Tag Archives: humans of sackler

arts & culture, Community, February 2018, Humans of Tufts Boston

Humans of Sackler: Becca Silver, “Enthusiasm was contagious (no pun intended)”

February 9, 2018 Ila S. Anand

I’m Ila Anand, a fifth-year student in the Microbiology program. I’ve recently taken over the “Humans of Sackler” portion of the Newsletter, which was originally pioneered by Andrew Hooper. In this issue I had the honor of getting to know our GSC president, Rebecca Silver, better known as “Becca.” It was a delight sitting down with this die-hard Bruins fan and discussing a variety of topics—from finding out she loves butter pecan ice cream and Figaro’s to discovering how she first broke into science. I hope you enjoy our conversation and are better acquainted with our GSC president!

IA: Hi Becca! Let’s start with what were you doing before you started graduate school?

RS: I was having a good time in college at the University of Maine in Orono! Besides the academics, my favorite part of college was having my friends nearby and being able to spend time with them whenever I wanted. I had a pretty diverse group of friends in college and I still keep in touch with them. I’m originally from Portland, Maine and spending time with close friends was also a big part of my childhood. My favorite memories are from Fourth of July when my friends and I would hang out at a lake house. The lifestyle in Maine is generally much more slow-paced. That is actually one of the biggest differences I noticed when I started grad school—there’s much more of a “rush” in Boston compared to Portland, where the people are more laid-back.

IA: Sounds like there are definitely some cultural differences between the cities. Where else have you traveled to in the past?

RS: I’ve mostly traveled on the East coast. I’ve visited the majority of the North East and I’ve also visited Georgia and Florida. I’ve actually never traveled to the West Coast but if I had the opportunity to attend a conference I would totally go. I also really want to ski in the mountains of Colorado at some point in the future. Outside of the U.S. I’ve traveled to Canada and Bermuda. I visited Bermuda when I was fairly young (ten years old) and I vividly remember that time period because two weeks before the vacation I had pneumonia. At the time it was awful because I missed school and was trying to recover (I had a lot of Pediasure!), but in the end, because I also went on vacation, I ultimately took a month off of school and my teachers didn’t assign me any extra homework. You could say that was my first introduction to the infectious disease field!

IA: That does sound awful! So when did you actually become interested in pursuing research and studying science?

RS: Well, I was a bioengineer back in college and honestly pursuing research was a decision I made on the whim. I took an immunology elective class my junior year of college and quickly realized I really like immunology. The class was much more interesting than any of my bioengineering classes- the lectures were awe-inspiring! The professor really emphasized infectious disease clinical examples like super gross rashes all over the body, etc. The professor was so excited and his enthusiasm was contagious (no pun intended). After taking the class, that summer I took the GRE and applied for grad school the fall of my senior year. It was literally a 6-month turnaround from being a bioengineer to wanting to be an immunologist!

IA: What was your first experience working in a lab?

RS: My first experience doing lab work was during a Co-Op internship at Idexx, which is a veterinary biotech in Portland, ME. I interned at Idexx during the summer going into my junior year of college. I was involved in developing a lateral flow assay that is similar to an ELISA and this rapid immunoassay detected digging worms in infested dog feces. It was a triple detection assay so it was able to detect whipworm, roundworm, and hookworm. My internship involved developing positive and negative controls for the assay. My boss at Idexx played on the same recreational hockey team that I did in Maine and she was a Tufts alumnus. Later, when I decided I wanted to go to grad school, I reached out to her for a reference and she’s the one who influenced me to apply to and attend Tufts Sackler.

IA: That’s really neat that you play rec-hockey. How did you get into that? What else do you like to do outside of bench research?

RS: I picked up hockey in high school when I was fourteen. My friend asked me to try out for the school team because they needed more people and now it’s one my favorite activities to do. I currently play on a Greater Boston rec-team called South Shore Women’s Hockey League. We have a lot of fun! In addition to hockey, I like to run. I run with a group in Jamaica Plains called the Forest Hill Runners and my favorite spot to run is in Peters Hill in the Harvard Arboretum. It has the best view of the whole city, in my opinion. I also like to cook and play video games—specifically strategy games, like Civilization 6. As GSC president, I’ve also been heavily involved in planning the Sackler relays. Our plans are kind of top secret but I can tell you that this year we’re going to have relays in June rather than July and we’re going to have an awesome raffle. Of course, my favorite part about relays is winning- go Immunogenetics!

