Paola Arlotta is a developmental neurobiologist and a professor at Harvard. She studies how the most complex organ in the human body (in the world? in the universe maybe?) comes to be: the brain (!). How does it develop from just a bunch of cells? Paola is also the Chair of her Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, where she takes particular care about the nurturing of the next generation of scientists in her field. In this episode, Paola describes the crucial role that happiness and passion play for her in doing research. But science for Paola is also a walk in the dark woods, requiring the courage to tackle seemingly quirky questions that get at the heart of the most fundamental biology. We also discussed the role of the mentor in helping to develop the brain for creativity, much the way an infant’s brain develops to understand the world around it.

For more information on Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .

In this special, we talk about podcasting with the two hosts of the Big Biology Podcast (https://www.bigbiology.org), Marty Martin – professor of disease ecology at the University of South Florida – and Art Woods – professor of physiological ecology at the University of Montana. We had a great time discussing our respective podcast experiences, trading tips and reflecting on our passion for science communication and the ways that it has impacted our own research. In their podcast, Marty and Art tell the stories of scientists tackling some of the biggest unanswered questions in biology. While both of our podcasts focus on the people doing science, Big Biology discusses the results, while Night Science explores the creative process of science. 

For more information on Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .

What was the creative process of Alfred Russel Wallace? In this séance, we channel the legendary self-taught evolutionary biologist, founder of the field of biogeography, and co-discoverer of natural selection. Mr. Wallace (as he insists to be called) told us how he did night science by candlelight during long and lonely nights on his travels in the tropics, and how he prefers to ponder the big questions. He sees himself as an early data scientist, identifying patterns in data – in particular in the study of beetles, with both him and Darwin afflicted by beetlemania. He feels that he has an advantage over Darwin because of his less fancy and less structured education: while Mr. Darwin was force-fed the then-current world view, Mr. Wallace was free to read the books that excited him.

This episode could not have been recorded without Mr. Wallace speaking through the  voice of a medium who knows his life and works in exquisite detail: Dr. Andrew Berry, lecturer for evolutionary biology at Harvard.

For more information on Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .

Isaac (Zak) Kohane is the Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School. In this episode, Zak talks with us about how medicine, at its core, is information processing. But in medical data science, one has to understand and to model the dynamics of two orthogonal systems: the patient’s physiology and the dynamics of the healthcare system, in particular the integrating intelligence of doctors who decide about a patient’s path through that system. Zak also tells us how his creative process is an engineering process, how important the right abstraction of the data is, and how reading science fiction gives him the courage to think beyond the technology that is currently feasible. 

For more information on Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .

Jim Collins is Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT. In this episode, he talks with us about his radical switch of fields in the early 2000’s, when he essentially founded the field of synthetic biology. Jim’s creative process includes ‘storing content’ about a particular problem; committing a portion of each day to reflect on it, even if this might often feel like wasting time; and then bouncing ideas around in open discussions with colleagues. Jim stresses the need for being disciplined in one's night science improvisations, anchoring oneself with the constraints provided by nature. He highlights the power of coming into a new field from a position of strength, where you introduce methodologies that you have expertise in.

For more information on Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .

Caroline Bartman is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Princeton’s Chemistry Department, and she is about to start her own lab at the University of Pennsylvania. Caroline’s research focuses on how our metabolism changes in response to cancer and to viral infections. In this episode, Caroline explains how she has developed to become a creative scientist. She also describes an unexpected trick: whenever she stumbles upon something interesting – such as an experimental observation or something she read – she adds it as a card to her electronic set, which she reviews on a daily basis for flashes of inspirations. 

For more information on Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .

Albert-László Barabási is a distinguished professor at Northeastern University in Boston. In this episode, he tells us how he established the field of network science. He explains the expert’s fallacy and why it’s time to move to another field once you become afraid to break things. He tells about his strategies to select research projects with his students, and that the science only really starts after the first draft has been written. He also tells us how the crucial skill to make discoveries is to sense which idea’s time has come, and how to move into a field when you think that you can bring something all of your own to the table.

For more information on Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .

Doing science reminds Stuart Firestein of an old saying: “It’s very difficult to find a black cat in a dark room. Especially when there is no cat.” Before studying biology and becoming a professor at Columbia University in New York, Stuart worked for many years in the theater. In this episode, he talks about how he doesn’t miss the creativity or the spirit of the theater, as he finds all of that in science. For Stuart, ignorance and creativity are two horses pulling the same wagon of science, and lab meetings are center stage for both. To make progress, Stuart finds pluralism of enormous value – and crucial to pluralism is the ability to fail. 

For more information on Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .

Professor Galit Lahav is the Chair of the Systems Biology Department at Harvard Medical School, where she creates an environment that is collaborative, stimulating, and interdisciplinary. In this episode, Galit tells us how her creative process consists of incubation and interaction. She stresses the importance of being vulnerable for creativity to emerge, and also how to use night science to make the tough decision to stop working on a particular project. Thinking about how to normalize incubation at the department level, Galit led us to conclude that Night Science Tuesday should be a part of every scientist’s work week! 

For more information on Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .

Eric Topol is a cardiologist, scientist, and author. Many twitter users will know Eric from his voice-of-reason tweets related to the covid pandemic. While Eric’s exceptionally broad scientific work includes genetics and clinical trials, his main focus is on the ways in which artificial intelligence may change medicine as we know it. Creativity in this field, Eric explains, lies in exploring applications of AI that no one thought possible before, such as predicting the risk of heart disease from an image of the retina. In our conversation, Eric encourages any scientist to think big, to be counterintuitive, to go against the dogma. To find exciting new ideas, he suggests to think about how cool new tools could be used in ways that are not obvious – and then to test-market your crazy ideas by discussing them with experts in the relevant fields.

Eric Topol is the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, a professor of Molecular Medicine at the Scripps Research Institute, and a senior consultant at the Division of Cardiovascular Diseases at Scripps Clinic in San Diego.

For more information on Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .