Tag Archives: coffee & conversation

articles, May 2020, Mentoring & Outreach

Coffee and Conversations with Professor Madeleine Oudin

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One of my favorite Boston GWiSE events is the monthly Coffee and Conversations with female faculty, alumni, and post-docs from Tufts. “Coffee and Convos” allows GWiSE members and other GSBS students to have a casual conversation with these successful professionals. Past guests have included Malavika Raman, Claire Moore, Trina Basu, Georgina Kontou, and Parisa Kalantari. We learn about what got them into science, their career trajectory, and advice for navigating academia. Unfortunately, work-from-home and stay-at-home advisories have brought all student-led events to a halt. So today, I would like to bring the coffee and convo directly to our work-from-home office. Start brewing your favorite caffeinated drink and grab a snack if you haven’t already!

This month’s Coffee and Conversation is with Dr. Madeleine Oudin. She has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts School of Engineering since 2017. Since coming to Tufts, she has generated a lot of interest in her lab, which works on the role of tumor microenvironments in cancer metastasis and drug resistance. I sat down with her over Zoom and started off with the question that we start all “Coffee and Convos” with: 

What got Madeleine into science?

Growing up in a suburb of Paris, France, Madeleine enjoyed her Biology and Chemistry courses in high school. None of her family members were scientists, so she fostered that growing interest by herself. She majored in an accelerated Biochemistry path at McGill University in Montreal because it combined these two interests and left out plant biology (a sentiment this author fully supports). She didn’t get into research until her senior year because she didn’t think undergraduates could do research!

What was Madeleine’s career trajectory after University?

With her new-found love for scientific research, she pursued a Master’s degree in Pharmacology at King’s College London. The one-year master program led to her to complete her PhD in Neuroscience in the same lab. The senior PI, Dr. Patrick Doherty, was studying stem cells from the subventricular zone of the brain in the context of adult neurogenesis. Meanwhile, the junior PI studied the migration of these cells in the stage after neurogenesis. What Madeleine learned from the junior PI is what got her into imaging cell movement, which is still a staple of her research today. “Let the cells tell you what they are doing.” 

Madeleine loved neuroscience but craved a medical aspect that her research had been lacking up to that point. When she met Dr. Anne Ridley, who studies Rac and Rho signaling in cancer cell migration and metastasis, at a conference, Madeleine realized she could translate her skills in imaging cell migration to a field with more biomedical relevance. Her post-doc lab was a perfect place to tie her neuroscience training in with cancer biology. Dr. Frank Gertler at MIT studies Ena/VASP proteins involved in axon guidance that are also upregulated in cancer. This essentially divided the lab in half: a neuroscience group and a cancer group. Madeleine loved this! Additionally, the lab was in a new engineering building at MIT intended to foster collaborations with cancer research. When Madeleine looks back at her time at MIT, she admits that it was really cool to see the collaborations and new tools that came from this unique union of fields.

When it came to applying to faculty positions, Madeleine looked at both engineering and biomedical departments. She came to the Tufts School of Engineering in 2018. If you were to ask her at the beginning of her research training, she never would have imagined she’d end up in this field.

How can we change predominantly male science environments to be accepting of women?

Madeleine wants to see more representation in seminars, in faculty, and at conferences. Biology historically has had a higher representation of women than Engineering as a field. When Madeleine got to Tufts, the Biomedical Engineering seminar series was 90% men. She raised this issue with her colleagues. “A woman would’ve noticed the discrepancy in minority representation pretty quickly, but my male colleagues hadn’t. I think it’s important to promote awareness.” She then organized the seminar series and increased minority and women representation from 10 to up to 80%. Stepping up to this task reflects on Madeleine’s belief that more women in leadership roles will facilitate necessary changes to predominantly white, male environments.

Other areas that Madeleine thinks need more support are childcare, maternity leave, and time to apply for grants during maternity leave.

Has Madeleine ever experienced discrimination as a woman in the work place?

Madeleine wishes people would focus less on her appearance and more on her abilities as a scientist and mentor. Colleagues of hers have commented on how young she looks in front of students and have even mistaken her for an undergraduate student. To set a more professional tone and reduce confusion, she introduces herself as Professor Oudin. Conversely, she tries not to assume when asking other people what their role is at seminars and conferences. Despite these challenges, Madeleine has been extremely successful in her first 3 years as a professor. The Oudin lab has produced 3 published papers and been awarded a handful of grants since coming to Tufts. Make no mistake: Professor Oudin kicks ass as a scientist. 

