Finding Fulfillment in Science : Dr. Harmit Malik

In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Harmit Malik.

Transcription

Transcribed by Zack Drum, PhD (he/him)

J: Awesome. And then, of course, it’s a podcast so I can edit whatever you need. Yeah, I usually start this off with a short autobiography. So do you mind, you know, telling us your name, your educational journey where you not where you are now, and what you’ve been up to.

H: Well, it’s a pleasure to be on here. My name is Hermit Malik. I’m currently a professor in the division of basic sciences at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center. I’m also a affiliate faculty in the Department of Genome Sciences at University of Washington, and I’m an HHMI Investigator. My journey started in India. I was born and raised in India, and I went to college as a chemical engineer in the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and there, through a fortuitous series of events, I got introduced to both molecular biology as well as selfish genes. By reading, you know, books on the topic and I sort of with the encouragement of my mentors, I decided I’m gonna do a PhD in biology, instead of continuing down either the chemical engineering or, you know. Go do an MBA and make a living? So I I applied with some trepidation to schools, both in India and in the Us. And I didn’t do very well with Phd programs in India, partly because I had never really taken a formal class in biology during my college career, and people worried a little bit about that. But actually, I did quite well, ironically, I did quite well in the US. Partly because of my GRE scores, which you know, is a whole different topic in its own, right?

J: Yeah.

H: I landed up at University of Rochester, wanting to work on transposable elements which are then, and still considered one of the prototypical selfish genes. And did my Phd. In biology with Tom Ibush, who is like a leaderin the field of transposable elements. And what was kind of nice nice about that was that even though I had joined his lab more interested in molecular biology or transposable elements. His lab is also like doing some very cool phylogeny and evolution work on how transposable elements evolve. And I actually just naturally found myself gravitating towards that line more and found myself more the bulk of my thesis end up becoming about the evolutionary strategies and history of retro transposable elements, which was great in a way, because it was like a field that I had never been exposed to, but actually, intuitively, was a little bit of a better fit to my educational background and math and engineering. Then I moved to Seattle to do a a postdoc in Steve Henikoff’s lab at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center, and in Steve’s lab I initially applied to his lab because I was interested in deep homology detection, the kind of stuff that you can now do with Alpha Fold to find structure of homology. Steve’s lab had begun to pioneer some of these things a lot of people who know Steve from his chromatin world don’t realize he was actually one of the pioneers of the Bioinformatics world also, and his lab actually came up with the Blossom series for protein comparisons that are still used by cyblast and stuff. And so I thought I would join his lab and continue that work until he told me, since NCBI was basically gonna take over with the side blast. He was not gonna be doing that much work which, like a wasted interview at that point because I had already flown across to Seattle. But then he told me about this work that he has been doing on centromeric histones which seemed really fascinating, and in particular, I remember this very clearly, that he showed me this phylogeny of the centromeric histones. Now histones are super slow to evolve, but the centrum histones in the phylogeny were clearly much more rapidly evolving. And I remember this very clearly, because it’s such a influential moment in my life. We went to dinner as part of the interview on the first night. And I happened to have read the same issue of genetics that he had read where he had come up with the, a sort of a tentative model about what was driving the rapid evolution of centromeric histones. And because I had read this paper I knew exactly what he was talking about. And then, just over the course of this lovely dinner we had like mapped out what was close to what we now know as the centromere drive hypothesis even though we had really no data. But it was like just this amazing moment in time, where, like just that observation, and then a little bit of the groundwork that other papers had already provided. And so at the end we didn’t really discuss me joining his lab because I was like implicitly going to join his lab. And I think he had assumed that I was gonna join the lab. And then I remember this very clearly, because we went to dinner with him and his wife, who’s a fantastic bioinformatician and me, and then we went to this restaurant, and then I remember the whole restaurant was empty, and they were going to close up, and we were still talking, and it was like fantastic to be in his lab. And so I joined his lab. I worked on centromeres, and then, when the time came, I did like the full academic job search and decided to stay like 20 feet away from where my bench was in the Henikoff lab. And I just started my own lab in the Basic Sciences Division. That was a bit unusual at the time. They hadn’t actually hired a postdoc from within for more than 15 years at that point. But it was clear to them that I was going to be doing things that are slightly more evolutionary and Steve is, of course, gonna do all the Steve like things which was like, you know, he was gonna start new disciplines every 3 years. So I didn’t really have to worry about being in a shadow because I knew that he was just gonna move on to different new things. So it’s been fantastic. I’ve been here for 21 years, and eventually I did, you know, also start a fantastic new collaboration with my senior colleague, Michael Emerman, who’s an HIV virologist. And so, as part of my sort of endeavor to be a little bit different from Steve, we started working on the rapid evolution of host virus interactions. And so those 2 themes on rapid chromatin evolution and host virus interactions continues to be the running theme in my lab.

