GATEWAY STUDY OF
LEADERSHIP
TURNING
POINTS
SCHOOL OF
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Choosing Academia
Choosing Academia
Turning Points Series Discover nuggets of unconventional wisdom through the excerpts of student interviews with Rice University faculty. Copyright 2013 Rice University. All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the School of Social Sciences at Rice University. Requests for permission should be directed to ipek@rice.edu.
Other books in the 2012-2013 series II Natural Sciences: Cultivating Mentors Developing Skills Discovering Opportunities Embracing Leadership
Books in the 2011-2012 series I Social Sciences: Choosing Academia Finding Inspiration Fostering Curiosity Sparking Enthusiasm Overcoming Obstacles
Rice University School of Social Sciences
Gateway Study of Leadership TURNING POINTS
{series II | 2012 - 2013} Natural Sciences
Choosing Academia
Gateway School of Social Sciences Rice University 6100 Main Street Houston, Texas 77005-1827 U.S.A.
Turning Points Series PRODUCERS
Ipek Martinez, Alex Wyatt, Vinita Israni REVIEWERS AND EDITORS
Bo Kim, Leslie Nguyen, Nathan Joo, Hira Baig, Nitin Agrawal CONTRIBUTORS
The Turning Points, Series II is made possible from excerpts of faculty interviews conducted by 2012-2013 Gateway Study of Leadership (GSL) fellows, GSL codirectors and other Gateway students. 2012-2013 GATEWAY STUDY OF LEADERSHIP FELLOWS Daniel Cohen (co-director), Amol Utrankar (co-director), Nitin Agrawal, Hira Baig, Cynthia Bau, Sang Hee (Steven) Cho, Colleen Fugate, Rujia Jiang, Nathan Joo, Bo Kim, Haley McCann, Yoonjin Min, Trent Navran, Leslie Nguyen, Arik Patino, Rohan Shah, Andrew Ta, Sallyann Zhou.
A NOTE FROM THE GATEWAY DIRECTOR
The 2012-2013 Turning Points series shares excerpts from student interviews with the School of Natural Sciences faculty to bring a slice of life experiences to view for the Rice University community and beyond. In the fall of 2011, the School of Social Sciences Gateway program initiated Gateway Study of Leadership (GSL), which brought undergraduate fellows together to organize and lead interviews with the Rice School of Social Sciences faculty to discover career journeys and inspiration behind research endeavors, plus additional focus on their thoughts regarding role of academia in society. These candid conversations revealed many thought provoking life experiences and interesting stories and some had an essence of a “turning point� regarding the decisions involved in attending college, selecting majors, pursuing advanced degrees, encountering mentors, finding inspiration for research topics, and developing a refreshing new approach to handle
criticism in order to build knowledge and propel ahead. A collection of those excerpts formed the Series I of the Turning Points booklets. In 2012-2013 academic year, the GSL fellows organized and conducted interviews with the Rice School of Natural Sciences faculty exploring their initial interest in science, career decisions and additional focus on leadership in academia. The participating faculty members shared experiences and thoughts on role of collaborative nature of research in sciences, working with mentors, developing a variety of skills along the way, discovering of opportunities and ultimately embracing leadership roles when necessary. We gathered few excerpts from these conversations to share as the GSL Turning Points Series II, in five booklets titled: Choosing Academia, Cultivating Mentors, Developing Skills, Discovering Opportunities, Embracing Leadership. Ipek Martinez
CONTENTS
1.
Eugene Levy, Ph.D. Deciding a Specialty
1
2. Paul Padley, Ph.D. 3 Hunger to Learn 3.
K. Beth Beason-Abmayr, Ph.D. Defining Success in Science
5
4.
Matthew Bennett, Ph.D. From Physics to Biology
7
5.
John McDevitt, Ph.D. Addicted to Problem Solving
9
6.
Janet Braam, Ph.D. Free to Be What You Want
11
7.
Brandon Dugan, Ph.D. Self-Competitive Nature
13
8.
Stephen Bradshaw, Ph.D. Love of Learning
15
9. 10.
Neal Lane, Ph.D.. Gifted Teachers Help See Beauty
19
Ken Whitmire, Ph.D. Explore & Do What You Enjoy
21
11.
Thomas Killian, Ph.D. Reinforcement of Decision
25
12. Anatoly Kolomeisky, Ph.D. 27 Growing Up in the Soviet Union 13.
Angel MartĂ, Ph.D. Placing in the Olympics
29
14.
Matthew Baring, Ph.D. Always a Researcher
33
15.
George Phillips, Ph.D. Inspired by Sputnik
35
16.
John McDevitt, Ph.D. Forbidden Fruit
37
17.
Brandon Dugan, Ph.D. Free Thinking
39
18.
Matthew Bennett, Ph.D. Exploring Academic Freedom
41
19. 20.
Janet Braam, Ph.D. Careers Materialized from Passion
43
Haldre Rogers, Ph.D. Something Natural
45
21.
