People of Science with Jon Choy

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Synopsis: In this episode, we hear from Davy Deng who is an MD PhD student at Harvard-MIT’s Health Science Technology (HST) joint program. He grew up in the desert, which has significantly impacted his academic and professional journey. In this episode, we learn about the Harvard-MIT HST program, his research on brain simulations, high and lows of his experiences thus far, and hear some of Davy’s life lessons along the way.

Fish and friends: In a research environment where struggle is commonplace and progress can often feel slow, one should be wary on building an identity based on their work. To protect our humanity, avoid burnout, and to ensure high quality of life it is important to foster an identity built upon things that make us emotionally full. For Davy, he enjoys keeping aquarium tanks and caring for his two puffer fish. He also loves spending time with friends, whether going shopping, watching movies, or cooking with them.

Harvard-MIT HST, ME&MP: Davy is an MD-PhD student at Harvard-MIT’s Health Sciences and Technology, Medical engineering and Medical Physics program. Unique to this program is their focus on bringing students from diverse academic backgrounds to biology-related research. Davy majored in Chemistry in his undergraduate at UC Berkeley and completed a master’s at Harvard in computational biology. Now, Davy applies the lab techniques and computational skills he’s learned to conduct neuroscience research with Dr. E Boyden in the department of Biological Engineering at MIT.

Emulating the brain: Davy’s PhD work is perhaps the most least straightforward project he’s work on to date. The broader goal of his project is to simulate a brain in a computer. This raises interesting questions: what does it mean to upload a brain to computer? Is the brain algorithmic? What about consciousness? Given the complexity of human brain, his work focuses on emulating neural activity in smaller organisms like C. elegans and Zebrafish larvae. Currently, Davy’s goal for his PhD is to accurately simulate neural responses of a zebrafish larvae in its natural environment in a computer.

Energy ratios for bacteria + denoising tumor DNA Davy applies many skills he’s learned from previous research projects during his undergraduate and master’s career. During his undergraduate at UC Berkeley, Davy conducted biochemical research on a bacterial strain called Listeria monocytogenes—he found that depending on the NAD+/NADH (one of the main metabolic currencies) this bacteria can be pathogenic or nonpathogenic. During his master’s at Harvard, he developed a computational model to better understand tumors within glioblastoma patients, noting that one can use his model to increase the signal of tumor DNA collected from blood samples of patients (tumors release very little DNA into the bloodstream, requiring a denoising algorithm to accurately sequence the DNA). The lab and computational skills from these research experiences have prepared him well to excel in his graduate research.

Looking ahead: In one year, Davy hopes to have some preliminary results for a computational model of a neuronal network, whether in C. elegans or Zebrafish larvae or both. In five years, he will have completed his PhD and will be tasked with deciding to either going back to medical school as part of his MD PhD program or to start a company, focused on “mind uploading” for several different model organisms. In 10 years, he hopes to have completed a high-fidelity model of Zebrafish larvae and as well as for or working towards one for mice.

Gobi desert: Davy’s family are Mongolian nomads in the Gobi Desert, an environment with harsh weather conditions and where the quality of education and healthcare was scarce. Witnessing disease and its effect on the people around him fostered early interests in medicine. He further illustrates his childhood experiences: how him and his family would frequently move towards areas with milder conditions and better resources. For shelter, nomads live in Yurts which are Mongolian tents which can be easily set up and taken down to be transported by camel to other areas of the desert.

Troughs: Being a first-generation college student, there were several obstacles Davy faced during his undergraduate at UC Berkeley. While many people choose their majors based off their interests, and perhaps what they’re good at, Davy majored in Chemistry because he did understand it and wanted to. This presented an initial challenge at first, since his background in chemistry was limited relative to other students and his lecture and class material were not offered in his native language. Compounded to this was an unfortunate learning curve in research, where he got fired by three different labs because he had trouble with learning lab techniques. These struggles severely affected his mental health in his early college career, but he was able to overcome them!

Peaks: During this time of struggle early in his undergraduate career, he sought out a program called Biology Scholars which fostered a community of students from non-traditional backgrounds. It was here where he received the support from people he could relate to and begin overcoming academic and research obstacles. Eventually, Davy published research in a peer-reviewed journal and was accepted to medical school!  

Don’t worry, Davy vs Davy: Doubting one’s own abilities and accomplishments in a research-intensive environment is common. Davy has had experience imposter syndrome many times at Harvard-MIT HST, pointing out how difficult it is to not feel this way when “every single person in this program are just the most incredible researcher/future physician that you could possibly meet”. He underscores the importance of finding ways to mitigate this feeling, as it is a “futile” effort to conjure up scenarios of what ifs and what could bes. For Davy, he reminds himself of his unique journey and compared himself to the person he was a year ago rather than the people around him.  For others who will inevitably experience imposter syndrome, Davy provides two solutions to combat this feeling (1) don’t freak out when it does happen and (2) to not minimize it—remembering that everyone’s paths are nonlinear and to focus on the present and improve oneself.

