ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
By Archita Srinath, Shahrzad Firouzian & Natalie Osborne
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stablishing your own research lab in academia sometimes feels like a near-impossible feat achieved only by those with a singular focus and the best laid plans. But dedication, curiosity, flexibility, and the courage to do things “differently” can be just as important to success. These are the qualities exemplified by IMS alumni Dr. Amanda Ali, who shared her unique journey from grad student to Assistant Scientist at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Michigan. Starting university, Dr. Ali did not know what she wanted as a future career, so she kept her options open. By the time she decided to take on a research project in her 4th year, most lab positions had already been filled up. So, she had a decision to make; either forgo research altogether or take on any placement she could find. She decided to go for a position in a plant biology lab, seizing the opportunity to build her research skills and even publish a paper. Even though she describes her time at this lab as “not the greatest research experience”, she still enjoyed what she learned and decided to continue her research career through graduate studies with the IMS. “When the time came to decide on a supervisor, I had two research areas I was interested in; osteoarthritis (OA) and diabetes, because I had a grandma suffering with each. I thought this would give me personal motivation to spend the next however many years toiling away learning about these conditions,” explains Dr. Ali. She ultimately chose to work with Dr. Benjamin Alman, an orthopeadic surgeon with the Hospital for Sick Children with access to clinical samples. Dr. Alman’s 28 | IMS MAGAZINE SPRING/SUMMER 2021 PUBLIC HEALTH
lab was large and had a great breadth of knowledge on various musculoskeletal disorders, which Dr. Ali felt would inform her own project. And so began her (now illustrious) research career in OA, a disease that involves the wearing down of the protective cartilage on the ends of bones, and which currently has no cure. Dr. Ali quickly transferred from an MSc to a PhD, with an ambitious project on the hedgehog signalling pathway, which is important for the development of the musculoskeletal system. This pathway, which normally should be inactive in adults, becomes active during OA, and is thought to drive some of the pathologies seen in patients. Dr. Ali’s aim was to determine how this occurred, and she made a critical discovery – the hedgehog signalling was regulating cholesterol stores within individual cells in the cartilage, and exacerbating OA. While cholesterol’s role in OA had previously been explored, Dr. Ali was the first to demonstrate intracellular [disbalances] in cholesterol homeostasis. “I was very fortunate to have built an amazing network of people, but this only started towards the end of my PhD. In the beginning I was sort of a fish out of water – I had very little research experience in molecular biology, so it took me a long time to get my bearings and learn some of the basic techniques that my peers already had mastered,” explains Dr. Ali. “At a critical point I met my (then and now) best friend Natalie Vanier – the founding editor of IMS Magazine. She was one of those really instrumental people in my life who helped me become more involved.” Dr. Ali’s involvement with the magazine allowed her to develop and flex her
“writing muscles” and learn that writing was an outlet for her. She became an exceptionally skilled science communicator whose articles remain some of the most read IMS pieces to this day. Dr. Ali credits her IMS Magazine experience with shaping her career and improving her experience of science; “Not only was I engaged in science, I also saw myself as someone who was commenting on science. I had the opportunity to formulate and express my opinion on relevant hot topics and ongoing issues,” she explains. Dr. Ali still applies these writing skills daily, from popular press articles to scientific manuscripts and grants, and finds writing in a journal to be therapeutic way to express herself. But at the end of her PhD, Dr. Ali came to a crossroads; “I was convinced I would never do a postdoc. I was really burned out, I didn’t want to continue in the lab, I didn’t want to see another mouse, I didn’t want to run another PCR. So I started to explore every possible avenue for what I could use my PhD for and how I could build my career beyond the IMS.” A career in science writing was a reassuring backup plan, but she systematically ruled out the common alternatives, industry, pharma, and government. “I realized that I really did love research, I loved the pursuit of knowledge; I was just tired.” It was then Dr. Ali decided to make a strategic move in her career - instead of pursuing a post-doc in the molecular biology of OA, she would study the same disease but from a vastly different perspective. She won a fellowship for a postdoc position in applied research at Western University that used qualitative methods to study how OA is managed in community settings. While information Graphic design by Ava Schroedl
