People of Science with Jon Choy

Synopsis: In this episode, we chat with Ya’el, a 5th-year PhD student in Harvard’s Program in Neurosceince Program. She shares how her childhood curiosity, from repairing broken VCRs to questioning the brain’s mysteries, led her to a career in neuroscience. We explore her research on how class one drugs affect cerebral spinal fluid signaling in the womb, her unexpected pivot on into studying psychedelics, and her personal drive to understand brain fog. Along the way, Ya’el reflects on the importance of work-life balance, the support systems that shaped her success, and the lessons she’s learned from setbacks in the lab.

Bookworm + Nature-buff: For Ya’el, hobbies outside the lab are as essential as her vocation. Specifically, she enjoys reading and hiking which help her recharge and stay grounded. She engaged in several genres like science fiction, fantasy, memoirs, and non-fiction. A book recommendation for the audience by Ya’el is Empire of Pain, a deep investigation into the Sackler family’s role in the opioid crisis. Whenever she gets the chance, Ya’el also loves to hike, finding peace and inspiration in nature.

From Broken VCRs to Harvard: Ya’el is a 5th-year PhD student at Harvard’s Neuroscience Program. Reflecting on her early experiences, becoming a scientist seemed natural. As a child, she had a curious mind, begging her parents to bring home broken VCRs to figure out how they worked. She always asked “why,” and this drive for understanding the world around her pushed her towards neuroscience. Her curiosity took on a new dimension during her teenage years when she witnessed close friends also in foster care struggle with mental health challenges. The frustration of watching psychiatrists unable to diagnose her friends invigorated her resolve to study the brain and uncover the unknown in the realm of neuroscience.

Liquid Signaling Blocked: Ya’el’s current research focuses on how medications affect the baby’s developing brain during pregnancy. Importantly, clinical trials often exclude pregnant women, so the safety of many drugs on both mothers and babies remains unclear. Using mice, Ya’el studies how medications pass from the mother to the fetus and impact the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). While CSF is commonly known to act as a cushion surrounding the brain—it’s also critical for transmitting signals to stem cells that guide brain development. Her work has shown that certain drugs can disrupt these signals, leading to improper brain growth.

Beautiful Blood Bessels: Like many researchers, Ya’el has faced her fair share of setbacks. One memorable one involved an experiment where she tried to visualize how secretions from cells enter the CSF. Instead, she ended up visualizing blood vessels because the protein she labeled was also present in the blood vessels, not just the secretory cells. This mistake cost her months of work and led to an awkward conversation with her dissertation committee. She jokingly notes that her transgenic mice are a great model for thos wanting to visualize the blood vessels in bright fluorescence. I also like how she quotes Thomas Edison which I believe captures the scientific research experience, “For every invention that works, there are 99 that didn’t” —these failures, while frustrating, are prerequisite to discovery.

Serendipitous Success: Many scientific developments arise unexpectedly. Ya’el’s PhD research initially focused on a serotonin receptor’s role in brain development. However, when her PI presented her work at a conference, other scientists pointed out how psychedelics are ligands for the serotonin receptor she is researching. Curious about the role of psychedelics on this receptor, Ya’el took on the challenge of getting federal and state approval to research class one substances like LSD and DMT. This serendipitous shift in her research focus resulted in eight months of grueling navigation of bureaucracy and paperwork, but was worth all the work she was able to pass the necessary clearances—opening the door to exciting new research for her lab.

A Thank You:  No one succeeds alone and Ya’el is grateful for people who supported at the beginning of her research journey. She recalls mentors like her first PI, Dr. Joel Hughes at Kent State University, who laid the foundation for her research career. When no else responded to her cold emails for research involvement, Dr. Hughes took her on and invested in her when “he was investing a lot more than he was getting out of me.”She stresses the importance of persistence, encouraging those struggling to break into research to keep pushing forward. For Ya’el and many other scientists. . . science isn’t a solo journey—it’s built on the support and guidance of others.

To Her Surprise: When Ya’el first interviewed for Harvard’s Neuroscience Program, she expected to find overworked, exhausted PhD students. To her surprise, she found a close-knit group of 5th-year students who were thriving. She vividly remembers them hanging out together after interviews, a testament to not only the kind of students at PiN, but also just program’s supportive community. Now, as a 5th-year student herself, she grateful for the friendships she’s made and the programmatic support that has contributed to her success in graduate school. Key to her success has been her efforts towards maintaining a healthy work-life balance, rarely working more than 40 hours a week in the lab and sowing other non-vocational aspects of herself. I agree with her—that staying well-rested promotes productivity and resilience when experiments inevitable go awry.

Lessons from Wendy’s and the Bar: Ya’el’s past jobs as a Wendy’s manager and bartender taught her valuable lessons that have carried over into her academic life. Those experiences sharpened her ability to stay calm under pressure and communicate effectively with peoples of different scientific backgrounds, ranging from academics to families and construction workers. I specifically resonated with how Ya’el analogizes explaining research to construction workers at the bar to writing grants for funding agencies, emphasizing the similarity in tailoring a message to a specific audience. In the lab, Ya’el often schedules herself very tightly which inevitably leads to her frustration. These lab experiences have helped her embrace flexibility and spontaneity—a mindset she’s beginning to learn to implement into her life. Traveling with her partner, for instance, made her realize that rigid itineraries rarely work in practice, and it’s often better to let life unfold naturally. . .to “plan spontaneity.”