How does Madeleine foster an inclusive lab culture?

Madeleine’s students see her advocating for inclusion in her role as a mentor. Her lab consists of a majority of women and a diverse group of students. Interestingly, mostly female undergraduates apply to work in her lab. Some have told her it is because they are inspired by seeing a woman in her position. Madeleine enforces a respectful, collaborative, and supportive lab environment; no bullying or bad behavior is tolerated. She circulated an anonymous survey of lab culture, which opened the door to having a conversation about it. “As PIs, we aren’t taught how to manage. We aren’t always going to be perfect, but getting honest feedback from the lab on our work culture seems like the easiest step to take in that direction.” 

As a mentor, Madeleine encourages her students to expand their professional network and try new things. As a baseline, she has younger students interact closely with older students in the lab. She also introduces her students to the people she knows in Boston. These are the steps she actively takes in fostering an inclusive and successful lab setting. However, she emphasizes there is only so much she can do. “Students can put themselves out there to get the information they need.”  Madeleine provides excellent resources to her students and it’s their decision to utilize them.

Does Madeleine participate in outreach programs?

Outreach is another avenue in which Madeleine exemplifies her commitment to fostering an inclusive science community. Some of her favorite local outreach programs are the Cambridge Science Festival, Tufts Community Day, and the Girl Scouts Science Fair. She also participates in panels where she can raise awareness about the obstacles women still face in the fields of biology and engineering. The Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering Graduate Student Society (BEaChES) at Tufts acknowledged Madeleine’s advocacy by voting her as an Exemplary Engineer among the Biomedical Engineering faculty in 2019 and 2020.

What new hobbies has Madeleine taken up during quarantine?

Madeleine recently got a Peloton! She says it’s a fun way to stay active while staying indoors. She’s also taken up more household projects like painting and gardening. And since Madeleine is gluten-free and has had little issue finding gluten-free flour at the market, she’s been baking cakes during quarantine.

Community, December 2018, Events for Students

Coffee, Conversation & Intersectionality

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Guest Post by Alyssa DiLeo (Neuro)

If you’ve listened to Beyonce’s self-titled 2014 album, you’ll recognize the definition of a feminist as a person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. What this definition misses is the importance of intersectionality, a framework that attempts to identify the intersecting social factors, like race, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, class, and education, that impact marginalized populations. At GWiSE’s November Coffee & Conversation, we welcomed PhD student Molly Hodul, who attended a Harvard event addressing Intersectionality in STEM and discussed what she learned and how to an active ally in the fight for social justice.

Historically, feminism has mainly served white women who centered and upheld their own voices instead of prioritizing experiences of all women and women identifying populations. This can most easily be seen in the history of voting rights in the US. Non-white men and freed male salves were “allowed” to vote in 1870 through the 15th amendment, but Jim Crow and voter suppression laws kept many from exercising their right. The 19th amendment in 1920 gave the right to vote to women, but similar restrictions applied to poor or non-white women. Native Americans weren’t allowed to vote and keep their tribal affiliation until 1924. It wasn’t until the 1960s that the poll tax was prohibited and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 protected voting rights for racial minorities. Here, it’s simple to see how race, gender, and tribal association affected marginalized groups, both separately and together.

Kimberle Crenshaw first coined the term “intersectionality” in 1989 in her paper for the University of Chicago Legal Forum, but many black activists had advocated for intersectional principles. Sojourner Truth made parallels between her abilities and those of men in her speech to the Women’s Convention in Ohio in 1851. Audre Lorde said in a 1981 speech “ I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of Color remains chained. Nor is anyone of you.”

Around the same time, Shirley Malcom conducted the Double Bind study that showed that discrimination of minority women shifted from race based to gender based as they moved into post college training or graduate school. Over 40 years later, women of color are facing more subtle obstacles and microagressions in academia. Overt racist and sexist laws may not be in place anymore, but academic institutions can make statements through their action or inaction in the face of discrimination. Historically, science has also been used to uphold patriarchal white supremacy, something we’re still seeing as the alt right co-opt genetic studies for their agenda, which causes mistrust among minority populations. The failure of science to credit and teach the work of underrepresented minorities in science also adds to this problem.