Zoom out: Remember why you are doing what you are doing. In the context of research, one can be driven by passion, curiosity, professional development, or all three. Regardless, keeping your purpose and a vocational impetus close can help one stay motivated through struggles and mundane aspects of research. When the going gets tough, it’s helpful to ask yourself if your research efforts contributed towards understanding the subject matter? Additionally, it’s helpful to zoom out and appreciate your efforts in the context of the bigger picture. Davy remembers that during his master’s research on tumors, his PI (pediatric neuro oncologist) would bring in patients or the parents of patients who would benefit from this research to tell their stories. He distinctly remembers how after each one these, he’d realize how insignificant a failed experiment or feeling of complacency would be in comparison to the patients and families affected by such a horrible medical condition.

Antifragile: Davy’s journey to becoming a Physician-Scientist at Harvard-MIT HST is inspiring to me in more ways than one. Growing up in the Gobi desert and dropping at of high school before attending UC Berkeley put him at a rather significant academic disadvantage. Davy says “I wasn’t ahead of people from the beginning. I was, in fact, behind from the beginning and continue to be somewhat trying to play catch up among these Harvard-MIT folks”. Perhaps the irony here is that many would consider him ahead than most people and aspire to have his accolades. We are all dealt with the cards we are dealt, but we are given a choice to persevere and work towards goals we set for ourselves. I appreciate Davy’s perspective on what helped him throughout his journey, noting how every time the environment tries to break him, tries to get in his way, he become stronger. He notes that this quality of his is called “antifragile” and recommends a book entitled Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder is a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Changing the world, approaches: Davy outlines two approaches to changing the world, one more ideal than the other. A common western approach to helping international countries is to implement institutions and infrastructure based on what they believe to be right with little to no consent from the native people living there. An alternative approach is to assimilate into the existing community and “live with them, gain their trust and ask them what they need that I can provide to you” As someone who grew up in the Gobi Desert, Davy believes that the latter is the superior approach because humanitarian assistance is often approached with little regard or “inkling” of understanding of the people living there.

Humans, not robots: Davy’s advice to his younger self is to stay naïve and keep your humanity intact, letting curiosity guide your learning rather than external pressures. He encourages younger children to read more poetry and fiction, rather than so quickly getting involved with computer science and STEM (which seems to be so common these days). He wishes for himself and other researchers and medical practitioners to keep an idealism, emotionality and sensibility alive before it’s too late.

[00:00:00] Jon: Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining me for another episode of the People of Science podcast. I’m your host, Jon Choy, and my goal is to highlight the experiences of people in science because I believe that the experiences of other people can inspire deep reflection and be a powerful tool for clarifying our own convictions and aspirations.

Whether you are considering if a PhD is right for you or currently a graduate student, I hope that these conversations can be a helpful resource for you.

 For transcripts and summaries of this episode, I encourage you to check out my website@peopleofscience.blog.

 And this episode we interviewed Davey Deng, a third year, MD PhD student, in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program. Davie shares his unique background, growing up as a nomad in the Gobi desert. and his path from studying chemistry at UC Berkeley to researching whole brain emulation. for small model organisms. He offers insights into balancing hobbies, dealing with imposter syndrome and the importance of resilience. Davie also discusses his long-term goals in mind uploading research and emphasizes the value of maintaining one’s humanity to succeed in their scientific careers.

[00:01:19] Jon: So, thank you for meeting with me, Davy. One of the things that I, I love starting off with, with all my guests is, is hobbies. Being in graduate school, I think it’s very easy to get busy and, and sort of get sort of, Fill your time with all the fill your, fill your work.

But here at people of science, we believe that sort of suther sowing other parts of your identity is also important. So can you please sort of talk about what you like to do outside of school?

[00:01:49] Davy: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s a really great first question, but I also suspect that it’s one of the hardest questions to answer because like you said, there is very little free time outside of grad school for me, at least. But I do have some hobbies. I usually, I, one of the big things that’s been really consistent with me is keeping fish aquarium tank tanks.

So I keep like saltwater fish. freshwater fish. I have like two puffer fish in my apartment right now. They’ve been with me for years and I’ve been, you know, sort of trying to figure out how to keep these very delicate creatures alive in the aquarium tank since I was a little kid. And I think like partially that sort of inspired me to go into science.

So that’s one of the things. And the other is like, I try to spend a lot of time with friends outside of work because the work can be quite solitary sometimes for me. And with a busy schedule, sometimes you kind of forget about the important friendships in your life. So whenever I get a chance, I try to go shopping with friends, watch movies with friends, cook with friends, basically anything that has to do with other people.

[00:02:54] Jon: Yeah, I love that. Are there puff fish? Are those do those require a lot of time to take care of? I can imagine that also takes up much of your free time as well.

[00:03:02] Davy: Yeah, they can be, they’re not beginners fish for sure. So would not recommend if you never kept fish before to start with puffer fish. But once you know what you’re doing, you can, you can get, kind of get into like a cadence of things. So they’re not so much time consuming as like a dog or a cat, but they’re more like difficult.

So if you mess up, they might, they will immediately let you know by getting sick or something. So it’s more like delicate than time consuming.

[00:03:30] Jon: right, listeners. So, you know, there’s hope if you’re interested in buying a puffer fish, reach out to Davey, but no, yeah, I’d love them to now get into, get into sort of where you are right now. So if you can introduce the listeners to where you are right now and sort of how you got there.

[00:03:48] Davy: Yeah, so I guess it depends on how far back you want me to talk about my journey because it is not a linear trajectory for sure, but currently I’m a, I guess going into going to my third year in the Harvard MIT Health Sciences and Technology, Medical Engineering and Medical Physics. It’s a very long name for a program and I study neuroscience in Professor Ed Boyden’s lab.