Looking Ahead: The Future in Immunology
In the next year, Ya’el will begin a postdoc in immunology. Looking five years ahead, she hopes to secure a faculty position at an R1 university. In ten years, she sees herself on the tenure track, leading a lab with 5-6 trainees, studying the underlying mechanisms of brain fog.

Foggy brain? Ya’el’s interest in brain fog comes from personal experience. As a teenager, she contracted mono, which left her physically exhausted and mentally out of focus. Despite being treated for strep throat, no one had answers for the lingering cognitive effects of mono. This inability to focus, known as brain fog or scientifically known as post acute sequela of an infection, deeply frustrated her. Now, inspired by both her personal experience and the increased attention to brain fog after COVID, Ya’el looks forward to to studying this condition in-depth through her future research.

YOLO, a Mantra: Ya’el drives the point home of being able to be both happy and conduct good science. She says, “We only get to live once, and it’s not worth being miserable along the way” suggesting that living our fullest life means embracing things that make us happy outside of our vocation. In fact, as Ya’el suggests, by doing so—we become better scientists.

I’d Say Good Job, You Did It when asked what her advice would be to her younger self. Typically I try to summarize and provide my own perspective on different parts of the episode, but I think it’s better to read this part directly for Ya’el:  

I don’t know if I believed that I would actually make it this far. I, like, did not graduate from high school and it’s not all that common, I think, that someone who didn’t graduate from high school and took a PhD from a very good research institution and is well positioned to go on to an academic career.

So, I think to myself and anyone else who might have like a less conventional path, just like don’t let people tell you can’t do it because I have had people tell me that. I had people tell me I should probably enlist in the army because there was no other way my life was going to shape up and turn out all right.

And I refused to do that. I said, I really don’t think that those are my two options, like ruin my life or join the army. I think I could figure out something else. And I did.

Connect with Ya’el on linkedin

Transcript:
[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.

 In this episode, we chat with the, Ya’el a fifth year PhD, student in Harvard’s program in neuroscience. She shares how her childhood curiosity from repairing broken VCRs to questioning the brain’s mysteries, led her to a career and neuroscience. We also explore her research on how class one drugs affect cerebral spinal fluid signaling in the womb, her unexpected pivot to studying psychedelics, and her personal drive to understanding brain fog. Along the way Ya’el also reflects on the importance of work-life balance, the support systems that shaped her success. And the lesson she’s learned from setbacks in the lab.

[00:01:17] Jon: I’m so excited to talk to you about your science and also, you know, your life outside of science. One thing that I sort of wanted to start off with and here at people of science, we believe that.

You know, it’s very important to sow other parts of your identity outside of science. And so my first question to you is, what do you like to do outside of science? And perhaps what are some of your hobbies?

[00:01:39] Ya’el: I think that all my friends would agree one of my most defining traits that I like to read a lot. I read a lot. I have, I was a kid and it’s for a long time formed a lot of what I’m interested in and what I think about. I read a mix of like fiction, sci fi, fantasy and memoirs and popular nonfiction. I give away probably, I don’t know, 20 books a year because I find that people don’t read books enough to give them to them.

So I read a lot. I also really like to hike and get outside. When I travel, I always tuck in a hike if I can.

[00:02:10] Jon: Yeah, we love to hear that you’re reading outside of, you know, scientific literature. Do you have a recommendation for the listeners out there perhaps?

[00:02:20] Ya’el: If you want to be angry, read Empire of Pain. It’s a non fiction book about the Sackler family and how sad they are. Their decisions precipitated the opioid crisis. If you don’t want to be angry, don’t read that. But it’s a wonderfully, wonderfully researched piece of basically investigative journalism that turned into a book.

[00:02:38] Jon: Empire of Pain. I’ll definitely put that up on the website for listeners to look into.

[00:02:44] Ya’el: Super well researched, very informative, but definitely pretty angering.

[00:02:49] Jon: Well, great. One sort of aspect of doing research is obviously reading scientific literature. So I’d love to sort of get into your science, science background and your scientific experiences. But the first thing I guess would be how you got into research.

So perhaps introduce where you are right now and sort of bring us back all the way to young Yael and perhaps how you got to where you are today.

[00:03:12] Ya’el: So right now I am a fifth year PhD student in the program in neuroscience at Harvard University. And I work in the research lab of Dr. Maria Lehtinen, who we are physically located in Boston Children’s Hospital, and we study embryonic brain development. Now, rewinding all the way back to like, why would I have gotten into science and into research and how I ended up here.

I think like probably as a kid there were signs and I remember when sometimes I’d be driving around as a kid if I found like a VCR on the curb, which not a lot of VCRs running around anymore, but a videotape player, I guess. I would always beg until I take it home. And my parents would be like, well, it’s broken.

I’m sure that’s why it’s on the curb. And I’m like, that’s okay. I’m going to take it apart and put back together. I’m going to fix it. And so I think I, I was always super curious about how systems worked and why things were broken and what they were made of and could I fix them? And I also was like very much the type of kid who if I if someone would say something’s a fact I would just say why and like why does it work like that and I would just keep asking until We’d hit a point where they’d be like, I don’t know.

