School days and a lifetime of learning

The autumn season is always a nice reminder of my school and college years. I can honestly say that I looked forward to going back to school each year, even though I always enjoyed having the summers off. Autumn is the start of a new school season, with all the hype, expectations and focus that a new start entails. That feeling of starting a new school year has never left me, even though I am far removed from my school days; I always have a bit of it when I go back to work after a long summer vacation. But now that I do consulting work for the university, I feel that sense of ‘new school year’ excitement when I walk past groups of students gathered nervously together on campus—that sense of anticipation about new courses, new books, new teachers, new social experiences, and a lot of studying. I’m glad I’m finished with all that, but it’s interesting to be back on campus as an adult doing an adult job. I enjoy seeing the students and remembering back to my own college days at Fordham University. Those years were something special, and I knew that already at college age. I knew that such an opportunity to be able to focus and to study uninterruptedly for four years would never come again. And it’s true, it never did. But those four years were a wonderful immersion in biology, literature, Spanish, organic chemistry and history, on a lovely campus in the middle of the Bronx.

I went to work full-time right after college, halfway through my master’s degree in cell biology that I ended up finishing at night. I was offered the chance to do a PhD by professor Loren Day, my biophysicist boss at my first job, but I turned down the offer so that I could work for some years while I figured out in what field I wanted to do doctoral work. I knew it would not be biophysics (my first working lab experience—isolating and purifying bacteriophage DNA in order to study its helical structure). Although the technology we used at that time was fascinating, I was more fascinated by the use of computers in the lab—the early computers that let us feed DNA sequences into crude programs in order to get back protein sequences, for example. The computers that were programmed to tell us “Cool your jets, I’m adding up the sites” while we waited for the output. They were being funny with us, of course programmed to be so by the offbeat programmers who had offbeat senses of humor. I became friends with Roy, our resident computer programmer, who showed me how computer circuit boards were designed, and who was patient enough to explain the chemistry involved in their manufacture. He taught me the rudiments of the programming language UNIX, and got me interested in the first small personal computers. My interest in computers led to my taking a course in FORTRAN and in machine language at New York University, courses that I have never regretted taking. I hit the wall countless times, but I managed to pass both courses and I learned some really cool things in the process, like how to move 0’s and 1’s around in the data and address registers that make up the CPU. This binary language is the language needed to talk to the guts of the computer; the executable programs that are written in higher level languages like FORTRAN in the early days and in C++ nowadays are translated to executable machine (binary) code by a compiler and linker. So I waded carefully into the programming waters, but I was not clever enough to continue in this field even though it interested me tremendously. I don’t regret this decision, because biology was and still is the field of study that interests me the most, with literature a close second. The exposure to computers and to complex instrumentation in my first job laid the groundwork for my next job, which was to be the daily leader of a flow cytometry core facility at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Laser flow cytometers/sorters were used to analyze different cellular parameters and to physically sort different cell types from each other; most of them were coupled to computers that were programmed to run these instruments and to perform the complex analyses involved. When I look back to that time, the 1980s, I remember it as a phenomenal time in terms of learning. The use of flow cytometry in biological and cancer research was just taking off, and it was fun to be a part of it, attending courses in Boston (sponsored by Ortho Diagnostic Systems) to learn how to run these complicated instruments, as well as a course in Los Alamos, New Mexico at the government lab there to learn how high-speed flow sorters were being used to sort chromosomes and to make chromosome libraries, among other important things. We learned how to do some pretty novel stuff at that course, and got a chance to see a lot of New Mexico in the process. I joined the Society for Analytical Cytology (SAC) that later became the International Society for Analytical Cytometry (ISAC); I have attended countless conferences in different countries since 1985, but the conference that stands out is the one at Cambridge University in England in August 1987. It was here that I met Trond, the Norwegian man who became my husband. It was also my first trip to Europe alone; my lodging was a student dormitory room not far from the building where the conference was held. All conference attendees lived in this way for the week we were there. I loved the feeling of living in the dorm; it was a monastic room, simple, small, with very little furniture save the bed and a desk. But it gave me a real feeling of what it must have been like to study at Cambridge, and the city itself was attractive with its many bookstores and music stores. All I know is that one day I hope to really study there—to take a literature course of some sort during the summer months. It’s on my bucket list.  

Maybe it’s not so strange that I ended up in academia. I don’t teach, even though I have achieved the level of professor competence. I prefer to mentor students on a one-to-one basis or in small groups, and I still like being in the lab from time to time. I don’t like bureaucracy, power politics, or the ‘publish or perish’ mentality of academia. What I do like is the ability and privilege that we have to immerse ourselves in lifelong learning if we want to, and I try to take advantage of this as much as possible. Because life is short, but also because society is changing at a rapid rate, and has changed immensely within the last thirty years. Being able to keep up with the rapid change is important, and the only way we can do that is to remain open to learning for the rest of our lives. 