My research focuses on whole brain emulation of small model organisms such as C. elegans and zebrafish larvae and as you can, some of the audience might like can probably see where I’m going with this, but whole brain emulation is sort of like the holy grail of You could even say humanity, maybe like if we could one day achieve human brain whole brain emulation, then we are essentially uploaded our consciousness to machine and live as a machine forever.

So that is sort of the ultimate goal, but of course, human brain is way too complex for us to do anything about right now. So that’s why I’m starting out with C. elegans and zebrafish, a more tractable system to, to figure out what does it take to upload? A small brain like that. As far as to how I got here yeah, it’s a very, it’s a long story, but I, I went to UC Berkeley as an undergrad.

I actually studied chemistry. I didn’t know I wanted to do biology. I knew that I kind of wanted to do medicine, but I didn’t know I wanted to do biology. like research, certainly not neuroscience. After graduating, I actually spent a couple, that was around COVID time, so I spent two years at home studying computational biology to give myself some coding experience, and then that led me eventually to my program, my current program.

[00:05:37] Jon: Yeah, and so for those who don’t know of your program do you mind introducing the program itself? I know it’s a super long name.

[00:05:45] Davy: Oh yeah, for sure. No, it’s a very unique program actually. It’s, it’s a joint program between Harvard Medical School and MIT, and you could choose to pursue an MD only program, a PhD only program, and an MD PhD program. It’s all housed within this sort of cross school department. And what’s unique about this is that it caters to people with coming into grad school without a significant background in like traditional biology.

Let’s say like molecular biology, biochemistry are sort of what we consider traditional life sciences. This program does not cater to those people. This program specific targets people who study something else like chemistry, physics, engineering, but now they want to apply their backgrounds in medicine.

So there’s actually 11 tracks within this program. Basically spans anything that you can imagine except biology. So it’s very interesting. So you have aeronautic, astronautics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering. You can pretty much choose any subject that is not biology. When you apply to this, to this joint degree, and you will be basically, Getting into the program as a student in the HSC department with the concentration, so to speak, of your choice.

[00:07:04] Jon: I see. So, so can you talk us through, I mean, you mentioned that you’re a chemistry and then you did some computational work. Can you talk us through, you know, what motivated you to apply to HST? I mean, you mentioned that you were always interested in medicine, but you know, how did you sort of develop those interests to ultimately apply to this HST program at the end of your master’s program?

[00:07:28] Davy: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I knew I wanted to do medicine. So a little bit of more background, I guess, if we keep backing up. I was born in the Gobi Desert which is the the desert that borders Mongolia and China. My families are Mongolian nomads. They still are back in Mongolia and I was born on the Chinese side, so I hold the Chinese passport.

Back growing up in the Gobi Desert is very, is a very strange experience because you never, you’re never really staying in one place. You’re always on the move with We live in those things called yurt. And Mongolia is a country with very little sort of education and health care access. So we drink water from like wells and you know you ride on the camel.

So it’s a very different world. And of course you see how how much restriction on economy has on people’s well being. So there is a lot of a lot of disease, a lot of like public health concerns that are not being addressed. So when I was a kid, I did really wanted to go into medicine in order to help sort of my people, you know, in a sense.

However I didn’t really know how to get there. Another piece of my personal background is that I’m a first generation college student. So my parents didn’t really tell me what to do or how to, how to become a doctor because they don’t know much about that either. So when I came to Berkeley, The reason I did chemistry was purely because I couldn’t understand chemistry.

That’s actually a very opposite from what most people did. I did the worst in my introduction to chemistry class, and I got goaded into majoring chemistry because I was very upset. I was like, hmm, you cannot tell me I cannot do chemistry. I’m gonna major in chemistry just to prove to you that I can do chemistry.

That was pretty much 90 percent of the reason why I went into chemistry major. I didn’t love chemistry. I didn’t really know what chemistry was really. So after four years, as you can imagine, I, I decided, okay, I was good at chemistry. I became good at chemistry, but I was. it’s not really my passion. I got into the degree purely out of spite.

So and I realized that computation was becoming more and more important in research. So I wanted to become more versatile. So during COVID and which, you know, also you cannot go into a lab space, I decided, well, that would have been a perfect time for me to gain some of the computational skills. So throughout this entire time, my original dream of becoming a doctor never faded.

So I was studying MCAT, I was studying the GRE just in case that I don’t, I don’t get into medical school. I have some backup. And I applied to medical school. I want to say 20 different schools, and because I’m not an American citizen, most of the schools could not consider my applications, and Harvard and MIT was effectively the only one on the on the east coast that eventually accepted me, actually.

So that’s why I’m here.

[00:10:29] Jon: Yeah, well, no, congratulations. That’s awesome. And I guess when you look back, there’s obviously highs and lows to every journey. Can you maybe talk us through maybe a hardship through this journey and how you overcame that?

[00:10:46] Davy: Yeah, I mean, that’s that’s you can probably imagine that somebody who didn’t really know what higher education was, there were probably more hardships than that otherwise. And that was certainly true. The first year when I was at Berkeley, I really just didn’t know what to do about anything. I was getting like the, I think I got the lowest score in the entire class for the chemist for the first chemistry final, because I was obviously, I didn’t go to high school, that was another piece of the thing, like I didn’t have any background information going into, so everybody was like a year ahead of me already.