I don’t know and i’d be like, well, do you not know? Or does the world not know and I don’t think i’ve ever really loved that point where the world just doesn’t understand how something works and then that escalated when I was a teenager, I left a pretty bad home environment and was with child protective services and I had other kind of authority in situations and ended up being friends with a lot of people in foster care.

And people who had pretty significant like mental health struggles and would go to psychiatrists who would tell them, Oh, we don’t know what’s going on in your brain and we don’t know how to fix that and we don’t know what to do about it. And so I think that similar frustration that I had as a kid when people told me they didn’t know, I continue to have and I realized that there are just pretty significant limitations on like what we, the world, understand about how the brain works and what happens when it doesn’t work right.

And I think that’s what really planted the seed for me to want to research the brain. And I went from there and I’ve been able to become a person who researches the brain.

[00:05:15] Jon: Yeah, I love that. I, I love the thread that sort of laces all your experiences together. It’s sort of this curiosity, always asking why, and also sort of wanting to fix problems, problem solving. That’s a huge part of research. And so I love to actually hear about your research on the brain. So, you know, if you were to describe your research to someone not in the field, How would you describe It?

I know you mentioned that you’re part of the Lehtinen and lab just studying embryonic development.

[00:05:44] Ya’el: Yeah. So if I was describing it to like non scientists particularly, I would start by saying when we think about taking medicines and how medicines get approved, we think about clinical Trials and clinical trials are supposed to answer, does the medicine work for what it’s supposed to Work for? And is it dangerous?

Does it have Harmful side effects? And so And that’s wonderful, except clinical trials are not run on pregnant people almost ever. And so something that is a common problem is that if a pregnant person has an illness or a disorder it’s not clear really to anyone if a medication is going to be safe for them during pregnancy or for the developing baby.

And so my work during my thesis has ended up focusing on Certain medications that if a pregnant person takes them are quickly propagated to the baby and are really bad for the brain development. And so I’ve been able to show that there’s certain periods during pregnancy that the brain, before it’s the brain, it’s just stem cells, sorry, is really vulnerable to certain medications that just pass right on through.

And so I use mice to study this because you should not study this in people. It’s better to figure out in mice. And I’ve specifically shown that. When certain medications get through to the baby, they’re able to change cerebrospinal fluid, which I think people think about a little bit because that’s what like protects your brain from concussions.

It gives your brain a cushion, but a lot of people don’t think about the fact that it also can carry signals and it’s actually really important embryonically that this fluid has the right signals to tell stem cells how to build the brain. And at different maternal medications, mess up the signals and then mess up the brain.

So that’s really what my work has been about for the past five years or so.

[00:07:25] Jon: That is so cool. Yeah, I’d love to, I’d love to get into more of that. And I’m sure there’s sort of a lot of details and a lot of struggles and also successes. And a big part of a PhD is, is struggling and experiencing failure. So I’d love to hear one of your failures along the way and perhaps how you overcame that.

[00:07:45] Ya’el: Yeah, a lot of a PhD is, failures. But what’s the famous Benjamin Franklin quote? I might be misattributing it, but it’s no Thomas Edison. It’s for every invention that works, there’s 99 that didn’t. I think that’s very true and it’s very true for PhD as well. So I think the one that, the one that hits the hardest for me was early in my PhD.

I had this vision for how I was going to visualize a type of secretion. So I’ve studied cerebral spinal fluid and the stuff in it, but I also study how that stuff gets there, and so I helped discover this really cool type of secretion where cells, like, go from being enormous cells to having this huge thing sticking out of them that looks like a water balloon, just like this huge protrusion from the surface, and then explodes.

Into the server’s spinal fluid and releases a bunch of protein. And so I had this idea of how I was going to basically genetically modify a mouse to make the cells glow and to make their surface glow with a green fluorescent protein that I could use a microscope to watch the cells make these little protrusions and then explode.

And I was really excited about it. I, I knew it was how it was going to work. I knew what protein I needed to attach this green fluorescent protein to. And I did that, that part worked, but then I ended up, you know, taking months to kind of work with these mice and to make it work. And then I got it under a microscope and I was so excited.

I was going to see the secretion. And what I didn’t realize that the protein that had made glow, yes, it was in my cells, but it’s also in blood vessels. That’s really, really, really bright and strong and blood vessels. So by the time I took months, like I said, I got under the microscope and all I could see was how bright all these blood vessels were and I could not see myself and I could not see my situation.

And then I had to go, like, I’d had to tell my dissertation committee, which is this group of faculty I have to meet with every six months or so I had to tell them this big idea that I’ve been working on for months and I pitched to them was just not going to work and it wasn’t possible. And I wasted maybe months of time and all of my enthusiasm trying to get it to work, and it simply did not.

[00:09:56] Jon: Were there any silver linings to this?

[00:09:58] Ya’el: The blood vessels are so beautiful. They are so beautiful, and you know what? This mouse would be a wonderful tool for people who want to look at chloroplasts in blood vessels and other vasculature.

[00:10:11] Jon: Well, we just don’t want to focus on your failures and struggles. You know, a big part of PhD is obviously successes. And like you just outlined, you know, you’re doing some really amazing research. So I’d love to hear about a success or a big win during your time these past five years.

[00:10:26] Ya’el: Yeah, so one of my favorite things that has happened is, so I told you the story of my research framed by this idea of maternal medication during pregnancy. That’s not actually how it started. It started just studying a certain serotonin receptor and the effect of that receptor on brain development. And then after a couple years, my PI, my advisor, started to share my work a little bit at conferences or just talk to other scientists about it.