Scott Solomon, Ph.D.. Defining the Path
47
About the Contributors Acknowledgements
53 59
TURNING POINTS ONE
Deciding a Specialty Eugene Levy, Ph.D. Professor, Physics & Astronomy, Rice University
In some sense the singular decision, for many people not just for me, along that path is deciding what specialty to pursue. So if I point to a discrete event it was the decision to do astrophysics. And it didn’t come as a flash of lighting. I went to graduate school at the University of Chicago because it was really strong in the several areas I was especially interested in; one of them was astrophysics. In graduate school my interests at the beginning stayed pretty much as they were when I entered. I was mainly interest in three areas of physics. I knew I wanted to do theoretical work. I was interested in astrophysics, particle physics, and what is now called condensed matter, or solid state, physics. My interests congealed around astrophysics, as much as anything, because I very much liked the style of the guy I ultimately worked with as a PhD mentor. I 1
was attracted to his scientific style and insight. A lot of my fellow students had a more negative opinion of the guy; it was kind of a complicated thing. Years later in the late 80s, there was a celebration of his career at the University of Chicago, and I was asked to give the after dinner speech. Afterwards somebody in the audience came up to me and said, “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard a speech in which the guest of honor was characterized as a son of a bitch.”
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TURNING POINTS TWO
Hunger to Learn Paul Padley, Ph.D. Professor, Physics & Astronomy, Rice University
I had a very clear drive from about the fifth grade that I was going to become a PhD researcher in science. And it’s absolutely clear as day, I can remember from that point being in the elementary school knowing that’s what I wanted to do. I was motivated by the desire to learn things and the idea that I would learn something before the rest of the world knew it is incredibly seductive to me. And so that was a driving force and I had that hunger from elementary school. My parents just said, they didn’t care what I wanted to be. They just wanted me to be the best at it. My father would literally say to me if you want to be a garbage collector, that’s fine, you just do the best you can do at being a garbage collector. And that was, that was, really the only guidance from my parents.
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TURNING POINTS THREE
Defining Success in Science K. Beth Beason-Abmayr, Ph.D. Lecturer, Biochemistry & Cell Biology, Rice University
When I was in elementary school I asked for a microscope for Christmas—I remember looking at all kinds of things under that scope. And one year for Halloween I dressed up as a germ (my mom did a great job creating my costume). I’ve always loved animals and nature, but we didn’t do much science in elementary school. My first real science class was in the sixth grade. It was physical science and I hated it. I had a really hard time with it and it wasn’t interesting, but then when I took biology in the ninth grade, I thought, “Oh this is really cool.” I took human anatomy and physiology the next year followed by chemistry and physics, and by the time I applied to college I knew I wanted to major in science.
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By the time I had actually graduated, I had decided that, even though I liked microbiology, I didn’t necessarily want to pursue an advanced degree in it. I applied to graduate programs in physiology, and at that time, when I graduated, I knew I didn’t want to go to med school, but I also knew that I did not just want to be a technician in a lab. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do, but I figured, “Ok, I’m going to have to go get a graduate degree because with a bachelor’s I won’t be able to do much.” In the back of my mind I thought, “Well, teaching would always be an option.” My father was a teacher and then an administrator for K-12, and so I had grown up in that environment, and then I had the experience as a teaching assistant as an undergraduate, which I think was very valuable to me for future career paths. I just didn’t realize it at the time.
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TURNING POINTS FOUR
From Physics to Biology Matthew Bennett, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Biochemistry & Cell Biology, Rice University
My Ph.D. was in theoretical physics. When I was finishing up I started looking for postdoctoral positions. My advisor, Kurt Wiesenfeld, who’s a theoretical physicist at Georgia Tech, had a previous student by the name of Jeff Hasty. Jeff , who is a synthetic biologist and a professor at UCSD, was looking for postdocs. Although Jeff was doing research in biology, he had the same training that I had. He was using techniques from physics to explain how genes work –I found this fascinating. So, I took a position in Jeff’s lab and it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I basically had no training in biology before I got to UCSD. So, it was a lot of work to simultaneously learn the biology while doing the research. Jeff was 7
a great mentor, however, and taught me a lot. Plus, the problems that synthetic biologists are interested in tend to be well suited for theoretical physicists, so the transition wasn’t that bad. As it turns out, a large number of synthetic biologists were trained in physics. I took the job in Jeff’s lab and I haven’t looked back since. That was seven years ago, and I’m really happy with my choice to switch to biology. I think a lot of the physics students get into physics thinking they are going to solve the secrets of the universe. That’s definitely what drew me to physics in the first place - the idea of figuring out how the universe works. But it turns out the majority of the research going on in physics now is not that at all. Things like string theory and cosmology are just a small portion of what physics is all about. Because of that, I got a little disenchanted with physics and that is what led me to biology.