April 2017, articles, arts & culture, Community, Humans of Tufts Boston

Humans of Sackler: Patrick Davis, “I’ve been Accused of being a Science Robot”

April 24, 2017 Andrew A. Hooper

Humans of Sackler, 23 March 2017

Patrick Davis, Neuroscience, Fifth-Year M.D./Ph.D. Student: “I’ve been Accused of being a Science Robot”

For this issue of Humans of Sackler, I had the opportunity to sit down with Patrick Davis, an M.D./Ph.D. student in the Neuroscience program. Although I see medical students coming and going around Sackler every day, I confess I haven’t gotten to know many of them – or much at all about the medical school curriculum. So it was a great pleasure to learn more about this from somebody who is as passionate about medicine as he is about science research; Patrick and I had a particularly engrossing conversation about the differences between these two kinds of higher education, and I hope you, dear reader, enjoy and benefit from it as much as I did!

Young Pat with the Chestnut Hill Academy Theoretical Physics Group

AH: How did you become interested in studying science?

PD: I had a physics teacher in 11^th and 12^th grade – Marty Baumberger – who was just the best teacher ever. He got me so into physics that I started a Theoretical Physics group at Chestnut Hill Academy… I went to Brown University as a physics major. I loved the open curriculum, but I was a terrible student. I didn’t do well my first year, so I switched to an economics major for about a year, and that was completely unfulfilling. Eventually I came to my senses and switched to biology… The thing about Brown: it’s chaos. There are no required classes, so you just mix and match and do whatever. There are requirements for your major, but you could theoretically never take a math class if you never wanted to. What happened to me was the best-case scenario: the first year and a half made me a more dedicated student. I learned that if I’m not doing something I really want to do then I’m going to be lazy, and if I don’t work hard then I’m not going to do well.

At a Macklis Lab get-together, chatting with friend and mentor Alex Poulopoulos (left)

AH: What was your first experience with neuroscience research?

PD: When I graduated from Brown, I didn’t know right away that I wanted to do med school or neuroscience. I ended up working at Jeff Macklis’s lab at Mass General Hospital for two years after college, and that was my first real exposure to neuroscience. Jeff made his name with a series of studies on induction of neurogenesis in the neocortex. I met Alex Poulopoulos there, who has been a mentor ever since, and a very good friend. I would credit Alex almost entirely with piquing my interest in neuroscience, but also with my development as a scientist. I love to come up with an idea, test it, go through the whole process myself, interpret my own data, talk to other people about their data – I like the actual scientific process. Alex just started his own lab at University of Maryland School of Medicine; anybody reading this, please apply to his lab! You could not ask for a better person to work for. He’s interested in how neural circuits self-organize, which is extremely interesting to me as well.

AH: Why did you choose the M.D./Ph.D. path and how have your medical and scientific training differed?

PD: I could never be just an M.D. because I love science too much. The fundamental quality of a scientist is curiosity; medicine is more like service and helping people, curiosity about the people themselves, empathy. The preclinical years are a lot of memorization, but once you get into the hospital, it’s more like an apprenticeship. You’re learning how to do the day-to-day things that a doctor does: how to walk through clinical decision-making, interview a patient, present that information to other doctors, how to work with your hands if you’re doing a surgery rotation… Because medicine is an applied science, the goal there is all oriented around the health of the patient; I don’t think that’s really what science is about. For a long time, medicine has been done in a very parochial way: people in this hospital do it this way, people in another hospital do it another way. Evidence-based medicine still gets a lot of pushback. Take stenting for example: doing a coronary artery stent for someone with angina. About half of the stents in this country are done for stable angina – chest pain when you exercise, but not an acute threat to your health – and it’s now been shown over and over again that that is no better, and possibly worse, than just giving them statins and blood pressure reduction medication and telling them to eat their vegetables and exercise a little bit. It’s because doctors think in terms of, ‘I see it happen, it intuitively makes a lot more sense to me, so it must be this.’ Of course the lines are blurred in real life, but a true scientist would say, ‘We have to trust the evidence, why don’t we look at what’s causing the increased risk of doing the stent, or why do statins work?’ The curiosity that is absolutely necessary to be a good scientist is not necessary to be a good doctor… The types of mind that are selected for by these two professions are almost non-overlapping, they’re completely different.

Even science robots enjoy a night on the town every now and then

AH: What do you like to do when you’re not studying medicine or neuroscience, and how do you find the time and energy to do it all?

