Once a Scientist

Seemay Chou is co-founder and CEO at Arcadia Science, Board Member at Astera Institute, and Board Chairperson at The Navigation Fund. Seemay was previously an assistant professor at UCSF and completed her PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley.

Episode 88. Eugene Yeo is a Professor at UC San Diego and is building a scientific ecosystem in San Diego. He runs the Innovation Center at Sanford Stem Cell Institute, is Scientific Director at the Sanford Consortium, Chief Scientist at the Sanford labs for Innovative Medicines, and Director of UC San Diego’s Center for RNA Technologies and Therapeutics.

Episode 87.  Sudarshan Pinglay is a researcher at the University of Washington and faculty at the Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology (SeaHub). He did his PhD at New York University and bachelor's degree at Johns Hopkins. Jesse Gray is a Senior Director at SeaHub. He previously worked in industry at Ascidian Therapeutics and as a professor at Harvard Medical School. Jesse completed his PhD at UCSF and his undergrad at University of Wisconsin.

Episode 86. Prachee Avasthi is co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Arcadia Science and Head of Open Science at the Astera Institute. Prachee was previously a professor at Dartmouth and University of Kansas. She completed a PhD in Neuroscience at University of Utah and her bachelor's degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Episode 85. Fay Lin is a Senior Editor at GEN Biotechnology. She completed her PhD in Biochemistry, Molecular, and Structural Biology at UCLA and undergrad in Biology at NYU with minors in Computer Science and Chemistry.

GEN Biotechnology website: 
https://home.liebertpub.com/genbio

Call for Papers: Special Issue in AI in Biotechnology: 
https://home.liebertpub.com/cfp/special-issue-artificial-intelligence-in-biotechnology/497/

Episode 84. Maryann Martone is an emeritus professor of neuroscience at UC San Diego. She received her BA from Wellesley College in Biological Psychology and Ancient Greek and her PhD in Neuroscience from the UC San Diego

Anand Muthusamy is a Fellow at Convergent Research, where he's laying the groundwork for a focused research organization (FRO) to monitor the real-time activity of biomarkers in humans. Anand is a chemist and neuroscientist. He recently completed his PhD at Caltech, worked at Janelia Research Campus, and did his undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania.

Check out his recent paper on bioRxiv: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.15.584894v1

Defense talk on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OK1kBOKsaaw

FRO proposal overview: https://fas.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Muthusamy-Garrett-Molecular-Modeling.pdf

Episode 83. Anand Muthusamy is a fellow at Convergent Research, where he's building a focused research organization (FRO) to monitor the real-time activity of biomarkers. Anand is a chemist and neuroscientist. He recently completed his PhD at Caltech, worked at Janelia Research Campus, and did his undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Check out his recent paper on Bioarxiv: 

Episode 82. Alexander Titus is a professor at USC, doing research at the intersection of biology and AI. He completed his PhD in Quantitative Biomedical Sciences at Dartmouth. He's also the founder of Bioeconomy.xyz and advises the U.S. Government on AI and national security. Titus spent time at McKinsey and Google and helped build Colossal Biosciences and Form Bio. 

Episode 81. Ashley Ruba is the founder of After Academia and a Human Factors Engineer at Arthrex. Ashley did her PhD in developmental psychology at the University of Washington and her  undergrad degree at Duke University.  

Show Notes: 

Infant language and emotional development lab  [02:00]

NIH NRSA Institutional Postdoc Training Grant (T32) [03:48]

Ashey’s academic story [01:45]

Leaving academia [07:12] 

Human Factors Engineer [9:35]

Arthrax [10:37]

Working in augmented reality  [10:43]

Attachment styles [13:10]

How do you get your first job out of academia [16:05] 

Pivoting into UX research and Human Factors Engineering and the process of making the change [24:21]

Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive  [28:44]

Pivoting from big tech for stability and more growth opportunities  [29:40]

Career coaching [32:22] 

Getting over self doubt, internal roadblock, and imposter syndrome [34:39]

How do I get recruiter to look at my resume [38:32]

Tactical tips on how to structure a resume [40:08]

Motivating factors beyond salary and benefits [44:22]

Being honest with yourself [47:11] 

Core values - growth  [48:21]

Most unexpected change and realization [49:37]

Listen to yourself [52:57]

What advice would you give to your younger self? [54:09]

The myth of being stuck in academia [57:06]