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TURNING POINTS FIVE
Addicted to Problem Solving John McDevitt, Ph.D. Professor, Chemistry, Rice University
My interest in science evolved with a sense of curiosity that I couldn’t quench. I was mechanically inclined, so in high school I worked in a gas station and got my hands dirty. Here I learned how to build engines and had a fascination with the mechanical aspects of automobiles and how car batteries worked. Although a lot of people were encouraging me to be a mechanic, I knew that I wasn’t going to be happy with being underneath the hood my whole life. Once I learned how to complete one mechanical task, I wanted to move on and learn more. There was something more, so as I was working, I was also thinking about the next steps. In high school I found a fascination in chemistry, and excelled at that. As an undergraduate, I majored in chemistry and did internships in chemistry, which got me more excited about the Natural Sciences. I did 9
undergraduate research that was a key part of my education. Here I moved away from the cookbook and learned about the scientific method. I quickly became skilled in the lab and honed my problem solving skills. I became hooked on science and engineering. I was curious from my upbringing and the stimulus I got at home and when I got into the lab and was able to solve problems for the first time, I became addicted to the process. I use the word addicted because you couldn’t get me out- I wanted to solve one problem after the other, after the other. Being in the right kind of environment and doing undergraduate research. Now I am hooked on bringing other people into this, because it’s the key. I think another key step for me was the internship that I did at Raychem in between my undergraduate and graduate degrees. That gave me a real world experience and provided to me a sense that I wanted to do something that was helpful for society and that has been something I’ve carried with me till today. I am interested in book learning, I’m interested in academic research, but that’s not good enoughunless my lab can impact society, I feel not fully satisfied. So the bridge between academia and the real world is really important to me. 10
TURNING POINTS SIX
Free to Be What You Want Janet Braam, Ph.D. Professor, Biochemistry & Cell Biology, Rice University
As a kid, I was the youngest of four children. I was very close to my brother. I remember that adults would ask my brother what he was going to do when he grew up. Perhaps because I was a girl, they seldom asked me. But whenever I heard them ask my brother, it made me think about what I was going to do. There might have been one advantage to not being asked. My brother seemed to be under pressure to figure out this big decision and to fill everyone’s expectations, whereas I could be free to think about what I wanted to do and without expectations.
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TURNING POINTS SEVEN
Self-Competitive Nature Brandon Dugan, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Earth Science, Rice University
I’m a very self-competitive person and I feel that I like to push myself. I don’t like to compete against other people - I wouldn’t be good as a football player or a baseball player where the idea is I need to be better than him or her or faster than that person. But what I’ve always done since I was a little kid was push myself to where I feel I’ve tried my best, and done that. I think that’s partly due to the upbringing where my parents encouraged me to always do my best and push myself a bit farther. I set goals for myself and I try to achieve those goals. It’s selfmotivation and I don’t really know where it comes from other than I’ve had ever since I was a little kid. I guess it’s kudos to my parents. My primary area of research is studying the water cycle in the shallow Earth surface. As I grew up 13
my parents took me to lakes, to rivers, to beaches and I just grew up on the water and the lakes of Minnesota. I’m in natural science studying water, and a lot of where I grew up was out in nature with water, and so my environment sort of led me down this path. But also, just the support of my family has pushed me to push myself. It’s part of the environment, but also part of the nurturing I received.
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TURNING POINTS EIGHT
Love of Learning Stephen Bradshaw, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Physics & Astronomy, Rice University
Originally, when I was thinking about what I was going to do at university, I actually thought I’d do computer science. I did some work experience when I was about 17 years old, and it was work experience in the IT department of a large company. I got chatting to one of the guys who worked there and I told him about my university plans and things, and he said that from what it sounded like to him I could be better off doing something like physics because I already had a pretty good background in computing. I have been writing computer programs since I was a kid and he thought that perhaps a computer science course wouldn’t have as much to offer me as a physics course, and I would still get to do the computing stuff I was interested in as well. So I gave it a bit of thought and said, well, o.k. that sounds like a pretty 15
good idea. So I ended up applying to do physics at university. That was how I got into physics in the first place. Well, I was always interested in physics; I was doing physics for A levels, in the UK those are the exams that qualify you for university. That’s sort of equivalent to the AP, if you are familiar with that. So, I found myself at university studying physics, and I really enjoyed it. I actually discovered that I was a lot better at it than I thought I was originally. I got to know one or two of the faculty in the department and I thought that being a university professor looked like a pretty good lifestyle. I was interested in learning more about physics and I wasn’t really satisfied with just doing a degree, then leaving and doing something else. I wanted to go much further. So, probably from my first year I thought that I would do a PhD. The degree course I was in was more advanced as well. It was a four-year course. It was generally expected to prepare you for a career in academia. So there was always the possibility anyway, even from my first year, that I would do a PhD. By the end of four years I hadn’t changed my mind and so I applied for some PhD positions and was offered one at Cambridge. I moved to 16
Cambridge in the fall of 2000 and spent three years there doing a PhD in astrophysics. The path once you get on that track is pretty fixed, in the years immediately after PhD you do a post-doc, maybe two post docs, and then you start aiming for a more permanent faculty position as they become available. That’s how it worked for me, I mean, some people get PhDs in physics and and then decide they don’t want to be like me and maybe look into something like consulting, or banking, or move into industry, or something like that. But for me, I was always pretty clear that I was going to be an academic.
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TURNING POINTS NINE
Gifted Teachers Help See Beauty Neal Lane, Ph.D. University Professor, Physics & Astronomy, Rice University
I decided to become a physicist at about age 12. I didn’t know any physics nor had I had any physics courses. I could not understand physics books, but they looked intriguing. There was a certain mystery to it all, and I knew enough about physics to know physicists studied things like how the universe was formed and the nature of matter and energy –important fundamental questions about nature. I thought that was for me. I attended the University of Oklahoma and didn’t like my first physics course. It seemed to be a disconnected collection of different pieces – mechanics, electricity, magnetism, light, sound, heat and so forth. But then I was able to enroll in an honors physics course taught by a young Chinese assistant professor, Dr. Chun C. Lin, 19
who was a truly gifted teacher. He was able to pull the pieces together and help me see the beauty of physics; and that was the transition point for me. At about the same time, I had a quantum mechanics course from a different professor. He wasn’t all that stimulating, but I got hooked on the power and mysteries of quantum mechanics. And quantum mechanics is as mysterious today as it was when I first studied it. I took all the courses I could that were taught by Dr. Lin; and he invited me to do research with him as an undergraduate and, later, as a graduate student. That’s why I stayed at O.U. for all of my degrees. The message from this story is that a really good teacher, who inspires you to learn, and mentor, who cares about your future, can make all the difference in your lives. And you are just as likely to find this teacher and mentor at O.U. as you are at Cambridge or MIT.
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TURNING POINTS TEN
Explore & Do What You Enjoy Ken Whitmire, Ph.D. Professor, Chemistry, Rice University
The thing I would tell students regardless of what field they’re going to go into is that it should be something that you really want to do. There are a lot of people who come out of high school and end up following a low-energy pathway. Especially for people at Rice, they have lots of interests and in high school they were probably good at everything they did. Whatever course they took they got an “A”. That’s not a very realistic picture; nobody is really that very well-rounded or uniform. That doesn’t necessarily indicate how interested they are in a particular area or what their real level of insight would be into that particular topic. As you get more advanced in a field, what you find is that it’s harder and harder to really do well. You shouldn’t give up for that, but the point is that you need some more in-depth and complex understanding of what a 21
career and a field is all about. You shouldn’t be put off by the fact that you can’t do everything uniformly well. There are very few students who would be really successful research chemists that could also do exceptionally well in music and biology and economics and psychology. It’s okay to find that thing that you want to do. If this is going to be a successful long-term career you’ve got to want to do what you’re doing. I think that is true and there is always the tradeoff between how much money do I need to live on versus what kind of jobs could I get doing the career I take. And to some extent, the reason I am a scientist as opposed to an artist or an architect was that I perceived that it would be easier to earn a living as a scientist than as an artist. At the same time, I think people fool themselves if they think that they can drive their career solely along those lines. You can end up being very unhappy. The question is, “Is that the best strategy for following what you want to do?” Well you say, “I’m afraid that I wouldn’t be able to be a successful artist.” You won’t know unless you try, and if you don’t try, you’ll never know. If 22
you’re going to try, you should put everything into it. You should go into it thinking, “I am going to be the best possible artist that I can be.” I think a lot of times people sell themselves short. I think that’s part of the failure of our educational system. To some extent, we have this feeling that everybody has to do well, that you have to get an A in your classes and do well on standardized testing. What it doesn’t really tell you are your aptitudes. If you were given a choice of making something, what would you choose to make? Would you make a painting? Would you create a statue? Would you go make a new chemical compound? Would you build a house? Another issue in the question is how much should people be doing. There’s a lot of stuff--double majors, extracurricular activities, and how are you going to pad your resume for when you get a job or try to get into graduate school or medical school. It’s good to explore the various things you might want to do. Maybe you want to end up in theater and the only way you’re going to find out about that is if you 23
actually go and do theater. Whatever it is, you have to invest at least some time in it to figure out if you like it or not.
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TURNING POINTS ELEVEN
Reinforcement of Decision Thomas Killian, Ph.D. Professor, Physics & Astronomy, Rice University
I love science, but I really like interacting with people and helping people. Through high school I did, not a tremendous amount, but a little bit of tutoring and I really enjoyed that. I respected my teachers in high school very much and so I aspired to be a teacher because of all I could give back. In college, it’s natural, you see your professors around you and they are the people you look up to.You aspire to be like them. So I would say probably in college it crystallized for me that research and academia and teaching was a good path. There are many things I could say that, “If that hadn’t happened I might have done things differently.” I can definitely remember my first exam at college and, as a freshman, you don’t know, and you think maybe you’re the mistake. You’re the one 25
that’s not supposed to be here. Coming out of it I realized “I can really do this.” That was inspiring. And then certainly there were moments in the laboratory, doing research, where I could feel the light bulb going on and the excitement of learning and discovery. That reinforced everything. I would say, for me it was all of these things that just kept reinforcing it. In sixth grade I decided to be a physicist, but what does that mean by itself? Then I had a great physics teacher in high school, and then I had great experiences in my introductory physics classes in college. Then I got involved in a great physics laboratory and research. Everything just kept reinforcing my choice.
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TURNING POINTS TWELVE
Growing Up in the Soviet Union Anatoly Kolomeisky, Ph.D. Professor, Chemistry, Rice University
I was born in the former Soviet Union (now it is an independent country called Ukraine). I was born in a relatively small city. My parents were engineers and they always taught me the importance of education. I have an older brother who is also a professor of physics. I always had the example of my parents who were kind of technology, science, mathematics, physics oriented people and my brother was also into physics. I was interested in chemistry, physics and mathematics. That was the time in the Soviet Union when sciences were strongly pushed. So I had good competitors in my class who pushed me even more. I graduated high school there with something that’s analogous to a National Merit. I would say in a class of couple hundred people only five were able to receive it. And then I went to the best university 27
in Soviet Union, which was in Moscow, Moscow State University, the Chemistry Department. I was pushed by my parents and by people with whom I studied. That was a time when science was considered to be the solution to any problem. When I was in high school there were competitions like the Olympics or Olympiads for different subjects, including Chemistry. I had a very good Chemistry teacher who asked me to participate and I was surprisingly successful. I was the winner of all of Ukraine in Chemistry Olympics. It was extremely competitive and it was very nice, like a sport. We had to solve problems and puzzles. I was good in physics and mathematics but chemistry turned out to be a place where you can apply successfully these too.
