5 minute read
Meet a Neurobiologist at Harvard Medical School: Dr. Celine Santiago
from Mindscope Issue 10
by MindScope
By Annie Chen, Biochemistry, 2021
In my second year as a research assistant in Dr. David Ginty’s lab, I began to work closely with Celine Santiago as my research mentor. Before we worked together and got to know each other better, Celine and I had always been in close vicinity—we shared a working space with others in a four-person cubicle (I think it was called a ‘section’ and we were the best section) and we were in lab meetings together, just several seats apart. And of course, as a naive undergraduate working late hours at the lab, Celine was always there to help me fix the mistakes that I thought would lead to the end of my lab experience. A few weeks after Celine became my mentor, I began to understand how she is so successful with her mentees.
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In this interview, I asked Celine about her motivations as a research mentor and the secrets to her successful mentorship. Perhaps, for the readers, you can learn what to look for in a great research mentor and be inspired to start your own research experience.
What is your research interest at the Ginty lab?
Celine: I am interested in how the neural circuits that process the sense of touch develop, and in understanding the role of tactile experience in that process. From the earliest moments of life, we’re bombarded by tactile stimuli, and there’s compelling evidence that early tactile experiences play an important role in brain development, as sensory deprivation can have devastating and lifelong consequences on cognition and behavior. So I’m interested in how neural activity in the sensory neurons that detect gentle touch affects their development, and as a consequence, the development of other parts of the nervous system.
Celine Santiago, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Fellow in Dr. David D. Ginty’s Laboratory Department of Neurobiology.
What sparked your interest in becoming a scientist?
Celine: I became interested in science in high school, thanks to two amazing teachers who taught the A.P. Chemistry and A.P. Biology classes at my school. Through those two classes, I became fascinated by the mechanisms that underlie the ability of organisms to move, breathe, eat, and grow. The mysteries of developmental biology caught my attention right away—when I realized that all of the cells in an animal come from a single cell that contains all of the genetic information to make all of those various tissues and organs, it blew my mind. I wanted to understand how that could be possible. It wasn’t until college, however, that I realized that scientific research was a viable career option for me.
Section of mouse paw glabrous (non-hairy) skin. Touch sensory neurons (green) are found in close association with non-neuronal support cells (red).
Image Courtesy of Celine Santiago.
What made you interested in mentoring undergraduate and graduate students?
Celine: Throughout my career, I have been lucky to have had amazing mentors who believed in me, inspired me, and helped me harness my curiosity and develop as a scientist. This has made all the difference—without them, I wouldn’t be doing this today. So it is really important to me to pay it forward and to provide that type of mentorship for others.
What does your mentorship look like? How do you work with students?
Celine: I want students to understand the big picture ideas that are related to the work that they’ll be doing and to understand how the experiments they will do contribute to those larger goals. That requires spending some time reading the literature, thinking deeply about experiments, attending lab meetings and other seminars, all of which I encourage them to do in addition to their bench work in the lab.
Every student is different and I’m slowly learning to be responsive to their different personalities and needs and to provide as much or as little hands-on help in the lab as they want, but I want to make sure they all know I’m available to help in any way if they need it.
Do you have any advice for undergraduates who are interested in science, and maybe graduate school, but not sure if this is the path they should take?
Celine: Try working in a lab as soon as you can. The sooner you do it, the sooner you’ll know if this is something you want to pursue long-term. Reach out to several faculty and don’t limit yourself to one particular research topic: keep an open mind. There’s a lot out there. It’s more important to find a good lab environment and a good mentor than it is to find a position that involves work on a particular research question at this stage.
What are your future plans and goals in your career?
Celine: My goal is to lead my own lab at an academic research institution and to continue mentoring the next generation of scientists, working on the questions that fill me with wonder and that initially drew me to this path.