Musings about science and scientists, and the weather

I’ve been at a scientific conference (dealing with the cell cycle and regulators of cell proliferation) most of the week; it started on Monday night and ended this morning. I wasn’t able to attend all the sessions each day, but I managed to be present for some really top-notch lectures delivered by Nobel prize winners and international experts in their respective fields. That’s always an encouraging and inspiring experience; it reminds me of why I chose this profession—a scientific research career, when I hear top speakers talk about their work. Many of the top speakers were older men who more or less summed up their research careers in their lectures. I have more appreciation for that type of lecture now—maybe because I’ve been in research a long time myself. I know the ins and outs and ups and downs of this business, and I appreciate hearing the opinions advanced by these speakers, because they know what they’re talking about. So when a few of them talk about the importance of small research groups as opposed to large ones, I’m suddenly all ears. I agree with them. Small groups are the places where innovative ideas are born. We should not be getting rid of small research groups. We should not be discouraging younger people from pursuing academic careers. But the granting powers that be are doing so. By not funding scientists who lead small research groups, they ensure that younger scientists cannot continue because they will never get the chance to start their own small groups. By not encouraging younger scientists to fly free rather than clipping their wings which happens all the time now, we are eliminating the pool of future scientists that each society so absolutely requires. Younger scientists are leaving academia. There is no place for most of them. There are no jobs for them and there is no real future for them. This is confirmed for me at most conferences. Younger scientists in this country (post-doc level and above) are little more than slaves for their group leaders. They are doing two and three post-doc periods and finding themselves without any prospects after they finish. They are not being offered staff scientist positions or group leader status. They’re rather told that they’re too aggressive or too independent. And they are, of course. Who wouldn’t be after three post-doc periods? That’s the point of post-doc periods—to create independence and self-sufficiency in intelligent and enthusiastic scientists. But their wings are being clipped in huge numbers, and the granting situation for the future will ensure that there will eventually be no post-doc or staff scientist positions at all. But there will be a lot of PhD student positions. God knows what this country will do with all the new PhD recipients. There aren’t jobs for them. And little is being done to create new jobs for them. Many of them will end up as salespeople or will leave the profession for greener pastures. The only reason there are currently so many PhD positions is because the principal investigators who run research groups need slaves and lots of hands to do their work for them while they are busy writing grants and networking with their fellow group leaders. They know there is no real research future for the PhDs they’re turning out, either in academia or in industry. And industry is not really stepping up to the plate to meet the future needs either.  

The meeting was held at the Holmenkollen Park Rica Hotel at the top of the city of Oslo, literally. On a clear day, there is an amazing view of the fjord and of the city from this vantage point. But of course, the weather this past week was not cooperative, so the hilltop and hotel were mostly shrouded in fog, and when there wasn’t fog, it was raining. I cannot remember a summer like this one—it has rained steadily, if not daily, at least several times per week. The non-Norwegians at the meeting were asking me if the weather was always like this. It isn’t. Today was a perfect example. The last day of the meeting is of course when the sun chose to reappear and blue skies took over--just perfect for walking. So I walked to work from the top of the city to my hospital. It took me about an hour door to door. Relaxing and enjoyable to walk downhill for the most part, take in the nature around me, and just enjoy being outdoors in the sunshine. It was a sharp contrast to Tuesday night, when the entire meeting was treated to a boat trip on the fjord. It happened to take place on exactly the one night of the summer when a storm (remnants of Hurricane Irene in fact) blew into Oslo, causing flooding and all sorts of other problems. We did sail out on the fjord though—the trip was not cancelled. We stayed more or less on the inner fjord, so the waves were not very high. The boat was quite large so it was actually not a problem to be out on the water. But the wind whipped the sails about and the rain was unrelenting, so we were forced into the boat’s innards where dinner awaited, and that was cozy. People had a good time and that was the most important thing. I know that the foreigners at the meeting will remember this particular trip. It’s not often you get to sail on a boat during a fairly intense storm.

It was heartening to meet a lot of the scientists who were at this conference. For some reason, most of the top scientists who attended were actually quite down-to-earth people—friendly, interested in others, and interesting to talk to. It made me wonder about the correlation between real intelligence and humility. If you are really intelligent, perhaps you don’t need to flaunt it or to treat other people poorly. So perhaps this is one explanation for what I see in my workplace—several rude people who think they are intelligent (but who really are not), and who need to be arrogant and rude to others because they are insecure about their intelligence. They need to make others feel inferior in order for them to feel superior. Kind of makes sense to me now. This has been reinforced for me by some of the lecturers I have had the privilege of listening to at the Science library at the University of Oslo. They have been given by some really incredible human beings, people you’d be proud to know. This gives me hope for the future of science generally.