PD: I love to teach, I really like being in the didactic role and seeing people learn and discover things for themselves. I tutor for the MCAT, I used to tutor for the SAT, I’ve volunteered for things like middle school science fair mentoring and the Brain Bee. These kids in the Brain Bee were extremely impressive; they knew more facts for this test than I would have! Thomas Papouin and I also started a class trying to teach grad students the basics of the scientific method. There’s a whole rich history of how to think formally and scientifically; and the more aware you are of it and the more you practice it – like by applying these things to your own rotation project or qualifying exam – the better you get at it. The notion that, by just reading papers, this will happen – for some people, maybe it will, but the purpose of the program is to maximize the probability of this happening for everybody… I’ve been accused of being a science robot: the joke between Alex Jones and me is that when I get home, I have a scotch and read PubMed… The M.D./Ph.D.s that I’ve spoken to, the ones that succeed, are recharging one half of their brain while the other one works. Like a shark, like a science shark!

Relaxing by a picturesque mountain lake in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru

AH: Have you had many chances to travel outside of the U.S.?

PD: I’ve traveled through Europe a bit, I’ve been to Peru, Brazil… I was in Berlin at one point, and I decided to just hop on a train and go to Prague. I spent two full days and a night there, and it was awesome. Most of the people spoke English at tourist-type places, but it was fun to walk around, take pictures, be completely by myself… I had a Cormac McCarthy book called “All the Pretty Horses”, and it was nice just being on the train, reading or watching the sites, then walking around the city and going to a café for a coffee or beer. I don’t know much else about Prague, but aesthetically, I can’t imagine a prettier city. Part of why I enjoyed the city so much was because I didn’t expect it to be that way: of course when you go to Rome, you know that one of the greatest civilizations existed here and that every step you take is rich with history, but I didn’t expect this in Prague.

Enthusiastically sharing data at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting

AH: What topic have you studied for your thesis work?

PD: Under Leon Reijmers’ mentorship, I’m trying to figure out how ‘extinction learning’ happens in the brain: it’s a medically-relevant type of learning that underlies treatment for psychiatric disorders like PTSD. In extinction learning, the patient repeatedly gets exposed to the thing they’re afraid of, you gradually increase the ‘stimulus intensity’, and they learn that it’s safe. So for example, if they’re afraid of spiders, you would show them a picture of a spider at first, then maybe have them in a room where there’s a spider in a corner, then work your way up to having them handle a spider. What I’ve found is that there’s a particular cell type in the amygdala – the parvalbumin interneuron – which acts a critical hub for this kind of learning: if you silence these cells, then you shut down the process of extinction learning. Now I’m using that finding as a jumping-off point to really figure out what’s going on. I’m manipulating parvalbumin interneurons with different frequencies of stimulation and seeing how the amygdala – and the rest of the brain – responds to that. It looks like I can ‘toggle’ the fear state up or down just by controlling this specific type of neuron!

Contemplating the mysteries of the universe

AH: Where do you see the field of neuroscience heading in the near future?

PD: I think that we have tools in neuroscience that 15 years ago, you couldn’t have even fathomed. Not just optogenetics, but recording techniques, chemogenetics, optical electrophysiology, simultaneous local field potentials with single units, closed loop systems… The engineers like Ed Boyden have done us a great favor. But now it’s time for us to step up. I think that in the next 2, 5, 10, 15 years there are going to be many, many discoveries that are really going to blow things open. Once we fall out of love with the mere application of modern tools to hypotheses we already kind of assumed to be true, then we’re going to ask the question: how? You have to record neurons’ endogenous activity, then do experiments that are really informative about what’s going on. In neuroscience, because we have these techniques, we can start asking this kind of question.

articles, arts & culture, Community, February 2017, Humans of Tufts Boston

Humans of Sackler: Nafis Hasan, “I Refused Determinism”

February 9, 2017 Andrew A. Hooper 2 Comments

Humans of Sackler, 30 January 2017

Nafis Hasan, Cell, Molecular & Developmental Biology, Fourth-Year Student: “I Refused Determinism”

This month I present, for your reading pleasure, excerpts from my interview with Nafis Hasan from CMDB. Nafis and I had a remarkably wide-ranging conversation covering existential philosophy, cultural differences between Bangladesh and the US, the exquisite symmetry between ecology and cell biology, and current controversies in carcinogenesis research. I can only hope to capture in the space below a mere whisper of his deeply-considered intellectual convictions and passion for social justice. Fortunately, Nafis has also authored an editorial on Science Activism in this very issue, and I strongly urge you, dear reader, to check that out next!