So I was very I was depressed. I was a little depressed, very stressed out. I couldn’t speak a lot of English back then either. So it was very, it was very stressful. So, I started looking for a community of people who came from similar backgrounds. There was something called a biology scholars program at UC Berkeley, basically catering to people who came from so so called non traditional backgrounds.

So, those were basically, Eventually became it became sort of like my second home on campus where I could ask for a lot of help from different people. So that was the first sort of like the major hurdles that I ran into basically right at the beginning. And the second was like I didn’t know how to do research or what was research and I remember getting Actually, this is a funny thing.

I got fired three times in my second year by three different labs because I couldn’t do, like, I couldn’t do what they were asking me to do. Like, you know, like certain techniques, I couldn’t learn it very well, and I wasn’t learning at the speed that they were expecting. So, So I got like I for certain for like a semester, I was like, okay, yeah, science is not in the card for me.

I think I should just focus on medicine. But eventually I got interested again and try it again. And you know, here we are. But yeah, that those are those are the lows of the journey. In terms of high, I mean, after every low comes the high really, you know, when I first got my publication, my first publication, that was definitely a high when I first got my acceptance letter to, to the very first medical school.

That’s, that was high. So, yeah, there’s, there’s a lot of those. For sure. Never boring.

[00:13:02] Jon: I’d love to sort of focus in on on the research

[00:13:06] Davy: you were doing and then sort of how you transition from that into your master’s in computational biology.

I did chemistry research in undergrad. My research was focusing on the NAD plus NADH ratio in the anaerobic pathogenic bacteria called Listeria monocytogenes. So there was a lot of, we’re trying to figure out why concentration ratio of NAD plus NADH matters so much for Listeria.

Because this ratio, when this ratio is out of whack to listeria is unable to become pathogenic. So basically, it goes from a very pathogenic and deadly bacteria into a very mild and non pathogenic bacteria when this ratio is not within its normal range. So we were trying to figure out what is the biochemical determinants of that.

And of course, you can imagine NAD plus NADH sits like it’s involved in everything. It’s, it’s basically like one of the currencies in biochemistry. So there was a lot of like teasing out like exactly the causal, like a sort of circus that that’s controlling that that distinction. So it was purely experimental project.

I did a lot of HPLC and like mass spectrometry, like those kinds of analytical chemistry techniques. The computational biology project was, of course, very, very, very different. I didn’t really do anything to make the switch. I just switched it. Like, I just simply emailed a bunch of labs.

A lot of labs didn’t really want somebody without computational background, but I emailed enough people and then got somebody. And then I was just like, I don’t know how to code. I don’t even know what Python was. I, I really didn’t know what Python was. I thought it was something that came with a computer.

I, I, I didn’t know I had to download it, so I was like, I don’t know anything, but I wanna learn and can you put me on a project? So I, yeah, that’s, that’s basically how I got started. Started during the, the master’s degree. And my thesis was on developing a Bayesian machine learning model to try to denoise the cell free DNA data that we can collect from patients with glioblastoma.

So basically, if you have a brain tumor, a very small percentage of that tumor DNA eventually gets into the bloodstream and can be sequenced with a blood draw, so that you can imagine we don’t have to do, like, invasive DNA sequencing. surgery to take the tumor out and sequence those. We can just simply draw your blood and try to sequence the tumor from your blood.

But the problem is that the signal to noise ratio is extremely low. So we need some like statistical methods to try to denoise to get the signal. So that was basically my project.

[00:15:42] Jon: Yeah, this was all during COVID. And so I’d love to sort of hear how that general experience was. Were you on campus at all for your master’s?

[00:15:49] Davy: Yeah, I did move to Boston from from, from San Francisco, from Berkeley, but yeah, I didn’t really go to campus made some friends remotely and. Didn’t really meet the lab until like two years later, I think. So, yeah, I learned everything by just zooming with people or having like coding sessions with people on online.

[00:16:13] Jon: Yeah, was that hard at all? What were some of the biggest takeaways during that time and how has that helped you at all now that you’re in now that you’re here again for your MDPhD?

PhD?

[00:16:24] Davy: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, it wasn’t as hard because you know it’s It’s supposed to be coding. So it’s probably, it was probably the perfect time to learn coding anyway. Like I imagine it would have been a lot harder if I was a computer science major and trying to learn experimental techniques during that time.

It would have been much harder. So it felt normal. Of course, you felt a little bit disconnected from the rest of the lab because you’re a new person who they’ve never met in person, so never, I guess. didn’t feel super like integrated into the team as I felt, you know, backing undergrad in my old lab.

But yeah, but that was, that was all right. And then of course, now in my MD PhD, I, I used those skills every day, you know, in my new projects that basically requires me to both do experiment and do computation work.

[00:17:14] Jon: Yeah, and now that you’re in this program, can you talk us through how that experience has been so far?

[00:17:20] Davy: Yeah. The program is amazing. People really blow me away. Every single person you meet in this program really, like, just, are just the most incredible researchers slash future physicians that you could possibly meet. It’s, it’s, it’s not, it’s, it’s hard to not have imposter syndromes in this program, I think, because you, you run into, like, geniuses who have completed, like, A PhD before they started MD PhD, or maybe they’ve gone to like college at the age of like 12 or something or 14 or like, you know, like you run into all kinds of these people.