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TURNING POINTS THIRTEEN
Placing in the Olympics Angel Martí, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Chemistry, Rice University
From a very young age, I had an interest in science. It wasn’t so much my parents—my mother was an accountant, and my father was a school principal. But as a kid, I would often do experiments in a shed near my grandfather’s house in Puerto Rico—I was always fascinated by science. When I came to college, I was very interested in studying medicine, because it involved science, and I was very interested in improving health. During the first week, though, one of my professors asked who was premed in class, and nearly everyone raised their hand. That’s when I realized that I didn’t want to do medicine—I didn’t want to do what everyone else was doing. That’s when I decided to get involved with research, which I liked. I also realized that I really enjoyed teaching. So it made sense to get a PhD, because academia would provide opportunities for both research and 29
teaching. Teaching is still very important to me here in Rice University, and in the University of Puerto Rico where I still conduct many workshops. When I went to high school, I entered in this team that was training for the Olympics in mathematics, so I got very motivated about that. I took all of the advanced courses in mathematics. By the time I was in 11th grade, I had already taken calculus. So, I competed, within Puerto Rico, and I won 2nd place at the Olympics. That qualified me to go to the Olympics in Brazil, so I went there to compete. I actually didn’t win because there were too many good people there. But I really got motivated to do things in math and science, so basically when I started thinking about what I would do when I would go to college, I actually thought very seriously about doing my bachelor’s degree in mathematics. I was also very excited about medicine, because I really liked biology and science in general. And I liked working with people. But after the first week, I got discouraged about that, and then I thought chemistry would combine basically all of my interests: mathematics, science, and when you do 30
research—especially when you’re in a university—you interact with a lot of people, and you have influence on a lot of people, on how they think, and what they do, not to mention what decisions they make. So I think that after looking retrospectively, I think I got all of what I wanted.
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TURNING POINTS FOURTEEN
Always the Researcher Matthew Baring, Ph.D. Professor, Physics & Astronomy, Rice University
I always viewed myself as being a researcher. I asked, early on as an undergraduate, what is research like? And when I got to sample research, in a senior research context, I loved it so much I thought this is what I want to do. So whatever I ended up doing, as a professor, or as part of a government institute or a research institute, I wanted to do research. And that was central, but I also love teaching. I was basically a tutor to my peers as an undergraduate in a sense, not formally, just informally. They were my friends, we’d work together, I would help them out, employing my level of understanding at the time. It was fulfilling. I enjoy the teaching, not just because of helping create the future, giving the training that students need, but also because I get to talk about some of the 33
beauties of nature that I know and love. There is just a lot of fascinating stuff out there and I love talking about it. I like living it, and so that’s one of the things in my lectures that hopefully comes across.
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TURNING POINTS FIFTEEN
Inspired by Sputnik George Phillips, Ph.D. Professor, Biochemistry & Cell Biology, Rice University
When I was in high school, I seemed to be able to do the science courses without lifting a finger and this was during the post – Sputnik area where all of the sudden the U.S was scared of Russians of taking over space so there was a renewed interest in teaching of science, space and physics. I was caught up in that and there was a lot of excitement and lot of positive feedback for the kids who could do science well. So, I got positive reinforcement for that and I also, as a kid, always liked to build things and tinker with bicycles or whatever I was working on. I thought when I went to college I wanted to be a science major. While I was a student at Rice in the 70’s. I wasn’t quite sure what my major was going to be. I remember going to a Chemistry department open house and one of the laboratories I visited 35
was that of Professor Sass who’s retired now. At that time, he was in the Chemistry department and there were people sitting around building models of things. They said there’s this technique called X – ray crystallography. You can shine X – rays on crystals of molecules and it’s like solving a puzzle and you can find out where all the atoms are. I remember thinking to myself, hey you know I can get paid for solving puzzles, that could work for me. Then I had another course, advanced course, in Biochemistry and another professor who put up the atomic structure of a giant molecule, an enzyme molecule that was done by crystallography. After that I was hooked. The visual images and the three dimensionality and like architecture, form flawless, function in these molecules and sort of getting their structures and figuring how they work and wandering around in the molecular world. I said this is pretty cool. I stayed on at Rice for my graduate work. I don’t think that necessarily at that time I wanted to be a professor but it was more like I wanted to be a scientist and there are lot of ways of being a scientist other than being a professor.
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TURNING POINTS SIXTEEN
Forbidden Fruit John McDevitt, Ph.D. Professor, Chemistry, Rice University
My father was an aeronautical engineer at NASA and my mother was a schoolteacher in San Francisco. I’ve always wondered how the message got passed along to our family about the importance of education because there was no overt pressure, rather subtle impressions about this topic. Despite the absence of helicopter parents in our family, I have five other brothers and sisters, all have advanced degrees, three are university professors, and three have Ph.Ds. from Stanford. I believe that the example of actions from our parents and subtle clues passed along the message of the importance of education more so than a pressure for success in academia. For me, it began at a very young age, when my father showed me how to dissect some electronic devices and I just became fascinated by light and electricity. After that I couldn’t stop taking 37
things apart. I recall my mother told me, “don’t put anything in a wall socket ever because you’ll get electrocuted.” That forbidden fruit simply became a fascination that I couldn’t resist. Right after I received the lesson I put the knife in the wall socket and I almost killed myself. I was fearless and craved information about our world. I couldn’t stop it. I think, for me, part of this was a curiosity that I think my father passed on to me, and part of it also was that education was important. Fast forward a few decades, now I really enjoy being in an environment where someone pays me to learn.