And she started getting questions like, well, what would actually affect that receptor? Why would we care about this? And a couple people started saying, wait, don’t psychedelic drugs act at that receptor. And so she emailed me one day and the subject line was just psychedelics question mark. And she said, Hey, people keep asking me.

You know, psychedelics act at this receptor, which is the serotonin receptor five, HT two C. It was like, do you think that really matters for our cells at all? And do you think that’d be like an easy way to test that? And I said, well, I don’t think there’s an easy way to test it because it’s very difficult actually to get permission to do that research, but I think we should do it.

And so I, this is a, a very good success story because then over the next, it took me about eight months. I was able to get our whole lab schedule one federal and state clearance. Which means that we’re able to research drugs that are federally classed by schedule one, which includes psychedelics like LSD DMT.

So now I’ve been able to like really kick off a research program with our group looking at the potential risks of psychedelic exposure during pregnancy. And getting the clearance was actually a huge win. It took a lot of papers, a lot of time. And now we have this opportunity to do super cool research.

So I’m really, really excited.

[00:12:10] Jon: Yeah, no, that’s amazing. And then do you have any favorite projects that you guys are working on with this sort of new freedom to research these drugs?

[00:12:19] Ya’el: So the reason I’m interested in asking why psychedelic exposureduring pregnancy like would matter or not isn’t because I think a lot of people are out there recreationally taking psychedelics during pregnancy. I think probably most people have the sense that that’s not a great choice, but there’s increasing evidence and really exciting clinical trials about psychedelics being effective for people with substance use disorders.

 To help them stop substance use disorder with only one or two exposures to a psychedelic. And so there’s clinical trials in people that show that this is true. At the same time, we know that substance use disorders are extremely dangerous during pregnancy and have really negative outcomes for a babies development.

And so I think myself and others are really interested in this question. Could psychedelics be safe during pregnancy for treatment of substance use disorders? And so a lot of what I’m looking at is like, are psychedelics bad during pregnancy? Are they always bad? Or are there times maybe really early on before the brain stem cells even exist?

That they might not be bad. And if they’re bad, no matter what, are there maybe ways we could like chemically modify the compound so that the pregnant person would still get positive effects of helping with the substance use disorder, but they wouldn’t harm the baby’s development. So I think that’s just the whole project angle that I’ve been really excited about.

[00:13:40] Jon: Yeah, no, that’s amazing. And I love I mean, of course, research is so nuanced and I love sort of that you’re really diving deep into all of that. A big part of research also and getting these big wins and making these big breakthroughs and these amazing discoveries is we have the support of other people.

And so I’d love to hear maybe the people who supported you along the way and perhaps your mentors as well, how they have supported you.

[00:14:06] Ya’el: Oh my gosh. I mean, every single thing I’ve accomplished and continue to is only because of support of others. But I think at least like the first thing I want to focus on is The first times I got involved in research, and I think some of the most impactful ways others have supported me was taking a chance on me when I didn’t have any skills at work, when I just was curious, just interested and wanted to do science.

When I was a freshman in college, I knew I wanted to be a scientist someday, right? I realized that’s what I wanted. And so I googled all the time, you know, who becomes a scientist. And I was like, oh, it looks like I have to go to grad school to do what I want. So I was like, how do you go to grad school?

And I googled it again. And one of the things the internet told me was get involved in research in college. Okay, how do I do that? Think I was looking at an ehow article those used to be huge was like cold email professors, and someone will respond and I said, All right. And so I went, I went to Kent State University and I pulled up our like faculty website, and there were people doing research there.

And so I picked basically anyone who studied anything remotely related to the brain, and I wrote them emails, and they were, it wasn’t a formal email, but it was just a few sentences, like, hi, I’m a freshman, I’m really interested in the idea of neuroscience, I’d like to be a scientist, and can I volunteer in your lab please?

And I really, one person said no. Most of them did not respond, like 20 people did not respond. And one of them said, Come to my office and let’s chat. Let’s chat. And I went, and that was Dr. Joel Hughes, who I ended up working with, and he got me my foot in the door. And I think that’s the most important first thing in research, is just getting someone who’s willing to invest a little time.

I got way more out of it than he did. I was not a particularly productive lab member, right? I was learning. What science even means and how you do it. But then he ended up bringing a letter of recommendation for a summer research program called BPA endure, which is two summers of neuroscience research completely funded.

And I think from there, there was no going back, but I think it’s at every level, to some extent, there’s been people who took a chance when it wasn’t necessarily a win win. When they were investing a lot more than they were getting out of me, but they were willing to kind of invest in the next generation of science so I could get through.

[00:16:35] Jon: Yeah, no, that’s amazing. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s always nice to look back on the people who, get us to where we are today and I’d love to hear also about the program right now how that supported you now, right? So moving from undergrad and now you’re in graduate school at Harvard studying neuroscience.

[00:16:52] Ya’el: Yeah, so I am in the Harvard program in neuroscience, and I think what I found both back when I was interviewing and just throughout my PhD experience is that people’s experiences are very different, both between institutions and even between graduate programs at the same institution And I’m still very thankful I chose mine because when I was interviewing for grad school, this is something I had in mind, and I wanted to be happy in a PhD.

