When I was asked as a kid "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I would always hesitate. How can I decide my profession if I have never worked in this profession? I first needed to gather more data. What do scientists or architects actually do? I had no one in my family or social circles that practiced these professions, so I couldn't get clear or informative answers.
I was always curious and interested in Biology, but never actually knew what it would mean and feel like to be a scientist. When I started my bachelors degree in Biotechnology, I had no idea how I would fall in love with basic research. On my 2nd year, I started working in the lab of Professor Dan Pe'er at Tel Aviv University, with the talented Dr. Ranit Kedmi, then a grad student and today a postdoctoral researcher at the Cancer Research Institute in New York. I immediately fell in love with thinking about scientific questions, thinking together about the results we got, and working on the bench doing experiments. The enthusiasm of Ranit and Dan were infectious, and I was excited and curious to learn. Quickly, I had a definitive answer - I realized that this is what I want to do "when I grow up". For my 3rd year, I started working in Professor Yoel Kloog's lab, a brilliant scientist who studied, among other things, Ras signaling in health and disease. Sadly, Professor Kloog passed away earlier this year.
During my graduate studies, I continued my journey, working with so many talented and enthusiastic scientists (which I will mention more on in future posts). First and foremost, my grad school mentor Professor Naama Barkai. My work with so many brilliant people, including Professor Adi Kimchi, Professor Guy Shakhar, Dr. Yoav Voichek, Sagie Brodsky, Michal Chapal, Dr. Miri Krupkin, Dr. Idan Milo, Dr. Gil Hornung, Dr. Ilya Soifer, and Dr. Itay Koren, and the mentoring by brilliant PIs, such as Professor Judith Berman, instilled in me their excitement and passion for science, and made it perfectly clear - very early on - that I want to continue doing research in academia as a Group Leader, faculty member, and mentor at a university or research institute.
While the next steps of my career were clear to me, I was also aware of the intense journey to this goal, which includes the nerve-wrecking need to make a big scientific discovery. Postdoc training includes so many variables that can make postdocs feel uneasy and insecure (see imposter syndrome). These challenges include, for Israeli researchers, moving to a foreign country, learning about new research fields/techniques, working in a new environment, and mixing all these ingredients with smart ideas and hard work, in the hope it will yield an important, interesting, and a rigorously-proved discovery. Sounds stressful.
Sometimes, through my outreach work with ScienceAbroad, I hear stories of postdocs have devastating and traumatizing postdoc experiences, which cut-short their academic careers. Many scientists in their postdoc stage decide, whether out of necessity or interest, to leave academia and continue their career in industry. However - there's a wide range of options out there, from working in a research company, to consulting, policymaking or bio-venture capital.
But what exactly are these options? Most grad students and postdocs are unaware of all the possibilities and opportunities that await outside of academia. Knowledge is power. Knowing and understanding the world outside of academia is crucial, not only to know of the alternative, but because academia and the biotech industry can benefit from each other and work in synergy. As poet Maya Angelou said “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better". In order to bridge this gap, a new podcast called mAcademia is interviewing scientists who made the transition from academia to industry. Every week, they interview a scientist who has made this transition. For example, they recently interviewed Thomas Teffri‑Chambelland who took his scientific background into the world of bread making - he has a bakery and bakery school in Provence, and teaches master classes world wide. It is remarkable how making bread can be improved by implementing insights from yeast genetics and quantitative measurements of conditions.
It is fascinating to imagine the impact of science beyond the maybe-obvious aspects of drug discovery and diagnostic tools. One such example which I really like is Professor Pat Brown, who started as a biochemistry professor at Stanford, and today is the CEO of Impossible Foods, working on sustainable solutions to replace meat with new plant-derived products. All these examples, and our growing knowledge as scientists, of the world outside of academia, can help all of us make better, more balanced decisions about our careers, and perhaps feel more comfortable when making decisions of what we want to do when we're older.
What is the future of academia-industry interplay? Let's brainstorm together.
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