So, what can scientists and scientific institutions do to actively be an ally for social justice? For one, we can acknowledge our own biases; Harvard has some great implicit bias tests here. When we are real about our bias, we can begin to unlearn these automatic associations we make about groups of people. Intersectionality must focus on the most vulnerable and others must work to uplift and amplify their voices. Most importantly, we, and by “we” I mean white people, must go into our communities and teach these intersectional principles because that is where the work needs to be done. As the holidays approach, find the courage to speak up to that “old fashioned” grandparent or racist uncle. Be a scientist and fight ignorance with facts.

If you’re interested in getting involved with GWiSE, follow us on Twitter @TuftsGWiSE, like us on Facebook, or email us at tuftsbostongwise@tufts.edu.

articles, Mentoring & Outreach, October 2018

Coffee & Conversation with Dr. Laverne Melón

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Written by Alyssa DeLeoNEUR. Coffee & Conversation is a series of informal chats with women faculty on campus, hosted by Tufts GWiSE. 

Our last Coffee & Conversation of the year featured Dr. Laverne Melón, a post-doctoral fellow in the Maguire lab and a TEACRS scholar. She will joining Wesleyan University as a faculty professor in neuroscience in the Fall. Laverne was born in Trinidad and moved to New York when she was 10 years old. In high school, Laverne helped establish the science club, which she insists was the most poppin’ after school extracurricular at the time, and she knew she wanted to work in research before even knowing what that was. The science club gave her and her peers the chance to support each other in the search for research experiences and ultimately lead her to volunteer in a cancer genetics lab at Columbia University. As she reflects on her first experience in science, she also acknowledges that it was also her first exposure to the sexism and racism that exists in scientific institutions. It’s difficult to turn a blind eye to these situations when all you want to do is put your head down and do the work in front of you. But, she didn’t let this taint her passion for the field and her experiences spoke to her resilience, which would be noted by several scientists later in her career.

Laverne went on to earn a BA in neuroscience at Middlebury College, a MS in Behavioral Neuroscience at Binghamton, and a PhD in Addiction Neuroscience at IUPUI after her lab at Binghamton moved. She lost a Binghamton fellowship in the move and had to teach at IUPUI, which she found frustrating as anyone does when they’re forced to do something. However, Laverne began to enjoy the process and her career path in academia became increasing clear. Laverne has been a post-doc in Jamie Maguire’s lab for the last 4 ½ years studying effects of stress on reproductive health and the role of the GABAergic system in alcohol addiction. As she moved into her post-doctoral years, she was really fueled by a research question which she presented to Jamie along with some data to score her current position. Now, she’s fielding multiple offers for faculty positions and learning to navigate this new part of her career.

As always, we chatted about how early life experiences brought our guests to their current positions, how crucial the role of mentors played in this trajectory, and the vital importance of self-advocacy. But, we kept coming back to this idea of producing good, reproducible science and how that is only possible if the field really cared about the people behind the data. It’s no secret that scientific institutions have not been the best advocates for the health of their workforce. Levecque et al. published a study in May of 2017 reporting one in two PhD students experience psychological distress and 1/3 of graduate students are at risk for a psychiatric disorder. An online survey of graduate students in a recent March 2018 study by Evans et al. reports graduate students are more than six times as likely to experience depression and anxiety compared to the general population. SIX times! It’s exceeding clear that health of scientists across fields and levels are struggling in this environment. This begins by hiring scientists that are more than a good researcher, but are inspired teachers, passionate mentors, and expert managers who are in touch the health of their lab.

As Laverne is beginning the next chapter of her career, she’s considering taking on an administrative position as a director of inclusion and diversity in addition to her faculty appointment. She intends to use her status to implement institutional changes to allow for better science through caring, supporting, and mentoring the next generation of scientists. When Laverne started to work in science, she admitted she tried to assimilate as much as possible, but it gets exhausting. It’s difficult to integrate into establishments and systems that have been hostile to the existence of women and minorities in science while trying to stick it out until you can get to a position to make changes. She’s been able to tap into her mentoring network over the years for support and instructed us to be vulnerable in our insecurities to allow these organic mentorships to grow.

If you’re interested in getting involved with GWiSE, follow us on Twitter @TuftsGWiSE, like us on Facebook, or email us at tuftsbostongwise@tufts.edu. Our next Coffee & Conversation is October 19th, 2018 at 5PM in Jaharis 913.