And I know that there’s often almost like a romanticization of this idea of an exhausted grad student, of like a PhD is supposed to be miserable, it’s a rite of passage. And I was like, no, no, no, I have no interest in that at all. I’m going to be a happy. And so I was actually nervous about Harvard because I think I had this perception of Ivy Leagues and of like just certain institutions being like very competitive.

And places where it’s easier to kind of work yourself to the bone to compete with other people than to be happy. And so I came into my interview, I think like a little extra cynical a little extra like, let me like make sure I can, I’ll figure out if students are actually happy or not. And when I, I interviewed the year before the pandemic hit, so it was fully in person, everything was.

They flew us all out. I think there’s about 50 interviewees who flew out to Harvard this weekend, and I just remember that all the upper year students were there, like all the fifth years, and they were still happy, and they were all friends, like so much friends that after the formal interview activities were over, they just all went out together, all the older years, and I was like, oh, you guys are like real friends.

And I think I realized later that was a testament, not only to maybe like the students, the program picked, but also the programmatic support being really quite good and really invested in the students. And I think it comes down to, at the end of the day, like five people in leadership, in the administration of the program in neuroscience, who just really care about us.

And like John Assad is our director right now. And he’s the kind of guy who, if you email him and you’re like, I’m having this problem, he’s like, you know what, I don’t know the answer to that, but you know what? I’m going to call 10 people if I figure it out. We’re going to make it work. Even if I have to write you a check out of my own pocket to loan you some money, we’re going to figure that out.

And he means it. And I just, it’s so cool that even if there’s a lot of bureaucratic or administrative hurdles, there’s something really nice that the faculty who help run the program will just make it happen. They will figure it out. And I think that’s essential.

[00:19:16] Jon: Yeah, yeah, and now that you are an older year as a fifth year, would you say your experience is exactly the experience or what you initially observed, you know, four or five years ago? Are you going out with your friends, you know, and having a fun time and kind of having that work life balance? What is that like? Your life outside of science?

[00:19:38] Ya’el: Yeah, I am very close to my cohort. So those are the students in my same year of my PhD program. And so when I first moved here, we actually got along so well on the interview weekend at Harvard that four of us decided to live together straight off the bat at the beginning, and so then the pandemic hit, and so it’s a good thing we all got along and were friends because we really had to be friends.

But then now that kind of life activities have picked back up again, now the whole cohort is doing things again. Like, I think up to like 10 of us at once have gone backpacking in New Hampshire together. And we are definitely still friends. And I’m pretty strict about work life balance. I really don’t work more than 40 hours a week in lab.

Sometimes I do take my work home with me and, you know, do more analysis and thinking at home. But only if I want to. Only if I’m so excited about something that I can’t stand not knowing how that graph shakes out. But I think it’s always in academia, a little bit of a push and pull with work life balance, and there’s always people at every institution who are like, wow, only 40 hours a week.

You must not care about science that much, huh? And I’m like Oh, I do. I do. But happy scientists are the best scientists, so I also need to be happy.

[00:20:47] Jon: Yeah, I’d love to hear about sort of, your experience. So you said you’ve been hiking and backpacking. How, how is the city in Boston? I mean, you said you initially went you did your undergrad at Kent state. I imagine sort of the environments are quite different. How has it been like being in a big city?

[00:21:05] Ya’el: So, I knew when I interviewed for grad school, and I’ve increasingly come to appreciate it, I don’t think I’m really a ciity person. But I knew that. And when I was interviewing for grad schools, I did make pros and cons lists of places. And one of the cons of Harvard was that it’s In a city in New England that has winter and it’s dark and it’s very expensive as the big cities are and those are cons for me personally but the training environment was worth it.

And that was what I had kind of had, like, my bets on when I chose it. And I do feel that way but. I also certainly found a lot of opportunities to get out of the city. Like I mentioned, backpacking with my cohort. New Hampshire, some just gorgeous mountains and places for weekend trips are about an hour and a half away.

So that’s completely doable. A very easy weekend trip. And similar distances to Vermont and western Massachusetts. And a little bit further away is Maine. And there’s a lot of places where if you like nature and like to get out of the city, you can. And so I’ve definitely done a lot of that to kind of keep myself sane over the course of my PhD.

Because again, I’m not a city person and that’s okay.

[00:22:14] Jon: Yeah. I love how you hit on that point of sort of making sure you do have a work life balance and that you are doing things that make you happy. Like you said, happy scientists are the best scientists. So I’d love to hear your perspective on this and how, perhaps, this work life balance has allowed you to stay motivated and You know, be the best scientist that you, that you can be and to make these groundbreaking discoveries.

[00:22:41] Ya’el: Yeah, I mean, I think when I do feel happy and also when they take care of themselves, me included, so like I, I need to get enough sleep at night, need to eat pretty well. I do better from exercising than when I’m in the lab functioning. I’m a very different person than if I’m sleep deprived, unhappy and frustrated.

And how that plays out scientifically is say I’m doing a big experiment. Like this morning I did a bunch of dissections to prepare for single cell sequencing, which is a pretty big experiment. If a big experiment fail, my reaction is really different. If I’m well rested, happy and grounded, then if I’m exhausted and work to the bone, if I’m exhausted and work to the bone, I’m frustrated.