But for me, I think, because I’ve already gone through so many weird stuff in my earlier life. I was never in the mindset to be like, I have to be the best. I’m just, I was always in a mindset of like, just comparing myself to myself a year ago. How am I doing? Am I doing okay? Then if it’s okay, then let’s keep, keep going the way that we are doing right now.

So it was important for me to keep in mind that I’m not, competing myself with, against anybody because my journey could not be more unique. Honestly, could not be more unique.

Yeah, no, that that that’s awesome. I love that sort of philosophy of like, yeah, just doing my own thing, running my own race,

[00:18:40] Jon: It’s hard to not have imposter syndrome, right? So I guess when you do experience those lows of you know, comparing yourself to others and feeling like an imposter. How do you stay motivated and how do you keep that same mindset because I’m sure we’re right when you’re surrounded by all these amazing people like It’s inevitable to have those thoughts

[00:19:01] Davy: Yeah, it is very difficult and I’m not going to pretend to, you know, minimize that it’s, it’s going to be a constant struggle for everyone no matter where you are. And so I’m first, I think the first important thing I want to point out is that it’s almost the definitely going to happen to you. So don’t first don’t freak out when that happens.

And second, just don’t, don’t minimize it. Don’t think, Oh yeah, no, it shouldn’t be a thing. It is a thing. It is very, very, very real thing. I think the way to. deal with it, and I have to admit that I am still trying to learn how to deal with these, is to ground yourself, you know, to, to eventually realize that you’re living a life for yourself, you’re not living a life guided by other people’s decision or by other people’s life, you know, the choices they’ve made, it’s, it’s all irrelevant. We are born into a very unique set of circumstances, and our paths are all unique. Sometimes a path might seem to take you into like somewhere that, you know, it’s less desirable, like when I When I drop out of high school, that’s certainly seemed like my future was going down the toilet, but if in retrospect, if I hadn’t dropped out of high school, I probably wouldn’t have come to Berkeley and nothing after that would have happened.

So I think it’s very important to recognize that the paths is almost always nonlinear just because somebody is ahead of you right now. It doesn’t mean that. you’re just any less valid than them. It also doesn’t mean that you will definitely like be better than them, quote unquote, better than them in the future, but it also doesn’t mean that you’re always just going to be permanently damned to be somewhat, you know, less good than them.

It’s, it’s never like that. Like the world is such a complicated place that it’s a futile effort to try to predict where you are going to be in five, six, seven, in this program, like eight, nine years, you know, it’s, it’s a futile effort. So instead focusing on the present is the only thing that actually matters at all, because it’s the only thing that actually carries any sort of like weights everything else is just, it’s just a pointless academic exercise, I guess that’s sort of thing that to keep in mind to always like sort of repeat that to yourself when you experience imposter syndrome,

[00:21:34] Jon: I love that. I think that mindset is very inspiring. Do you believe that this has also helped you sort of with your research endeavors as well? I know research can be riddled right with experimental failures and struggles as well. Do you think this has helped you at all for research?

[00:21:50] Davy: Oh gosh, that’s, I love that question because it is. Absolutely. I don’t think people ask that question enough, actually. So thank you very much for asking that question. Let’s say like during my master’s degree, I studied brain tumor, brain tumor, or even to this day, we haven’t had a breakthrough in brain tumor treatments in the past, like decades, like not even I think that two decades or something is probably not an exaggeration.

In fact, I think it’s probably more than two decades since we had a effective breakthrough advancement in brain tumor. So, as somebody who studies brain tumor, whether you’re conscious about it or not, you’re fighting what is effectively a losing battle. It’s very likely that you’re not going to cure the brain tumor.

Like, it’s very likely that, more likely than not, that you’re not really going to be that good. person you know, that solves this like decade long, you know, problem. So, so then if you are too much focused on the results of your research, then it’s you’re going to be very depressed very soon. And then take my current research.

My current research is trying to pave the way for human mind uploading. That is not even, I mean, nobody can even predict when that’s going to happen. It might not even happen in my lifetime. So I might not see the, the fruit the fruit of my labor. just in my entire lifetime, right? But that doesn’t really prevent me from being excited about the work I do, because that’s kind of the similar strategy you have to take.

You have to focus on the, on the present– did you make a contribution towards the understanding of the subject matter? If it did, then, Despite how insignificant it might seem in the grand scheme of things, you have done something that contributed to this field, and that’s good. Even if you failed, it is still a contribution to the understanding of this subject.

So I never think too far ahead, especially in research, especially if you’re doing something that is like just, you know famously hard.

[00:23:54] Jon: Yeah, I love that. Breaking it down to smaller battles and even when the battle is lost, it’s not a battle that’s lost, right? There’s always a silver lining, an undertone of success. I think perhaps, I know for some researchers, you know, the pursuit of knowledge can be addicting and What I want to ask you, what, what appeals you to research, right?

You know, if, if these failures are, you know, are so common you know, why, why do we stay? And I want to, I want to know why you’re interested in research and how you’re able to power through.

[00:24:29] Davy: Yeah, you know, one of the I want to tell a story that happened in my, in my lab when I was in, in, during my master’s program. So brain tumor, most people go into brain tumor because they said that I want to help people. These people are, are facing and basically a dismal diagnosis. Almost nobody ever survives it.