J: Yeah, that’s amazing. But it also seems like your science spans so many different fields. How do you, as a PI, you know, keep up with all that?

H: Intellectually, it’s actually not so different. I mean, we view these as arms races, and so in terms of principles. The principles of a host virus interaction are not that dramatically different than the principles of a selfish gene, or even a selfish centromere in the population. But the molecular biology is completely different, and often requires us to set up totally new systems. So I am still primarily a drosophila biologist. That’s my training. That’s what I trained in, in my PhD and during my postdoc and my intuition in terms of how I think about things still mostly goes back to Drosophila like I enjoy thinking about that. But I think what’s been really fantastic is our ability to recruit fantastic people who, including postdocs who have the zeal or ambition to start their own labs, and and often that process has involved them thinking about a system that they can establish to study an important problem in, say, host virus interactions with the intention that they’d set up that system in my lab. But then, when they left, they would take that system with them, and to establish their own lab, and that has created a little bit of a you know a little bit of a turnstile, if you will, for interesting people. Interesting projects, but again, like it just gives us, gives us more opportunities to study the underlying principles.

J:That’s awesome. And we’ll definitely get into the people part about this in a little bit. But before we do, I wanted to ask about your inclination for science. So I, you mentioned engineering and all of that. But what happened before that? Were you always like science is my thing, and I’m gonna do it for the rest of my life. Or was it more of like, you know, you’re out in the wilderness, and you saw something happen, and you were curious about it, like, how did that?

H: No, I didn’t. You know. I grew up in mostly in the city of Bombay. The wilderness was like, you know, mostly like the nearest kind of sewage plant, or whatever like that was not, I mean, we had some wilderness, but we were, you know, so surrounded mostly by concrete. So it was very different kind of upbringing, and I spent most of my life, most of my childhood growing up thinking I wanted to become a doctor. In fact. It’s a very interesting kind of twist of fate here. Where I turned out to be underage by just 3 days. So I actually got admission to both engineering and medical schools. Because I you know, I academically done quite well in high school but I could not join medical school that year, to the everlasting disappointment of my mother. Because, but they said that I can join medical school the following year. Because then I would be of the right age. So because of that, I ended up going to engineering thinking like, if it doesn’t work out, I can always come back to medical school, but of course I never did. And then, ironically, after all of that. I find myself in a biomedical research organization, having taken a long detour through chemical engineering, PhD in evolutionary biology. And now here I am. You know, sort of doing biomedical research.

J: Yeah. Yeah. And and I know you’ve ventured, you know, all around the world to pursue your dreams. Have you ever experienced like a culture shock cause you know you went from India to the east coast of the Us. I think in the east coast to the west coast, you know. I moved from California to North Carolina, and saw, like a dramatic shift in culture. So what was that like for you?