I’m mad. I’m not thinking super clearly. I’m just really upset that things didn’t work. And I probably will be like, I don’t even know what happened. Like I might blame someone else. I don’t know. It’s not great. But if I’m super rested, And, you know, just back from a weekend in the mountains. I’m like, okay, what went wrong here?

That’s all right. All right, let’s, let’s workshop this. Let’s figure out a much better approach so that tomorrow morning we can have take two and let’s think it through really carefully. So this doesn’t happen again, but it’s all right. And I get to try again tomorrow and I’m going to get it like, and just that kind of patience and logic, I think, makes it less likely to mess up a big experiment in the first place, like usually.

It works. If it doesn’t go well, it’s also fine. It’s okay. It’s not my whole life. Like, I’ll come back and I’ll make sure it works the next time.

[00:24:07] Jon: Yeah, no, that’s great. I would also resonate with that as well when I’m angry. No, when I’m sleep deprived, I’m angry, frustrated. You know, how do you think that’s played out in your work? So you are able to. Sort of plan out well and I guess it acts as a preventive measure almost.

[00:24:27] Ya’el: Yeah. I mean, I think that I get asked now at this point, my PhD, how I’ve been so productive. And I actually don’t think I do more experiments. Definitely, I don’t do more experiments than other people. But I think I’m really careful. And I’m really intentional about planning them. And if I’m really calm and careful when I’m doing them, they tend to work.

And so, if I’m both intentional about the plan, the design, so that if they work, it’s valuable data that legitimately forwards my progress. And if I’m careful as I’m doing them, Then they work, then it seemed at the end of the day, like I was productive because most of it worked, even if I didn’t do my experiments on anyone else.

[00:25:05] Jon: Mm hmm. And I love that. Sort of, I think one thing that I’ve learned about sort of graduate school training is that it’s very broad and it’s highly applicable. And I’m wondering, do you see sort of the skills like planning out and being calm and collective and poised to also apply in other aspects of your life as well?

[00:25:25] Ya’el: I think I actually learned them before grad school and that I applied them from real life to grad school, which yes, real life, but a bit of a bubble, like. Like I was a manager at Wendy’s for a while. That was my job. And then I worked as a bartender for a while. That was my job. And those are both places where in customer service facing jobs, you cannot get flustered or you get fired, at least if it’s customer facing, right?

That’s not like an option you have. And that at least taught me that in the reaction to a monetary circumstance, it’s not going to get flustered. But then I think organic chemistry lab in college is what taught me that like all logical pre work makes experiments possible. Because OCHEM was so hard.

OCHEM lab was so hard. But if I read the whole protocol book tip, and I planned like every step and like where my reagents would be. And I plan like every step and like where my reagents would be. And how I know once that was working like it turns pink, then I can make sure I know everything I needed when I should get each step and what my readouts of success were.

And I think that taught me in like a very translatable way, how to be careful in lab, but I think, you know, lab informs life informs lab.

[00:26:31] Jon: I love that. I think sort of the experiences that we’ve had before set us up well for our current place and what we’re doing now, I’m curious if there is anything perhaps that you’ve learned, I’m sure there is during your PhD that you’ve been applying outside of your life.

[00:26:49] Ya’el: Yeah, so this one is kind of funny I think prior to my PhD, and I’m still working on it. I tend to be very proud of my time management. So what that also means is I schedule myself very tightly. And so there’s not a lot of margin for error. And what that means is I have very little flexibility both for myself or for others.

And so if someone runs five minutes late to a meeting, I historically felt very frustrated. And if something was a little off in the timing of my day, like a piece of a equipment in lab, if someone’s using it longer than they had it booked for. I’ll be really frustrated because I need everything to run to the five minute interval today.

And I’ve realized that that’s not great. And maybe I should schedule a little bit more flexibility in my experiments and in life. And so I think I’ve started to do that to build in just a little more cushion. So that if something goes wrong by like a I kid you not five minutes used to send me into like the most frustration you’ve ever seen building a little bit more cushion so I could have patience with both myself and others has been good for both science and life.

It’s not everyone runs to the like five minute increment.

[00:28:03] Jon: Yeah. I love that. Having that sort of flexibility and grace and and I’m sure that, that, that also will apply very well to outside life. You know, people are always late, you know.

[00:28:14] Ya’el: And like famously, like my, my partner, he makes a great point that traveling is good because I’m the type that I’m like, so we have our itinerary. So for our 14 day trip to Iceland, we’ll be waking up at this time and we’ll be doing all of these activities and we’ll be going to bed at this time. And he’s like, well, what if something else fun comes up?

And I’m like, yes, I see that is possible. And it’s just like, I like the phrase plan spontaneity, which is just give yourself windows of time, whether that’s a couple hours in a week, day afternoon, like, or after work to just not have a spe cific plan and let life come to you, or when you’re traveling, have a half day where you just don’t plan anything.

Then you won’t also be frustrated things go wrong because you also have that wiggle room. I think that’s something where it started in lab that I realized it was maybe disproportionately spread forward, and then has now bled out to life as well.

[00:29:05] Jon: Yeah. I love that character development and also how your partners has sort of balanced you out in that way as well. So that’s really awesome. I love to track back a little bit about your. You mentioned your experience as being a manager at Wendy’s and also being a bartender. And we also talked about how, you know, our past experiences really do set us up well for our current current place and where we are today.