Actually, yeah, like almost nobody ever survives it because there’s no treatment. Nothing really works. And so it’s just like kind of too much despair there. Like I can’t even put myself in their shoes. I just can’t. even allow myself to imagine what that must feel like. So then people are like, okay, I want to help these people.

I want to bring some hopes into their life. Right. But two months into the research, you’re so bogged down with all the, all the PCR that didn’t work, all the sequencing that didn’t work. Like you just, it got lost in the, in the details and you’re, you’re, you know, frustrated with how, how things just never turn out the way you want.

And when that happened during my program, my PI, who is a physician, one of the PIs I worked with, she’s a physician, she’s a pediatric neuro oncologist, which means she works with kids with brain tumors. And that was one, one type of brain tumors I was working on that only like almost exclusively happens in like little kids, which is even more heartbreaking

she brings these patients or patients’ parents Because perhaps the patients have already passed away at that point. She brings these family members to the lab or sometimes over Zoom because of it was COVID. And just let them tell their stories. And you listen to their stories and you’re all of a sudden like, you’re like, your whole person is refreshed.

You’re like, okay, I found my purpose once again. I’m, I’m working on this research, no matter how difficult they are, for these real, very real people in the world. Like, I can I can see how they still need my help. So like my little problems in the lab are, it’s nothing. They’re, they’re really just, they’re, they’re inconsequential.

So that’s pretty much how I stay motivated. I try to think of the real people in the life, in life, even sometimes I don’t get to meet them in person.

[00:26:41] Jon: Yeah, I think it really puts things into perspective. Like, these people are going through the biggest hardships of their life and that they might ever experience. And I shouldn’t be crying over spilled milk or, you know, a PCR or something like that. But yeah, no, I, I love to sort of bring that back to the research.

And I know your sort of research is about whole brain emulation and sort of, model organisms are C. Elegans and Zebrafish, but maybe you can break that down for us and like what does that even mean? And you know, what are the clinical implications for this research?

[00:27:15] Davy: Yeah. What does that even mean? That’s a good question because sometimes I ask myself, what does it mean to successfully complete my project? Like, what does that look like? Because in previous world when I was studying cancer, brain tumor, it was very easy. Like, does the cancer die or not? Does this drug work or not?

Whole brain emulation is a whole other beast because it’s like, I’m trying to effectively simulate a brain in a computer. But what does it mean to have a successful simulation? Not sure. I don’t even know if anybody in the world knows what that means. If it’s, you know, and then if you get into the definition of like consciousness, then like this whole thing, it’s, it gets even more controversial.

And eventually, you know, people do want to use a whole brain emulation to upload their consciousness to a machine. And then there’s like so many questions about that. Like, first of all, is that even possible? Because like, well, before even that, what is consciousness? What is, what is this thing that you want to upload?

And even if you know what it is, is this even possible at all? Because for something to be uploaded to a computer and you, you want it to say that that’s the, thing that you uploaded is the same as what you have in the brain, then this thing has to be algorithmic. Is consciousness algorithmic?

Nobody knows. So my current research is in this very, like, unique position where a lot of things are kind of cloudy. I’m not really sure what the end, like, finish point is because nobody has really been able to define it. But focusing on But breaking down like the research to like a little bit more digestible like pieces is that basically I want to create a model in the computer where this brain will react to any external stimulus in exactly the same way as the brain in the real life would have.

So if I perturb a particular neuron, let’s say I shut it down in the computer, this brain will produce exactly the same activity as if I shut that same neuron down in a real fish brain. If I can do that, by my definition, I had simulated that brain and that is the goal that I’m working towards. And that does not mean I will be able to do that in like my, my PhD.

It probably means I won’t be able to do that for like another 15, 20 years, but that is the end goal there. So how do you do that? I think a lot of people will be interested in how do we upload our consciousness, right? So lots of pieces here. You need to first get comprehensive data about the brain, like every single thing you can imagine about the brain, you need to get information from it.

So you are a neurobiologist, so I’m assuming you have heard things like optogenetics and, and things like that, right? So for the audience who has not, Heard about these techniques. These are just various different methods that people use to interrogate like information in the brain by either perturbing it or by measuring its activity or all kinds of all kinds of things.

But when it comes down to it, it’s just to extract as much information from the brain as possible and then reconstruct them in some clever way in a computer and hope that reconstructed model using like artificial neurons. Would still capture like the essence of a real brain, which will it? Nobody knows, not until we try.

So part of the possibility of my research could be like at the end of a 20 to 30 or maybe even 40 years, I conclude brain cannot be uploaded. That’s very much, that’s very, that is a very possible scenario there, but we won’t know it until we try it for sure.

[00:30:59] Jon: Yeah, no, that’s awesome. And I’m sure it’s actually quite complicated.

 how are you accounting for sort of the neural networks and sort of, you know, it’s not as one dimensional as just knocking one down, one neuron, and then something else happens. how are you accounting for all these other things that are happening in the brain, right?

I’m sure there’s some other nuances to this.

[00:31:17] Davy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I don’t know if you’re referring to like other like neurons or other types of cells in the in the brain, or maybe potentially even an environment, we will have to model, all of that, if you want to truly upload a brain so some efforts are being. So, like to your point, you know, people are, people who are trying to like, really simulate the function of a brain has to create some sort of closed loop system where the brain generates some sort of output and this output has to impact its environment.