H: I definitely had a culture shock. Actually, I had like, you know, people ask me how how the transition from a chemical engineering to biology. How difficult was that transition? And I have. I am sort of I I surprised people by saying like that was not actually the most difficult transition. I had never even seen snow except in movies before moving to the upstate New York. And so my first winter was like a very rude you know, introduction to winters. I had also never been in an American classroom before, and you know the classrooms in India, although they are somewhat more interactive at the university that I went to. They were a lot more interactive, I mean, people got interrupted all the time, even in large classrooms and I was a little bit sort of, you know, the culture shock of being in an American classroom versus an Indian classroom was big and finally, you know, I was asked to TA, be a teaching assistant for genetics with my very first year in grad school. Despite the fact that I had never actually taken genetics as a student myself. Which in hindsight actually was like a fantastic thing for me, because it forced me to really become very good at genetics good enough to actually teach people and but I hadn’t until that time I hadn’t really encountered the the pre-med student, grade, you know, sort of and and that was like a shock to me also. It was very clear, like, you know, even students who really didn’t get it really still wanted to make sure that they got an A just because that was just so critical for their, you know admissions and people. A lot of people claim that I was had single handedly dismantled their dreams of becoming a doctor which you know honestly like, if you don’t know Mendelian genetics, maybe you shouldn’t be a doctor.

J: Yeah.

H: The way. I of course I didn’t tell them that, because I didn’t.

J: Right, yeah.

H: I didn’t want to lose my, you know, teaching assistantship, etc. But yeah, all of those things were kind of shocks. And then, of course, I was taking undergraduate classes in biology at the same time as I was taking graduate classes in biology, so it was a little bit intense in the first year, but it was kind of fun. And so I realized that I really did enjoy this.

H: Yeah, so was a lot of your genetics expertise, was that more of the product of classes or a lot of practice? What what was it for an aspiring geneticist?

H: Yeah, I mean, you know, I went to University of Rochester, where you know, I had applied to like all over the place, mostly from India. I just sort of didn’t know. I applied, you know, up and down the kind of prestige ladder and and and Rochester was definitely you know, in the Upper Third, but not like the most prestigious places that I had applied to, and in hindsight again, like it was really lucky that I went to a department like Rochester. First of all, it was very strong in molecular and cell biology, as well as in evolutionary biology. Perhaps at the time it was maybe even a little bit stronger in ecology and evolution than in molecular and cell biology. That was fantastic because I had peers who are both, you know, molecular biologists and evolutionary biologists. But the department is also is kind of small. My entering class was 6 students, I remember,

J: Oh wow

H: And there were 4 students who were Chinese, one Indian student that was me and one American student. And so that meant that, you know, like a pop in where I was able to just go to a professor, knock on their door and just have a conversation spontaneously. That was just like so easy, and that meant like life was great. It was great to learn. People really like took ownership of the students that were there. I mean, it was not like it was an easy time to be in graduate school, I mean the the the standards were pretty high, and it was not unheard of for people to flunk out or qualifying exams and flunk out of graduate school, especially on the ecology evolution side. But it was also sort of a very family like atmosphere. You know all the pluses and minuses of that where you sort of got to really know your faculty. Not just your own advisor, but many faculty. And I felt like I learned a lot just from like listening to my colleagues. You know, I had some amazing colleagues in graduate school, you know. I’ve had the like singular pleasure of being at every stage of my career, being surrounded by people who I knew were much more talented than I was, and it it. I wasn’t intimidated by that, but I just felt like it was just such a fantastic learning experience to learn from them, learn from their interest in selfish genes etc, and my interest was still sort of still, you know, in their formative years. So I got to learn a lot from them, and I realized how important it was to be in a department that was kind of open like that rather than be in this ultra competitive atmosphere, where, you know, students would not give the time a day to their fellow students. This was much easier. There were softball tournaments, and you know other things that we did together as graduate students. And it was, this is a very nice experience. I hope it remains that nice today.

J: Yeah, so it sounds like you’ve been able to overcome some type of imposter syndrome because of that environment, right? The the collaborative nature of it all has really helped with that?

H: I think imposter syndrome is like a whole podcast topic. You know. I would not say that I have overcome imposter syndrome in fact, I think my thesis is that you never really overcome imposter syndrome, because, as part of your you know, especially in the business that we are both in. You are constantly in the presence of people who, you realize are just, you know, kicking ass like there. I don’t know if I can say that on the podcast.