AH: Where did you grow up?

NH: I grew up in the house that my father and his brothers built in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and moved to the U.S. when I was 18. Most of my dad’s siblings and their families lived with us in Dhaka. As kids, we didn’t really have the notion of “privacy” for the longest time: the elders would each get a room and the kids would sleep in the living room on a big mattress. My cousins and I would all get into trouble at the same time… it was fun!

AH: Have you had any opportunities to travel around the States?

NH: For F1 visa (student visa) holders, you have a 3-month window where you have to find a job or get into school. After graduating from Lafayette College [in Easton, Pennsylvania], I thought, “If I have to leave the country, I might as well see it.” So when one of my friends said, “Let’s do a road trip,” I said “Let’s do it!” We started from Pennsylvania, went down to Virginia, our first stop was Shenandoah – I had actually never been camping before that, it was all a very new experience. We had two American kids, a Colombian kid, and a kid from South Africa… It was very liberating, and I started to see the country as it really is. At the same time, on the road, I was interviewing for jobs. I remember doing a job interview [by video phone] at a McDonalds in Idaho. I borrowed a shirt from one of my friends who dresses nicer than I do, since the interviewer could only see the top half of me… Over the course of two months, I think I applied to 200 jobs. Finally, I ended up getting a research tech job at Thomas Jefferson University in Philly.

Basking in the beauty of nature at Yellowstone

AH: What was it like adjusting to American culture?

NH: When I came to America, I had no idea what to expect, I had only heard things from my cousins who came here for college and what was on TV. One thing that I had in my mind was that I was going to try and meet as many people of different nationalities as I can. But there was a big cultural divide, how they grew up versus how I grew up. I think the road trip really helped me to understand the diversity of American people and especially during these times when people are so polarized, I reach out to that experience. We grew up seeing this version of America as the land of opportunity, the land of freedom, but America is not the government, is not their foreign policy, is not the consumerism that has taken over the world… America is more about the people that you meet here, and that’s how I see the country. America encapsulates the dichotomy of homogeneity versus heterogeneity, and I think that’s so beautiful.

AH: When did you begin to discover your interest in biology research?

NH: In Bangladesh I went to a private school that taught everything in English. The division of sciences starts in 7^th grade, and biology was definitely the most interesting to me. At the same time, I was caught up in the process of deconstructing my religious identity, because I was reading biology which has hard facts about how your body works, which calls into question how life was created… I found that more fascinating than having a set answer imposed by some superior being.

AH: How did you choose your field of study for grad school, and why is it so interesting?

NH: I started reading a lot of scientific nonfiction, presenting cancer as a very complex biological phenomenon, which was fascinating to me. I also had a solid foundation in breast cancer by the time I applied for grad school and I wanted to pursue that… I had seen lots of tumors, but no mammary glands. The more I learn about the mammary gland, the more I am fascinated by it. It develops throughout life: initially it’s just a branched structure that looks like sticks; when you get pregnant, it almost flowers, with grape-like clusters that come up through alveologenesis and these alveoli then revert back to the branched structure after weaning. It’s comparable to how trees shed leaves in the Fall, except in reverse: this course of nature – the seasons that you see – the same dynamic is there in animal tissue. And all of this is happening through the lifetime, after the majority of the organs are already fully developed!

100 miles?! — First Century – Repping Sackler at 2015 Tufts Century Ride

AH: What is one of the big challenges or controversies in your field at the moment?

NH: Traditionally, cell culture is done in two dimensions, on plates that are usually plastic – and plastic is not a natural substrate for cells to grow on, so you can’t recapitulate the same 3D environment where the cells are growing inside an organism. You can either try to mimic the natural environment as much as possible, or try to make a scaffold that is biocompatible… Cells need to be able to manipulate their environment, just as the environment should be able to provide them with physical or chemical cues to make them grow or organize in certain ways. Our lab has a very organic approach to it: we do 3D cultures in type 1 collagen, the predominant structural protein found in the mammary gland stroma. We believe that “organicism is greater than reductionism.” This is where we’re at odds with a lot of others in the cancer field, where reductionism is still the predominant philosophy. And we’re not saying it’s bad! It’s just insufficient to explain carcinogenesis.