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TURNING POINTS SEVENTEEN
Free Thinking Brandon Dugan, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Earth Science, Rice University
There are always new things people can learn, different ways to educate people, and that’s the primary role of an academic institution - to educate people so we can learn new things and expand what we know and be innovative and creative. Hidden in that innovativeness and creativeness is that a university should be a free-thinking organization where people get to explore new topics and different topics that may not be natural to them. I started off at university as a math major thinking that was the way I was going to go, but I didn’t feel constrained by that, so I explored a bunch of different majors and eventually found geological engineering, which is where I did my undergraduate degree, and while I was doing that I discovered Earth sciences and then went on to do my Ph.D. and so I sort of followed 39
this educational path of what was interesting or intriguing to me. I think that’s one of the benefits of a university; being able to interact with people across all the disciplines. Right now, at Rice, this Energy and Environment Initiative to link Earth Science or Natural Science research to energy systems, engineering applications related to energy systems, and social sciences allows us to address many issues - how does society interact with energy, what are the geopolitics of energy. It also allows us to transfer information from one sector ton another. That is something that you don’t find anywhere else. If you’re in business, you’re doing a business model. But in a university, you can interact with people with all different interests and expand your horizons through that.
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TURNING POINTS EIGHTEEN
Exploring Academic Freedom Matthew Bennett, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Biochemistry & Cell Biology, Rice University
I always wanted to be a professor, although I didn’t always know it would be in biochemistry. When I started my undergraduate career I thought I might be a musician and then I switched to linguistics. In the end it took me a long time to settle into natural science. I guess I wanted to be a professor because it was a lifestyle I found attractive,, and I liked the idea of academic freedom – to be able to think and do intellectual things all the time. All of that said, being a professor is not quite what I imagined it would be - it is very different, not that it’s bad, but there are definitely more administrative responsibilities than I anticipated. What academia means to me is a sense of freedom. I never wanted to work in a corporate setting. It didn’t 41
interest me at all – I felt it would be very stifling. And so, academia always appealed to me because it seemed so much more free and open and liberating in some way.
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TURNING POINTS NINETEEN
Careers Materialized from Passion Janet Braam, Ph.D. Professor, Biochemistry & Cell Biology, Rice University
I fell in love with science in college.
When I realized
that science might be a career for me, I tried to find a research position. There weren’t many positions open for undergrads where I went to school. But I was able to get a job as the Zoology Department lab assistant. I helped set up and clean up after the lab courses, but the best thing about this job was that I had a key to the zoology building and so I spent as much time as possible in the building among all the research labs. I finally convinced one of the professors, who was conducting research that involved cloning frogs, to let me help feed the frogs. Eventually, because I always seemed to be there in the lab asking questions, I was able to work a bit with the grad students on cloning projects. I recall 43
that the grad students were not particularly happy or inspiring. But I decided to give grad school a try. I didn’t know much about what I was getting into or about what a career as a professor would be like. Grad school was challenging, unlike anything I’d ever done before. During the early years, I had a lot of doubt about whether I was going to succeed. I also remember watching my advisor and lacking confidence that I could do what he did as a professor. It was hard to imagine being able to think of research projects and design experiments; that seemed pretty daunting. But I just kept moving forward and with each success I gained confidence. I had a successful thesis and then did well in my post doc research. So I just kept moving along towards being a professor. As a student, it’s hard to picture yourself as a professor when there so many steps ahead, but then as you go along you realize that you’re learning the skills that you need and you are getting closer. It’s a process. You learn more and get better along the way, making steps toward the career. Now I have so many project ideas, it’s only possible to work on a small fraction of them.
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TURNING POINTS TWENTY
Something Natural Haldre Rogers, Ph.D. Faculty Fellow, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Rice University
I grew up in a small town in Vermont. I always knew that I loved being outside. I loved catching snakes and frogs, and identifying trees. And I was concerned about the environment. Nobody in my family was in the environmental science field- my mom was a gardener and my dad a carpenter, but my parents were environmentally aware. Becoming a biologist seemed to be something that was natural for me from a young age. I liked my science classes in high school, but I took a year off between high school and college because I was really young. I graduated at sixteen. I didn’t feel like I was quite ready for college, so I moved to D.C. and volunteered at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum for a year. 45
In college I loved my biology classes; I had a brief moment where I wanted to be chemistry major, but I stayed with biology. I took five years off after graduating, but always did something related to ecology or the environment. Three of those years I lived in Guam, which inspired the research I did for my PhD.