J: You can, yeah it’s all good

H: That are so so amazing that they they just impress you immensely. And you know it became just such a routine thing, you know, because I was surrounded by some of the people who are, you know, professors in in fantastic schools now already. Including one person who was like one of the more impressive people I found who’s actually a faculty member at UNC. His name is Corbin Jones. He was, you know, one of the 2 or 3 most impressive people that I encountered when I was in graduate school, and you know, and he was actually a junior graduate student from than me. What’s nice about that is like, I realized that, you know, there were also some amazing scientists who are like several career stages ahead of me. And I sort of developed this kind of you know, just spontaneously develop this idea that I just needed to kind of think about like the people who are just one career stage ahead of me, or or my peers like, make sure that I was doing everything that they were doing in order to be successful rather than think about like somebody who’s like a full professor, you know, 15, 20 years down the line, and they’re pretty impressive, but it took them 20 years to get that impressive from the stage that I was, and I think one of the lessons I learned was my peers and my role models that are like one career stage ahead of me are a great way for me to tackle imposter syndrome, because I cannot imagine as a graduate student, I could not imagine what it would be like to become a full professor, but I could easily imagine what it would be like as somebody who passed that qualifying exam, or somebody on the threshold of like defending their thesis, or even like looking for postdocs. And so it became kind of easy for me to just think about somebody who is just one career stage ahead rather than several career stages ahead. And even now, as a full professor now I’m still surrounded by people who are like super talented. But now, actually, it’s becoming more and more often the case that the people who are more impressive are often younger, much lower, you know, career stages than I am. So it’s a it’s. It’s an interesting kind of observation. But again, you know, the idea is you’re not in a race with with anybody per se. You’re just basically trying to learn. And and you’re trying to learn about good habits from people who are like really successful at doing things that you wish you were good at. And so I sort of. I don’t think the imposter syndrome actually goes away. You’re you’re you’re you’re often asked to evaluate grants or fellowship applications for people. And you’re reading these fellowship applications. And you realize this person is so much more impressive than I was at that career stage, you know, and so that that is a great way for you to have your impostor syndrome come raging back. And nonetheless, you’re you’re trying your best right to make sure that you’re doing the best you can with the with the parameters you have in front of you, so it never really goes away. People who say that it goes away either are supremely comfortable with themselves, or they’re just lying there. There is a possibility that they’re completely sociopathic. Let’s claim that that’s not the case. But you know I don’t think it needs to be a crippling thing. I think imposter syndrome can be a really good way for you to educate yourself in overcoming hurdles that other people have successfully overcome.

J: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I I mentor some high schoolers. And I’m like, I had no idea what this was until my senior year of college. So the you know, these next generations of scientists are extremely talented, not good for imposter syndrome. But I tweeted a couple of days ago that I interviewed your postdoc advisor, Dr. Steve Hennikoff, and a colleague of yours, Dr. Sheila Tevis, and a couple of weeks ago I also interviewed Dr. Tina Termini, who, you know, I’ll say the same thing. You replied to that Tweet with “mentors matter”, so can you talk about what those 2 words mean to you, and how much you’ve learned, or you know, have taken away from mentors both good and the bad?