And, you know, even if they are sort of these two very disparate experiences, they do set us up well and help us succeed and so I’d love to hear more about how, your past experiences have sort of set you up well for your graduate school experience.

[00:29:42] Ya’el: I think one thing I think about a lot recently, that was totally unexpected was. How much being a bartender made me a good science communicator. And that’s because when I was at the bar, I like, I bartended a lot of nights, right? Some nights are much slower than others. So say it’s like a Tuesday night, I’m at the bar. It’s 5 p. m. There’s barely anyone, there’s maybe three guys, right? And you know, I’m bored. They’re bored. I don’t even have any cleaning to do. But oh are you a student?. Yeah. What do you study? Neuroscience. Typically, the immediate reaction is, oh, shoot, like, oh, she’s so smart. That’s so complicated. Oh, I couldn’t.

I’m like, no, no, no, you could totally get it. Like, and then I would just try to pitch it. I try to explain to them what I was working on. And I, it was always like a game of not exactly a game, but I truly wanted them to understand. Like what I was doing what I was working on because I very much believe that like scientists are not some like elite breed a person who’s smarter than everyone and can understand science.

I think that science is gatekept and most people just don’t take the time to explain to the others in the public about what we do. I think anyone can understand it. If you explain it well enough, and so I’ve always felt like the burden is on me to explain science well to people and bartending just gave me endless, endless, endless opportunities to do it.

To where I got pretty good at it and I got doing good at doing it to different audiences. So I got like kids in with their families after church on Sunday because there was also food at this bar. Or construction workers or senators or your average middle aged couple. Like I just had the chance to like talk about science with such a wide audience.

That now it’s, I mean, feels much more intuitive to me to just be able to translate findings to a lot of different levels and to get people organically invested and excited. And I think that’s super valuable.

[00:31:30] Jon: Yeah, I love that a big thing about science is scientific communication and being able to, you know, get your point across in a clear and cohesive and concise manner. And so I’d love to hear, you know, any like any experience, like any specific experiences. So did the construction workers, did those families, did those middle aged couples understand neuroscience? Were you able to get that point across to them?

[00:31:54] Ya’el: I think so. I think like, I usually don’t stop until I think they do. And like, I like when people are able to repeat it back to me and ask more engaged questions. And at that point, what I was studying was not, you know, pregnancy, I actually studied. In aging, why there might be sex differences in cognitive decline based on hormones and how like, you know, biological females go through menopause and how those kind of hormone changes might affect biologically female brains differently.

And that was something that I think people all have a grandma who’s aging right and they all know someone with Alzheimer’s and so that was a pretty good starting point. to kind of get into this conversation and go from there.

[00:32:35] Jon: I love that. And sort of looking ahead, you know, all the skills that you sort of developed and. gained along the way, whether that be scientific communication, time management, being more flexible. How do you think these will set you up well for, you know, your career endeavors? What are your career endeavors?

[00:32:58] Ya’el: Yeah. So I want to run my own research group. So I’m very much the stay in academia type. I want to be principal investigator of a lab. And I think the principal investigator at the end of the career trajectory doesn’t do much science actually. Right. So. Usually you end up overseeing kind of a bigger group and your trainees are the ones doing the science.

And I really view the PI’s job as, well, mentorship and teaching training to do good science, asking questions, but then also getting funding to the lab and explaining lab science to others broadly. And so I think management and leadership and science communication are really important. And I think that grant writing isn’t so different than explaining the brain to construction workers at a bar.

Because grant writing is telling someone with money why they should give you money to do science. So you have to tell them about the science you do, convince them that you’re the best person to do it, And the reason that it’s very important. And I really don’t think that’s that different. Than the skillset I practice the bar.

It’s just the people might be different and their values may be different. As soon as you can understand the values of maybe an organization, or maybe it’s a one person reading your argument, then you can totally get a grant. And so I think that will, I’m hoping that translates well, because I do really like grant writing.

I’ve been doing a bit of it in my PhD and I think it will serve me well as I go on to run my own group and get my own funding.

[00:34:22] Jon: Yes, that’s amazing. And definitely, definitely, definitely. I think it’s always good to set sort of plans. And I think, like you said, spontaneous planning maybe you can set up a one year, five year, and ten year outlook. What does that look like for you, Yael?

[00:34:38] Ya’el: In one year, I’ll be a postdoc and I will be in a lab specializing in immunology because someday I want to study immunology in the brain and the brain’s responses to infections, but I don’t have any immunology experience. So, first I need a job. In one year, I’ll be a postdoc. In five years, I will have just accepted a faculty position for my first big job at some university somewhere, maybe an R1 university with a lot of research activity going on.

And I’ll be thinking about my first projects and how to use my startup funds and I’ll be terribly excited to finally get to ask all the big questions I’ve wanted to ask in my own group. In 10 years, I’ll have had my lab for five years. I hopefully will be rising up the ranks of professors, so I have some job security, and hopefully I’ll have a few big papers where my groupie started to actually, Discover things about the brain’s response to viruses.

And what I really want to figure out is why brain fog happens. That’s kind of, I think what I want to hit on. And so maybe I’ll have some insight into how brain fog happens as I build up my research groups and have five, six trainings, how many I’ll have in 10 years, something like that.

