed my physiology classes because I learned how I work on the inside. And then I had the chance to do research over the summer with the Mcnair’s Scholars Program at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. And that’s where I learned about being a scientist: you go in, you do experiments, you manage your own time, you get to do fun things. At that time, we were looking at the hippocampus in rats and trying to understand longterm memory and how it can be impacted by hypothyroidism.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: And really quick, what’s the McNair Scholarship before you continue?
Dr. Chi-Chi Nnakwe: So the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Program is a program sponsored by the Department of Education. It’s founded after Ronald E. McNair, who was an astronaut who died a space explosion, space shuttle explosion. And it’s geared towards helping individuals from underrepresented populations learning about how to get graduate degrees—so ideally, PhD degrees. And it’s ideally targeted for people from low income backgrounds, first generation backgrounds, and racial and ethnic minority groups. And so having Nigerian-American heritage, I’m an African American student. And in college, because I did well my first year, they targeted me and sent me this email and they said, “Would you like to do this program?”
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
Dr. Chi-Chi Nnakwe: And I was like, “Okay, sure. Why not?” I get to stay on campus for the summer and then they gave me a stipend (so they gave me money, which was great). And then I got to do research. So I had to find a research project. And I had just taken physiology with my professor, Esmail Meisami. And so I asked him if I could work in his summer, and so I did.
So I was looking at rats. I learned how to—what they call—”perfuse” rats. So you have to fix the brains of the rats, but to do that, you have to inject them with formaldehyde. So we used the rat’s body to do that by opening up their ribcage and putting a needle of formaldehyde through their heart. So then the heart—like, it pumps blood around the body—it was pumping formaldehyde throughout the body. So then after the brains were fixed, I had to get that little mini guillotine and I had to separate the head from the body and then dissect the brains out, and then fix them and create slides so we could do staining for nerve growth factor.
So for me, that was my first authentic research experience, and I loved seeing the inside of the rats. I loved understanding how our organs worked. I loved being able to ask questions and answer them with experiments. I loved the time flexibility that I had; I could come in, I could set things up for awhile. And then I liked talking about the work I did. So that one experience led me to, I want to say, three others every summer afterwards because I said, “I’m going to be a scientist. To be a scientist, I have to do research in college so I can go to grad school. I’m going to go to grad school and get a PhD.”
So then after that, I went on to get a PhD from the University of Chicago, from the pathology department. And my area of focus is in DNA damage; so how do our cells sense when our DNA is damaged, and then how do they fix that damage and also communicate to the body or the rest of the cell that that damage is present? It’s really important to the communicate that there’s damage present so that there’s time to fix it before the cell divides, because the worst thing you could do is divide with damaged DNA, which means there’s mutations you’re carrying on to the next generation of cells.
So, for me, I got to do that in two labs and I got my PhD with Steve Kron, who’s in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology at the University of Chicago. I really enjoyed it. I did all my work in yeast with his work, and they smelled like donuts when they were ready to go in the morning.
[laughter]
Right? And then, when they had grown too much, you started to smell a little alcohol. So they smelled like palm wine, which is something a lot of Nigerians are very familiar with.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Wow.
Dr. Chi-Chi Nnakwe: It was kinda cool. But then, you can do such amazing genetics work with yeast. Like, you can just throw DNA at yeast and they’ll just take it in and incorporate it into their genomes because their recombination rates are very high. So really, all you have to do is have a cut piece of DNA, know how to transform or put the DNA into the yeast, and then depending on what techniques you use, the DNA will incorporate itself into the genome and express whatever gene you’re trying to express.
So I just, I loved it. I loved doing that work. It was really great to be creative. But it was really hard, you know? Doing research is very hard. It’s 90% failure in everything that you do. And going through the experience of graduate school, you learn how to mitigate that failure. It can be very frustrating at times, so you learn how to hustle and you learn how to keep at something. But I think that training is a big part of who I am today, and it’s really important for anything I do. It doesn’t really leave me.