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TURNING POINTS TWENTY ONE
Defining the Path Scott Solomon, Ph.D. Lecturer, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Rice University
I was always the kind of kid that was really interested in nature and science growing up. I was always outdoors, running around in the backyard, digging holes in the ground and driving my parents crazy with that kind of stuff. I don’t think my parents were at all surprised that I went into the sciences, and I think biology sort of made sense. I started off college pre-med. I thought I wanted to go to medical school, which is something that a lot of my friends were doing, and for people who are interested in science and biology, that seems for many people to just be the logical thing to do. I started off that way, and I don’t remember the point at which I-I don’t think it was a specific instance in which I realized that wasn’t for me-but at some point I learned a little bit more about what medical school is like, and what 47
it’s like to be a practicing physician, and it just didn’t really seem that that was what really got me excited. I was really passionate about, and continue to be passionate about, understanding nature and the way nature works and particularly, going to wild places and understanding what lives there and how they came to be there. It was less about understanding people and how [the human body] works. I think that’s really important, I’m very glad that there are people who dedicate their lives to doing that, it just wasn’t really what got me excited. And I think at the end of the day you have to do what you really get excited about. I was still interested in biology, I was majoring in biology, so I continued taking those courses. I think what really changed things for me was getting involved in research as an undergraduate. I was fortunate to be able to work beginning my sophomore year in a research lab with a professor who was actually a family friend. I started off, as many people do working in labs, doing basic things like washing dishes. Nothing very glamorous, but that’s how you start. You sort of learn the way the 48
lab works. Then gradually I was given more and more responsibilities and by the end of that time-I think I worked there two years-I was doing cloning and DNA sequencing and doing really pretty hightech, cutting-edge molecular biology. And that was great, that was a fantastic research experience. I was interested in it, but I was also kind of curious about what other types of things were out there. My junior year I spent a semester abroad, in Ecuador. That was a really important experience for me. I had traveled some with my family, but I hadn’t been to South America. I was always sort of fascinated by the tropics, the idea of the tropics, and had been a couple of tropical places-Hawaii, for example-but hadn’t ever been to any really wild places. As part of that experience, I took a class on flora and fauna of Ecuador, which had a lot of field trips, including a field trip down into the Amazon basin. We basically camped out in the forest and took hikes at night and found snakes and frogs and it was just amazing. I took another class on medicinal plants that had a lot of field trips too; we would go out into the forest and the professor would basically 49
cut off a leaf or a chunk of a plant and have us try it and chew on it, or drink it as a tea. It would have all different effects on us; it was fun. And then I took another trip just for fun while I was down there to the Galapagos Islands, which when you study biology is kind of the Mecca, the place to make a pilgrimage to. That was amazing and a lot of fun. When I came back from my time abroad, I basically started looking at what other labs I might be able to get a little bit of research experience in, just to try something different. And I was interested in doing something more with whole organisms or something maybe involving some fieldwork. And I applied and was accepted to a lab that worked on physiological ecology, so it was understanding how organisms function in their environment and what are the physiological and hormonal causes and effects of their behaviors. The professor that I was working with there, one of the things he did is worked with marine iguanas in the Galapagos Islands. And he invited me, I guess because I had been there before, to be his field assistant for a short trip that he made to the Galapagos Islands, which 50
was an amazing opportunity. I was really excited. I got to go down with him to the Galapagos Islands, and basically help him with this project where we had to catch marine iguanas that he had already previously caught. What he had done was implanted a little data logger inside their bodies that measures the heart rate and the body temperature, and keeps a record of the time. The funny thing about animals in the Galapagos Islands is that they’re basically completely tame. They don’t really have any natural predators so they’re not afraid of people; you can normally walk right up to basically any animal in the Galapagos Islands and sometimes they don’t even look at you, they just don’t care that you’re there. Except for the iguanas that had been caught in that initial study. They saw us coming and they immediately dashed, usually into the ocean. So catching them was tricky but it was also a lot of fun. We had all kinds of techniques: snares, running around on the lava rocks as the waves are crashing over us, trying to catch these iguanas. We had a great time.