Community, December 2016, Events for Students, Humans of Tufts Boston

Humans of Sackler: Stacie Clark, “Full of Surprises”

December 9, 2016 Andrew A. Hooper

Humans of Sackler, 1 December 2016

Stacie Clark, Molecular Microbiology, Third-Year Student: “Full of Surprises”

For this issue of Humans of Sackler, I had the chance to chat with Stacie Clark from the Microbiology program. As someone who mostly socializes within Neuroscience, it’s a real privilege for me to meet students from other programs and learn about some of the incredible, borderline-science-fiction work that’s going on right under my nose here at Sackler! Equally striking, I’ve found, is the treasure trove of unique passions and fascinating life experiences that lie just below the surface of our fellow students when we really get to talking. I’m grateful to Stacie for sharing a few of hers, and hope that you, dear reader, enjoy our conversation!

001 — Hiking through Glacier National Park, Montana

AH: When did you realize that you wanted to pursue a career in science?

SC: My parents told me they always knew I’d end up in science. From the moment I could walk, I was outside digging for beetles and worms and building terrariums. I was in the honors science program in high school, and I did a year-long project on hand sanitizer and bacterial survival. I was working in a lab as a high school student, and realized I really liked doing that. I think I was born for science, and my parents were super-supportive. When I was growing up, we went hiking all the time, they took us to the EcoTarium in Worcester, and we were members at the Museum of Science and Aquarium. So I was always exposed to all sorts of science.

002 — Swimming at a waterfall in El Yunque rainforest, Puerto Rico

AH: What places have you traveled to outside of Massachusetts?

SC: I studied abroad in Puerto Rico. Worcester Polytechnic Institute does this differently: they call it the IQP, Interactive Qualifying Project. The point of this project is to teach you how to work effectively in groups and communicate with people outside the university. I worked in the rainforest in Puerto Rico, and we did a project evaluating stream crossings. We wanted to look at how their bridges were affecting stream flow and water quality, so we got to hike all through the [El Yunque] rainforest and evaluate all these different stream crossings. We got to see parts of the rainforest that no one gets to see!

003 — With Pablo the capuchin monkey in Costa Rica

AH: What did you do between graduating from WPI and starting your Ph.D. at Sackler?

SC: Before I started grad school, I had always wanted to work with exotic animals. So I literally just Googled ‘volunteer experience in Costa Rica’ and this small remote place in Costa Rica popped up. I booked a two-week trip, went by myself back-packing in Costa Rica, and volunteered at an animal rehabilitation center. It was quite an adjustment: I was on a mountainside in southern Costa Rica, and it got pitch-black at 6 o’clock at night. I would go into the rehabilitation center, clean the cages, prep all the food, and then feed and play with the animals. The monkeys were my favorite, and there was also an anteater. His name was Gomer; if you went into his cage and just yelled out ‘Hey Gomer!’ he’d come crawling out, and he loved being held. We’d do enrichment activities for some of them too – so with the anteater, I would walk with him out in the jungle and let him go searching for termites and ants on his own, and then I’d go bring him back to his cage. I think everyone should go on at least one trip by themselves, because you learn a lot about yourself and it’s just a good experience!

AH: What do you like to do when you’re not working in the lab?

SC: I volunteer at the animal shelter in Quincy; I’ve been doing that every Monday for four years. I take the dogs out for walks, play with them, cuddle with them if they want to… They only get to go outside twice a day, that’s the only time they get to really play with people. I understand that work-life balance is really important to your mental health, so volunteering on Mondays is the one thing that I won’t let grad school take away from me. It’s something that I do for me that I enjoy – and I’m also a big dog person.

005 — Group photo with the Leong Lab (middle row, second from right)

AH: There are so many disciplines within biology – what got you interested in studying bacteria specifically?

SC: I’ve always been fascinated that an organism so small can have such a large impact on humans – that still blows my mind! They’re incredible organisms that can mimic the proteins we have, which I find pretty amazing. We’re full of bacteria, they do a lot for us – and the microbiota is a huge field now. Everyone is fascinated in studying microbiota and the impact they have on our health in general.

AH: What particular species of bacteria do you study, and what makes it so interesting?

SC: Yersinia pseudotuberculosis is a model pathogen that we use to study community behavior of bacteria within its host. Yersinia can establish a distinct niche within the spleen of a mouse, and once it forms a microcolony, it can replicate to high numbers despite the presence of the immune system. You get a recruitment of innate immune cells to the site of infection, triggering a response in the bacteria to create specialized populations within that distinct cluster; I always thought that was cool, the response between the bacteria and the host cells.