So you have to also simulate the world, basically simulate how this this output impacted environment using some physical methods. So let’s say if you’re simulating a fly, then you have to like simulate, it’s like the air dynamics and things like that in an environment, right? And that environment triggers some more changes that, that will be sensed by the sensory neurons.

So that will be your, your input back into the brain, and then the brain will process this new input, give output, go back to the environment. So it’s a, it’s a loop that is a closed loop because it feeds back onto itself. And one, if you train this kind of thing long enough, eventually, hopefully you got a brain that is sort of recapitulating what the real organism would behave in a similar environment,

[00:32:40] Jon: No, that’s awesome. Looking ahead, you know, maybe you can talk us through, you know, a one year, five year and 10 year outlook. I know, I know we’ve talked extensively on, you know, the present, but you know, perhaps planning ahead and setting broad goals can also be a little bit helpful

[00:32:56] Davy: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely. I should probably clarify that I’m never I’m not against making plans. I’m a planner. What I’m saying is that I shouldn’t be, I shouldn’t let the future plan dictates 100 percent of what I do, because the plans is always a fluid, they are always subject to change. So one year, five years, and you said 10 years, right? So one year is a very short time for my research because neuroscience takes just a very long time to complete, so I don’t think much will change in one year. I hope I can produce some preliminary results for a closed loop embodied recurrent neural network of ACL again, hopefully, in about a year.

maybe, maybe a little bit longer than that, but we’ll see how, how easy this task turns out to be. But hopefully I can make a virtually embodied artificial neural network that represents the brain of a C. elegans. And the advantage here is that we, because we know all of the neurons in C. elegans and how they’re connected, it is trivial to construct this part, but just because we know how they’re connected, doesn’t actually mean we know the functional relationship between them.

So that’s the tricky part that we will need to figure out. But once we figured out we, it’s conceivable that we can make a virtually embodied worm in a, but maybe a year, maybe a year and a half, two years. In five years, I will graduate from my PhD program. Either I will go back, either I will be back in medical school or I will graduate and start a company I would like to continue doing mind uploading research, of course. And currently I’m working on C. elegans and zebrafish. And zebrafish is the smallest vertebrate system we can possibly have. And of course we want to, we are interested in vertebrate because we are vertebrates.

So I want to start a mind uploading company well, not a company in a commercialized sense, because we can’t really commercialize this, but in a research institute type of thing, where we continue to try to upload more and more complex animals through the lessons we learned in uploading the worm and the zebrafish larvae during my, during my school.

Ten years ahead, I mean, I, I think of this research institute as pretty much like just dedicated my entire life to, to it. So without like any sort of disruption in funding, I hope that I will still be running the same institute in 10 years. But in terms of a scientific progress, I do hope that we will have a a high fidelity uploaded zebrafish larvae in 10 years and perhaps working towards like mice and things like that.

Although I would preface by saying that mice is a lot more complicated. than zebrafish larvae, but with hopefully with new advances in, you know, cutting edge technologies and interrogating the brain, many of which are being pioneered by my PI’s lab, like Ed Boyden we will have the, the right technology to begin tackling something like mammalian brain that is, and potentially, yeah, at that point, you know, it is, probably the time to think about human brain, just to, just to think about it and think about the ethical implications of mind uploading, because that is a huge topic.

But I do not believe that we will have mind the technology for human mind uploading in 10 years, but it will be the, the right time to start thinking about the ethics behind it in 10 years.

[00:36:23] Jon: That’s awesome. Yeah, I’m excited to see where that research goes. I’ll definitely be following it now but yeah, no, I’d love to hear your general advice for listeners. I like and what you would like to leave to listeners.

[00:36:35] Davy: Yeah. I think the most important traits for a researcher or just in general in life is resiliency. It, you don’t have to be the smartest person. I’m certainly not the smartest person in any rooms , really. And I am not. I didn’t have, like, the most advanced, like, background. I wasn’t, like, a super, you know, like, I didn’t receive a lot of premature, like, really, really advanced education when I was in high school or things like that.

I wasn’t ahead of people from the beginning. I was, in fact, behind from the very beginning and continues to be somewhat, a little bit, like, trying to play the catch up game among these super accomplished, you know, Harvard and MIT folks. But I do think one of my, strength, I guess, is resiliency. And if the audience hasn’t heard of the book I highly recommend there’s a book called Antifragile.

Antifragile basically means that if you are antifragile, which is a property of things, then the more something, the more you break, the more the environment tries to break you, the stronger you get. So not only do you, so it’s like one step even further than resiliency. Resiliency is a, is the resistance towards breaking, right?

Antifragility is actually a benefit from being broken. So either one of these two, I think qualities will benefit a lot for future researchers and PhD applicants. And I do think you know like what makes, I mean, like the only reason I could make it to, to here, you know, from the, from the desert, to be honest, is probably because the more life tries to break me, the stronger I get.

So I have this anti fragility always with me. So I highly recommend that people read the book and try to incorporate some of that lessons into their own life.

[00:38:25] Jon: I love that, Davey. And then, yeah, my last question is, I sort of wish I got into this more in the beginning, but I just love to hear more about your experiences growing up. I mean, that’s just so unique. Growing up in the Gobi Desert and then finding yourself, you know, on the other side of the world in Boston.