And so when I finished my PhD, I didn’t go into a postdoc; I went into management consulting and I worked for a company that helped solve business problems for other pharmaceutical or biotech companies. And I did that for a year and we learned all about helping companies launch products onto the market maybe two years in advance because they have to go through clinical trials. After that, I felt that I wasn’t really being called to do what I wanted to do, so I went into higher education and became the first Director of Graduate Diversity Initiatives at the University of Chicago. So now I was working in a centralized office—a provost’s office—and helping to coordinate strategies to recruit underrepresented minorities to the institution, to the graduate programs there (all the PhD-granting programs).
So I took my organizational leadership skills that I had learned in management consulting, and then I took all of the critical thinking and analysis schools that I learned in graduate school, and then I had my scientific background and the scientific method approach that I fell back on; and I took that and I built an office there and worked there for four years, and really enjoyed building partnerships and connecting with people and doing a lot of outreach so that we made some really great intitiatives. And after that, I felt like, you know, I’m helping to recruit for science disciplines—biological sciences and physical sciences, but also social sciences and humanities, which is amazing—but I missed my science.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right.
Dr. Chi-Chi Nnakwe: I missed being around new technologies and the cutting edge, and the collegiality of all of being around scientists and just shooting ideas together. So I applied and am now a AAAS Fellow. So the AAAS—the abbreviation stands for the American Association for the Advancement of Science—and I have become a Science and Technology Policy Fellow where I’m embedded in an office within the federal government.
So I’m embedded at the National Science Foundation within the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate. And the program that I’m working most intimately with is called I-Corps, or Innovation Corps, and it’s a program that works to help scientists and engineers and social scientists and educators learn about how they can take their deep research knowledge and expertise—and also develop a technology or innovation—how do they take that innovation and commercialize it in the marketplace.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Awesome.
Dr. Chi-Chi Nnakwe: Yeah, so it helps them learn about who is there customer, their market, and how do they customize whatever they’re developing in the lab or in their research program, to be able to start a business up from it. And so it’s putting me into this new area of entrepreneurship. And through my Fellowship, I’m able to figure out how do I increase diversity within entrepreneurship, and I’m having an amazing time. I just started two months ago on September 1, and I love it. I really do.
So it’s wonderful working within the government because there’s a public service orientation. And that’s something that’s always been very strong: I’ve always given back in many capacities. And now I’m able to serve in a public capacity and help people at a national level. So it’s amazing. I also really think that, when you work in the government, you start to understand that money does not just flow to be given to other agencies or institutions. This is taxpayer money, right?
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Yeah.
Dr. Chi-Chi Nnakwe: This is like your grandmother’s taxes going into whatever you’re doing. Like, your mom’s money, your parent’s money, your brother’s or sister’s tax money coming to these federal agencies, and the people that work in these federal agencies are stewards of that money. So it gives you some real accountability with how you use those funds and how you interact within the space of outside of government. Because you are serving the public; you’re serving people. So for me, I’m just having a ball. It’s a wonderful fit with who I am as a person because I’m someone who always gives back. But I fell it’s something that makes me exciting, right? I thrive on seeing other people excel and helping be part of that. So it’s great.
But being a scientist means, you know, you’re someone who has a deep level of knowledge in a particular area. You think critically. You like to ask questions. You’re curious. You like to organize something out of known. You know, you have to create some kind of process or manage large sets of information and know how to glean really important insights from it. And so I say that very vaguely because there are so many people who are scientists and they don’t even know it. And often when I have worked with students, I’ve also told them they’re already scientists; they just don’t have the level of time or experience that more older senior people have. But if you are curious and you like to tinker, you like to create (if you’re creative), all those things make a scientist.
[♪ Janelle Monae singing “Wondaland” ♪]
♪ Take me back to Wondaland
♪ I gotta get back to Wondaland
♪ Take me back to Wondaland
♪ Me thinks she left her underpants
♪ This is your land
♪ This is my land
♪ We belong here
♪ Stay the night
♪ I am so inspired
♪ You touched my wires
♪ My supernova shining bright
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: I’m here with Dr. Ron Hunter, who’s awesome and from Tacoma—so a Washington person (I think one of the only Washington people I’ve met so far). And he’s going to tell us why he wanted to be a scientist. Here you go!