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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Dr. Matthew Baring is Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University. His primary research interests involve theoretical high energy astrophysics, gamma-ray bursts, soft gamma repeaters, pulsars, supernova remnants, active galactic nuclei, cosmic rays, shock acceleration theory, QED radiation processes, plasma physics mechanisms, and hadronic interactions. Dr. Baring earned his B.Sc. (Honours) from the University of Melbourne in 1983, and received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Astrophysics in 1989 from the University of Cambridge. Dr. K. Beth Beason-Abmayr is Lecturer and Laboratory Coordinator in the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Rice University. Dr. Beason-Abmayr earned her B.S. in Microbiology from Auburn University in 1990 and her Ph.D. in Physiology & Biophysics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1996. Dr. Matthew Bennett is Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Rice University. His research involves synthetic biology and the dynamics of gene regulation - from small-scale interactions such as transcription and translation, to the large-scale dynamics of gene regulatory networks. Dr. Bennett received a B.S. in physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2000 and a Ph.D. in Physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2006. Dr. Janet Braam is Chair and Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Rice University. Her primary research
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interests involve environmental stress responses in plants, the role of the circadian clock and epigenetic regulation in plant defense, autophagy regulation, and chloroplast biogenesis and maintenance. After receiving her B.S. from Southern Illinois University – Carbondale in Zoology in 1980, Dr. Braam received her Ph.D. from the SloanKettering Division of the Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences in Molecular Biology and Virology in 1985 and was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Stephen Bradshaw is an Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy and the William V. Vietti Junior Chair of Space Physics at Rice University.His primary research interests involve astrophysics of the sun, plasma physics, and numerical modeling. Dr. Bradshaw earned his M.Phys. (1st class honors) in Physics with Planetary and Space Physics from Aberystwyth University in 2000, and his Ph.D. in Solar astrophysics from Cambridge University in 2004. Dr. Brandon Dugan is Associate Professor of Earth Science at Rice University. His research interests involve hydrogeology, marine geology, and sediment mechanics. Dr. Dugan earned a bachelor’s degree in geological engineering from University Minnesota in 1997 and a Ph.D. in geosciences from Penn State University in 2003. Additionally, he completed a Mendenhall post-doctoral fellowship with the U.S. Geological Survey. Dr. Thomas Killian is Chair and Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University. His research is primarily focused on atomic physics, plasma physics, and biophysics. Dr. Thomas Killian received his Artium Baccalaureus
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(A.B.) degree in physics from Harvard College in 1991 and went on to Cambridge University where he received his Master of Philosophy in Physical Chemistry in 1993 as a Marshall Scholar. He completed his Ph.D in Physics in 1999 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Anatoly Kolomeisky is a Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Rice University. His primary research interests involve theoretical investigation and complex chemical and biophysical processes using the methods of statistical mechanics. Dr. Kolomeisky earned a M.S in Chemistry from Moscow State University in 1991 and earned another M.S in Chemistry from Cornell University in 1996. He then went on to earn a Ph.D in Chemistry from Cornell in 1998. Dr. Neal Lane is the Senior Fellow in Science and Technology Policy at the Baker Institute. He is also the Malcolm Gillis University Professor at Rice University and Professor of Physics and Astronomy. He served as the provost of Rice University from 1986-1993. His research focus is on U.S. and international science and technology policy. Dr. Lane earned a B.S. from the University of Oklahoma in 1960, a M.S. from University of Oklahoma in 1962, and a Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma in 1964. Dr. Eugene Levy is the Andrew Hays Buchanan Professor of Astrophysics and the former Provost of Rice University. His primary research interests involve Astrophysics and Space Physics. Dr. Levy earned his A.B in Physics from Rutgers University in 1966 and his Ph.D in physics at the University of Chicago in 1971.
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Dr. Angel Martí is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Bioengineering at Rice University. Dr. Martí’s primary research interests involve the design and synthesis of multifunctional molecular constructs for the treatment and diagnosis of amyloid forming diseases. He received his B.S. in chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico in 1999, and his Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from the University of Puerto Rice in 2004. Additionally, Dr. Martí was a postdoctoral Research Scientist at Columbia University from 2004 to 2008. Dr. John T. McDevitt is the Brown-Wiess Professor of Bioengineering and Chemistry at Rice University. Dr. McDevitt’s primary research interests involve the development of “programmable bio-nano-chip” sensor methodologies for use in diagnosis of major health conditions and diseases. Dr. McDevitt earned his B.S. degree in Chemistry at California Polytechnic State University in 1982 and his Ph.D. degree in Physical Chemistry at Stanford University in 1987. Dr. Paul Padley is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University. His primary research interests involve experimental elementary particle physics. Dr. Padley completed his undergraduate studies at York University in 1981 and received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1987. Dr. George Phillips is the Ralph and Dorothy Looney Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology and Professor of Chemistry. His primary research interests involve relating the three-dimensional structure and dynamics of proteins to their biological functions. Dr. George Phillips earned a B.A from Rice University in Biochemistry and
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Chemistry in 1974. He then furthered his education at Rice University by earning a Ph.D in Biochemistry in 1976. He also did some post-graduate work at Brandeis University. Dr. Haldre Rogers is a Huxley Faculty Fellow in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Rice University. Her primary research interests involve the impact of biodiversity loss on ecosystem services, with a focus on seed dispersal and pest control by birds. Dr. Rogers earned her B.A. in Biology from Colgate University in 2000, and her Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Washington in 2011. Dr. Scott Solomon is Lecturer and Laboratory Coordinator in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Rice University. His primary research interests involve molecular systematics, biogeography, phytogeography, biodiversity, and tropical ecology. Dr. Solomon earned his B.S. in Cell and Structural Biology at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign in 2000 and his Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at The University of Texas at Austin in 2007. Dr. Ken Whitmire is Professor of Chemistry and Associate Dean for academic affairs for the Wiess School of Natural Sciences at Rice University. His research interests involve synthetic, structural and mechanistic inorganic and organometallic chemistry. Dr. Whitmire earned his B.S. in Chemistry from Roanoke College in 1977, M.S. and PhD in Chemistry from Northwestern University in 1982, and served as NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at Cambridge University in England between 1981-82.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to all Rice University School of Natural Sciences faculty who made this project possible by sharing their career experiences and educational life stories with the Gateway students through one-on-one interviews. Much appreciation goes to School of Natural Sciences Dean Daniel Carson and his staff, especially Ms. Pamela Jones for the continual support, and School of Social Sciences Dean Lyn Ragsdale for her counsel and encouragement, and Alex Wyatt for embracing the overall Turning Points project and developing the web presence at http://turningpoints.rice.edu. Our heartfelt gratitude to the Gateway Associates and supporters of the Gateway programs for making projects like this possible. Many thanks also to the current and past Turning Points team and Gateway Study of Leadership fellows for the tremendous amount of time and effort in bringing this series to life.
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