H: You know the thing the most important thing I mean. I’ve learned different things from my different mentors. But the most important thing that I learned from Steve in particular was there was never a point in his lab where I got the sense that he did not have my back. You know he just always implicitly had your back like, he was in your corner. You could be making like the world stupidest mistake, or you could be like having the world’s most inspiring idea, and he would like talk it through with you. I mean, he was kind of you know, pretty honest, and he always treated you as a colleague, so he didn’t like pamper you because you you were like a kid, if you will. And he but he also gave you the respect that you would be afforded as a as a colleague, and I had never been in a place where there were a lot of postdocs. And it’s certainly never been in an environment, you know, even though my experience in grad school was like fantastic. It was very clear, like there was this hierarchy where they these are the professors, and these were the students, and in Steve’s lab that hierarchy, you know, it was there. But it was also not there. And that just made it like kind of fantastic. When you realize that it just basically made the environment so much better because we were all really basically junior colleagues in the lab like that. And that sort of empowerment, you know, people who are on the fence like I was about whether I could run a lab eventually that just went away. You realize, like, you know, if the goal is to run a lab like this, I could probably do something like that. Now that was a little bit of a lie, because Steve had some pretty amazing people, you know. You realize that not every lab is got like so many amazing people. And they were amazing, not just because they were amazing scientists which they were, but they were also amazing friends, and, you know, really comfortable in their own skin, and, you know, quite comfortable, collaborating and and giving ideas, etc, and really, like my aspirational goal is to like, have my lab get to that point. And it has come very close a couple of times. I can say but I think the fact that you know this person who’s already at that time like a legend, was like treating you as their colleague. They were willing to banter with you and have ideas with you, and and be willing to agree in some cases very few cases, but in a few cases where your model was better than their model. That was pretty amazing, actually. And I I feel like that was like the thing that I suspect that that’s true, even now. Sheila is like considerably junior to me. So I was already like a full professor by the time she was a graduate student in Steve’s lab. But again it was the same idea that it never went away that you were expected to be a junior colleague to him. Not just like a underling, if you will, and so that if it was feeling empowerment is what I meant when I said mentors matter.

J: Yeah definitely. So can you tell us more about your most memorable mentees, and tell me what made them so memorable, memorable.

H: I would. I think I’ll get into trouble if I talk about some mentees and not others. But I will, I will maybe start with the the the thing about like I think the biggest biggest quote unquote risk of coming to a lab like mine was probably, when my lab was very young in its infancy. In fact, my very first postdoc is now a professor at University of Colorado at Boulder. Her name is Sarah Sawyer, and in the Virology field she is much better known than I am. And you know we are roughly the same age, and I encountered her when I was giving a job interview talk at Cornell University, where she was a grad student, and then we met at the graduate student lunch, you know, which is like the kind of typical. And she said, you know, I’m really interested in joining your lab which seemed like a really nice thing to say to somebody who was like a faculty candidate. Then then you know that you didn’t bomb your talk. And I said, You know, if I I was sort of at that time, really considering going to Cornell, and I said, if I go to Cornell, it would be better for her to go somewhere else, but if I go somewhere else she’d be welcome to kind of apply to me, and she did apply, and she had no background in molecular evolution, no background in virology. I had no background in virology, but, like I said, I had just started this new collaboration with Michael Emerman. And even though she came in to work on like a more traditional yeast molecular evolution project, very quickly we realized that she had the ambition and just the sheer like horsepower, to take this idea that Michael Emerman and I had, and ran with it. And you know the amazing thing was for somebody like her who had really no background in molecular evolution. She already had her first paper from my lab within 12 months of joining my lab. And she had a second paper from my lab within another 12 months of that, and those 2 have been some of the more influential papers my lab has published, and so very, very quickly, thanks to this person, we were kind of on the map, you know, as from a lab that didn’t even study those virus interactions to the point where we were getting invitations to give talks at, you know, prestigious speaking slots and virology conferences, and some of it is, you know, a large part of it, I would say, is, thanks to the generosity of my colleague, Michael Emerman, but who’s already well well established, but you know, sort of propped me and Sarah at at the kinda at the head of the authorship. That was very generous of him, but a lot of it I would give credit to to Sarah, because she just had the horsepower to kind of drive that another person who again, like I, had a huge influence in the lab in the early stages, was another postdoc. His name is Nels Eldy, he’s at the University of Utah now, also as a full professor, and he’s also an HHMI investigator now. He also was interested in host virus interactions. But he was. He’s a very creative person. I probably even since probably one of the most creative people that I’ve ever encountered, not just in my lab and his ability to look at a problem in a sort of a whimsical metaphorical sense, is something that is a huge asset to those around him like he he asked questions that many of us would go to this, you know. Write the paper, but he would stop and he’d go. But I wonder what this means, and you know, sort of like, we all have people that we have encountered where the first 4 figures are like write themselves, and then we stop. But he’s the kind of thing is like. Well, what if we do this additional experiment, etc, that kind of just open the door to much more profound kind of observations. And so he also was a very, very huge influence in the lab. And he was co-mentored by my colleague, Adam Jabal, and he, you know, tackled the problem of protein mimicry by viruses. And and and really sort of again. By the time Sarah and Nels left my lab, you know I I felt like my lab was already at steady state, so to get it to that steady state, you know Sarah and Nels and my first graduate student, Josh Bays. I think those 3 people had like probably the biggest like influence of you know getting us to fourth or fifth gear.