Dr. Ron Hunter: Hi, I’m Dr. Ron Hunter. I’m actually in Atlanta, Georgia now. I wanted to be a scientist ever since I was a kid. That is so stereotypical, but it is so true. I had a chemistry set growing up at five. I’m a chemist right now by training. I used to take my mom’s and dad’s cologne and mix it all together and create “potions,” as I called them. And so that’s why they bought me the chemistry set in the first place.
[Ron laughs]
And now I’m an analytical chemist working at the Coca-Cola Company doing LC or liquid chromatography work for them in global quality. So that’s one of the main reasons I turned out to be a scientist. Aside from loving science and math in general and always being good at it and it coming naturally.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Right. I think it’s funny that you just said that you wanted to make potions, because my six-year-old, Dory, says the same thing. She mixes water with milk . . .
[Ron laughs]
. . . and she makes a potion. So your parents buy you a chemistry set. What other support did you have to become a chemist, and a PhD chemist at that? So what kind of support, like from people or from institutions?
Ron Hunter: So the support I had was that everyone in my family is a teacher or an educator, and so from a young age, I was never told that I couldn’t do anything or not to try something, which is why people now would perceive a kid like I was as a “bad kid” because I was so busy and so into everything. But my parents, nor any of my family members, ever did that. I was always a good kid who was just extra inquisitive. And so they encouraged that inquisitiveness in me.
And then I went to D.C. in 2002 at the age of 20. I worked in the National Science Foundation in the Chemistry Directorate. And instead of going to med school, someone suggested I look into grad school. I accumulated all of these wonderful mentors, of whom I saw today—so a whole 13 years later in D.C., we’re still connected. They’re still my support system. We’ve all grown together to the point where my mentor’s, like, “I want a new job. Help me find a job.” And I’m like, “Cool, that’s awesome. But can you still help me find a job?”
[Ron laughs]
So I mean, now we’re more colleagues. But I still, they still serve as great mentors and sponsors throughout the course of life. So family support and then definitely external support from great advisors. I’ve never had a bad boss. I’ve never had a bad advisor—just been super fortunate in that everyone has always encouraged me to do whatever I asked or wanted to do.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: So you’re working at Coca-Cola now, but I know before that, you were working at the CD.C. with robots. And so I want to ask you about pop culture and the nerdy things that we both like. But before that, I want you to say something about the robots you worked with at the CD.C.. And then we can talk about pop culture.
Dr. Ron Hunter: Yeah. The robots that I worked with at the CD.C. are awesome. I worked with the Hamilton STARlet, which is an automation system. I called him Heisenberg because I’m a Breaking Bad fan. I worked with the Staccato System from PerkinElmer. We called him Tyrion Lannister because I’m also a Game of Thrones fan.
[Regina laughs]
Dr. Ron Hunter: And I always say . . .
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: All meshing together.
Dr. Ron Hunter: All meshing together. So I always say that they were a cross between if WALL·E had a love child with a Coca-Cola bottling machine (and that was prior to my job at Coke). And so I worked with automation and robots to do tobacco analysis in biological fluids such as serum, urine and saliva. So it was awesome. It was an awesome job. We were able to analyze over a hundred samples in under an hour-and-a-half, and then put them on the instrument. Great job, great robotics, great experience to the point where we received a Director’s Award for Innovation for the robotics research ARM group in 2014. So that was amazing for the Division of Laboratory Sciences Director to recognize all the hard work we put into innovating and automating the process in the tobacco exposure biomarker group.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Okay so Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad. Was there any pop culture when you were a kid or, you know, college that actually did assist you in liking chemistry? Or maybe did the opposite but you overcame?
Dr. Ron Hunter: So I actually never saw Breaking Bad until after I had finished my PhD. So if I had, I definitely would have been more gung-ho about it. But I did used to watch Doogie Howser quite a bit, and I was in pre-med initially. So NPH (Neil Patrick Harris) did play a critical role in developing my science capabilities. Problem Child and Home Alone 1 and 2 . . .
[laughter]
. . . also played a great role in cultivating my imagination because I saw how Macaulay Culkin was able to create all these gadgets, and so that’s—I was always an inventor; I feel like I have an inventor’s name. A pretty boring name, but Ron Hunter sounds like an inventor to me. Those are some current things. And then MacGyver. I might be telling my age there, but MacGyver definitely. Yeah, MacGyver definitely played a huge role. And currently, Breaking Bad for sure. CSI, although they do chemistry in the blink of an eye which is crazy. And see, I ask—those kind of shows are awesome in influencing how I stay passionate about the sciences as far as pop culture goes.
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: If you were to meet some aspiring scientists (which we have at SACNAS a lot—i’m sure you’ve already done this), what would you say to these students and how to motivate them because—I mean, all of them ask you questions. First of all, what is the most common question you’re asked? And then, what do you tell them?
Dr. Ron Hunter: The most common question I’m asked is: “How do you feel when you got your PhD?” I told my friend Patty this before she started her PhD several years ago, and I said, “It was alright.” And I said it like that. And if you ask me now, I’m so ecstatic about it. It’s the best thing that I’ve ever done. It’s a really proud accomplishment. But at the same time, you need to remain humble because you really only know a microcosm of the world. And it doesn’t make you any brighter necessarily than anyone else you meet. Just because you got these letters, you just had the opportunity to get it that somebody might not have had. So I say it’s alright. And when she came back and finished her PhD, she said, “I know exactly what you meant when you said it was just alright, because there’s so much work to be done.”
And six years later, I finally feel like the PTSD of getting a PhD has finally resolved itself and I’m able to enjoy my career and help other students, and I feel like a lot of people—they’re not lying when they’re trying to be positive about getting a PhD, but I feel like you need to give the students a real perspective before they start this program, because getting a PhD is hard. You need to choose the right advisor and the right program, and even if everything lines up, it’s still going to be difficult. So I give a real answer and I don’t sugarcoat it, because it’s definitely not going to be sugarcoated.
The second most asked question is: “How did you get your job?” And I just started working at Coca-Cola. My plan of attack was no plan at all. I just kept applying until someone gave me a job. I don’t advise that. But, I’ve never not had a job. So if that plan of attack kept me employed (gainfully), then I think it was a great plan of attack.
[laughter]
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Well I just want to thank you for talking to me. And everything you said about the PhD, I know exactly what you mean. After I finally finished, it didn’t feel like I was actually done. And five years out—you’re six years out—and I am starting to get to the point where I am really proud of myself that I did that. But it took a really long time.
[♪ Janelle Monae singing “Wondaland” ♪]
♪ Take me back to Wondaland
♪ I gotta get back to Wondaland
♪ Take me back to Wondaland
♪ Me thinks she left her underpants
♪ Take me back to Wondaland
♪ I gotta get back to Wondaland
Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaff: Thank you for joining us. Today’s episode, “Inclusive Science: Inspiration and Support,” was produced in the KMRE Spark Radio Studios, located in the Spark Museum on Bay Street in Bellingham. It was recorded on location in Washington D.C.. Our producers and engineers are Eric Ferrietta and Nathan Miller. Our theme music is “Chemical Calisthenics” by Blackilicious and “Wondaland” by Janelle Monae.
♪ This is my land
♪ We belong here
♪ Stay the night
♪ I’m so inspired
♪ You touch my wires
[♪ Blackalicious rapping “Chemical Calisthenics” ♪]
♪ Lead, gold, tin, iron, platinum, zinc, when I rap you think
♪ Iodine, nitrate, activate
♪ Red geranium, the only difference is I transmit sound
♪ Balance was unbalanced then you add a little talent in
♪ Careful, careful with those ingredients
♪ They could explode and blow up if you drop them
♪ And they hit the ground
[END]