[00:38:43] Davy: Yeah, it felt like a different planet. I just came back, I just went back home to visit my parents for the first time in five years last summer, and it continues to feel like a different planet. It’s I think it gives me perspectives. A lot of people in these high, you know, prestigious institutions, if they were born and raised in the U. S. and went to prestigious high school and the university, grad school, etc. They seem to, they usually lose touch with it. When I say reality, I mean reality as like a whole planet. They might be in touch with American reality, but that is still quite different from the rest of the world. Like I said, it’s feels like a different planet.

So I think that benefited me, especially as I pursue things like medicine, because medicine is all about the people, even though we have all these like very smart people who come from like, you know, some, some of them come from very prestigious background. It actually is a hindrance to them, in my opinion, because it would make, it.

It would, they will have to put in more effort to try to really understand sometimes the patients might come from a completely different cultural background to the patients might have come from a different planet, you know, as far as they are, they’re concerned. How do you talk to those people is a skill that actually needs to be.

develop intentionally. But for me, like, because I have been, I have grown, I’ve grown up, I grew up in that environment, it comes a little bit more naturally to, to me. But I think yeah, you know, there’s a lot of, I don’t really even know how to, like, describe it in a very concise way, but I guess I, I would, I’m not sure how to, how to like summarize Mongolia.

It’s very empty. There’s a lot of it’s either grassland or desert and there’s like No in between like sometimes a mountain segregates a desert from a grassland. So you will climb over a mountain. All of a sudden, you’re, you’re surrounded by trees and you come on the other side. All of a sudden, you’re in the, in the desert and there’s like no infrastructures because there’s a lot of people who are still nomads in Mongolia, so they don’t really need infrastructures. And it’s it’s a very like has a lot of like inequity because most of the people, or at least the wealthier people, they live in a capital, and even just a little bit outside of Ulaanbaatar, it’s completely different from, from the city the capital.

So it’s a weird experience. I don’t know how else I’m sorry. I feel like I’m not described. I don’t know how to describe it, to be honest, because I moved there directly from there to, to Berkeley, and I did have cultural shock for the first like three months. I didn’t know how to survive in that world.

But I made friends and they helped me. You know, understand It is a world where entitlement goes away. When we are surrounded, especially in prestigious university, we’re surrounded by people who are showered in like, you know, like they I wouldn’t I think their hearts are in the right place. They believe that they have been given the gift to sort of change the world.

But how do you change the world? It’s it’s it’s very, very important. Do you change the world by instituting policies where you are the You are the person who, you know, sort of donates money, where you, you wanna, you wanna institute certain policy, you tell the locals what do you do with these, or do you wanna be the person who goes into the community, live with them, gain their trust, and ask them, what do you need that I can provide to you.

This is, this is, two very, very different approaches to to change the world. And I personally think from somebody who’s lived in the, you know, quote, unquote, another planet, the second approach is much, much better because oftentimes the outsiders, they have no inkling of understanding of what the It is like to be, you know, like a place like Mongolia, or let’s say South America or Western Africa, right?

Unless you live there, unless you live with those people, you understand them, you, you grow accustomed to their daily life. And you ask them, what is it that you need that I can help? You don’t go in there, just be like, I think you need a school, so I’m going to build you a school. I think you need a well, I’ll dig you a well.

That is oftentimes how the Western approaches humanitarian assistance, and I believe that it’s wrong.

[00:43:10] Jon: Yeah. I love that. And I do think it’s a lot easier to empathize as well. Like you’re saying, if you know, you’re in, in, in the field.

And I love to hear just what, what would you say to your younger self? You know, back in, you know, back as a child living in Mongolia and the Gobi desert. I know on a different

[00:43:29] Davy: it does feel like, yeah, yeah what would I say to my younger self? So when I was younger, I wanted to be a poet. I was very close to be to study comparative literature if I just had more English skills, like I, the only reason I switched it was because I couldn’t understand a thing in lecture when I moved to the U. S. I would say to, I guess that could, It’s a, it’s an advice for my younger self, but it’s also part of like, you could call it like a little bit of a regret that I didn’t do it. And that’s why I wanted to give this advice to my younger self is to keep keep that sort of naivety, I guess alive.

It is when you’re, when you’re young, you always want to grow up, you want to be an adult and when you’re an adult, you want to be younger, right? So that’s like a general human condition, like the human psychology. So I think when you’re younger. You, you are naive about a lot of things. You’re idealistic about a lot of things.

And those are actually very, very precious. Like learn a little bit about art. Like I know everybody’s like, Oh, you should learn about computer science when you were a kid, but no, no, you should actually read more poetry and read more fictions not non fictions. Like even people around me who say they read books, they just read non fictions.

They don’t read fiction. That doesn’t count to me. Like when I say reading books, I mean, reading fictions, reading fictions, reading poetry. Keep those idealism, keep those emotionality, sensibility alive is actually quite important as both a researcher or medicine, a medical practitioner or both, because in the end, you realize that After you learn all of the sciences, you actually realize the one thing you’re missing, the one thing that you haven’t thought about, is your humanity.

And you now, now you’re like struggling to go back and be like, can I reclaim any of that humanity? Like from, from where? And it’s, it’s much more difficult to relearn humanity than it is to learn science and medicine.

[00:45:20] Jon: Thank you for listening to this episode. For summaries and transcripts of this episode. Please check out my website at peopleofsciece.blog. Also check out some of my other episodes. Thanks. Hope to see you in the next one.