[00:35:47] Jon: Yeah, amazing. Yeah, before, before we sort of wrap things up, I’d love to hear about sort of, you know, you mentioned your interest in immunology, so where is this coming from, right? So, a lot of your research up until this point has been a lot about embryonic development, so I’m curious,

[00:36:02] Ya’el: yeah, so we’re gonna go right back to the theme of I really don’t like when the answer is we just don’t know. So we can’t help you. And so when I was a sophomore in college, I got super sick, and I had mono and strep at the same time, which isn’t great. And I went to the doctor, I got some meds for the strep.

All right. And mono, there’s not so much you can do. You’re supposed to just rest and recover. All right, fine. But I didn’t really recover. All right. And I physically mostly recovered. I was tired, but I could not think to save my life. And I was a sophomore biochemistry major. I’d sit in class and not understand anything.

And I understood it before. So it wasn’t me, but like, it almost was like the professors weren’t speaking English and my, My average grade in organic chemistry went from 100 percent to I got a 58 on the next exam and I was like, all right, and I like I went back to my doctor and I was like, hey, what’s going on here?

And he’s like, we don’t know. It does happen sometimes. I hope this helps. And I was like, not super much. You know, that does not help. What do you mean it happens sometimes? How long should I expect this to last? What can I be doing to make this go away? Why does this happen? How can we fix it? There was not a lot of answers to be had there.

And so a lot of people recently became familiar with the idea of brain fog because of COVID and long COVID and the effects that COVID has had on some people. But brain fog is actually something that has been around as what people call a post acute sequelae of an infection. So some people, they get sick with something, whether it’s mono, which comes from Epstein Barr virus.

or the flu or a cold and they can’t think afterward. And sometimes it recovers. It took me about two months, but then it did get better. But sometimes people don’t recover. And a lot of times that kind of illness has some other symptoms and is characterized as chronic fatigue syndrome or MECFS or other kind of long term syndromes.

And For a long time, doctors have just kind of said, yeah, sorry about that. Don’t really know what’s going on there. That sucks. And there’s a lot of patients around the world, even before COVID happened, who were really struggling with impaired cognitive function after it was supposed to be just a normal, everyone gets the flu kind of sickness and they didn’t get better.

And so for a long time, there’s been a large number of people who had these conditions who were just kind of stuck. And now after COVID, there’s even more people who are struggling with brain fog. And so a question that I’ve been interested in for a long time because it happened to me and I got better, but I don’t know why.

And no one really knows why. And now that the world cares about a lot more, what that means is that there’s finally going to be funding for research on it before it’s not that scientists here and there didn’t want to figure out the mechanisms of cognitive issues after infection. But if there’s not kind of broad research interest, especially government or foundation research interest, there’s not money to research something.

And so even people who wanted to research it had a very hard time studying it. And so now I think we’re just at this juncture where it’s become finally possible to study in a real way, and I want to figure that out.

[00:39:12] Jon: That’s amazing. And I definitely think you’re hitting on a good point, which is there’s a lot that we don’t know. And even in the healthcare, there’s a lot of disparities and just knowledge disparities. And so being at the cutting edge of research, asking those big questions of why. And so I’m really excited for you.

And I hope you’re able to, I’m going to answer that big question of brain fog and sort of all be following that research as well. Definitely was not aware of that, but now I am. Wrapping things up and sort of landing the plane, I’d love to hear your advice for the listeners. Looking back on your past experience, a piece of general advice for the listeners.

[00:39:51] Ya’el: I think it’s possible to be happy, stable, well rested, and a good scientist. You don’t have to sacrifice any of those things. And you shouldn’t. And as far as I know, we only get to live one time. It’s definitely not worth being miserable along the way. But that doesn’t mean you can’t work hard and do super amazing science and make discoveries that impact the world.

Like you can do all of those things and in fact they’ll probably complement each other. You’ll be happier when you’re doing good science. You’re doing better science when you’re getting sleep at night. It’s easier to regulate your mood when you’re in sleep at night and be happier. That’s all. It’s like positive reinforcement cycle that is possible and you should seek.

[00:40:36] Jon: That’s amazing. Yeah. And I love sort of like, like a theme and the common thread has been work life balance. And if you can get that down, you will be a successful scientist sort of ending this off. I’d love to hear sort of reflect on your past experiences, but also, you know, advice to your younger self and maybe.

What you would tell your younger self , now that you’re on, on the verge of graduating and, you know, transitioning into this , new stage of your research journey.

[00:41:07] Ya’el: I’d say good job you did it. That’s what I tell my younger self because like. I don’t know if I believed that I would actually make it this far. I, like, did not graduate from high school and it’s not all that common, I think, that someone who didn’t graduate from high school and took a PhD from a very good research institution and is well positioned to go on to an academic career.

So, I think to myself and anyone else who might have like a less conventional path, just like don’t let people tell you can’t do it because I have had people tell me that. I had people tell me I should probably enlist in the army because there was no other way my life was going to shape up and turn out all right.

And I refused to do that. I said, I really don’t think that those are my two options, like ruin my life or join the army. I think I could figure out something else and I did.

[00:41:56] Jon: Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah, that, that’s awesome. And, and with that thank you for, thank you for coming on here. Yeah. I appreciate all your insights and talking with you. It was amazing. And definitely wishing you luck on your. Wishing you the best in this next sort of stage. Doing your postdoc and researching immunology, that’s so awesome.

[00:42:17] Ya’el: thank you so much. It’s been an absolute pleasure. So good to meet you and chat with you.