J: Yeah. Yeah. And and you know, let’s talk about their training, right? So I like throwing around the idea of like, I don’t know if this is the right term. Like a modern scientist, right? Like as society evolves, the scientists and the science go with it. Right? And right now, I’m trying to become a well rounded scientist, you know, I’m looking for opportunities and science policy, science communication. Do you have any advice for early career scientists about being an impactful, effective and modern scientist and and how to train them?

H: Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the biggest things is how much in our business, how much of science is? You know both a mixture of the old and the new, like the old, is like, there’s a lot of like very, very important concepts and ideas that you know people have talked about, even in the absence of tools. They were very creative about coming up in models that really made a difference. But then those models remain that, you know, because we just didn’t have the tools. But now, thanks to the modern tools, you know, CRISPR, Cas9, alpha fold, etc. They’ve just kind of changed the way we actually do science in a way, like, you know, even next generation sequencing, you know where you would actually positionally clone your favorite mutation and probably take you your entire thesis to do that now, you basically just sequence. You know, whatever your favorite model organism is, and you can get a pretty good candidate of what the mutation is and what the gene is, you know, often within a month. So I think the the thing that has been kind of interesting from my perspective is my training is still sort of steeped, very much in the kind of the old school way of doing genetics, etc, and you know, every once in a while, like a new person, comes in with this new way of doing that. And then it just it’s like a ratchet. Now, we we’ve learned to do things this way. And and there’s no going back. Because now you realize. Okay, this is like a much faster way to do that. And I think students underestimate how much they train their PIs just at the same time as their PIs think that they’re training their students. But it goes both ways, and I think for labs to stay current they cannot only be seeking the next technology kind of thing, I mean, that’s fantastic in its own way. And there are people who are pushing the frontiers of technology. And that’s what they do. But for most labs they really need to use the technology to answer fundamental questions that they’ve always been interested in and I think I think the mix for me has been this kind of mix of the old and the new, and it continues to be that way.

J: Yeah. So how do you think we can implement initiatives at different institutions, let’s say, like Fred Hutch or UNC. So that we can accommodate that old and new mix right cause. I feel like it’s hard when you know you’re at an institution, and things are so stuck in tradition, but in terms of like using your powers of professor. Have you been able to think of any initiatives to maybe better support post docs, for example, right like, how can we better support this old and new mixture.

H: Yeah, I think I think, you know, one of the most kind of obvious answers, for example, is that no matter what kind of field you’re in. You really need to be, you know, adept at computational biology. If you’re a graduate student today, right like it, it’s just not the kind of case where you do your thing, and then you have somebody else do the computational work. You really need to know what what is going on and I think, that’s one of the kind of things that has kinda come from this kind of training is that, you know, training is not simply just like learning the things you need to do to do your thesis. But you need to kind of be more extensive like I said. You’re expected to have a skill set that’s a little bit broader and more modern than your advisor, because, you know, you’re going to go into a different job market than your advisor did. Similarly, you know the sort of executive training that we really didn’t have in an explicit. Say, you know how to run a lab how to manage, you know, relationships with co-workers, etc. None of this. How to manage budgets, you know, for your lab, etc. These are not things that we’ve ever been trained on. How do you go if you’re interested in industry jobs? How do you go about it? I think these are all opportunities that I think are implicit in any kind of training, whether we do that at my institution or yours. And any good institution has actually now, you know, seen that and design programs that will basically adjust to that kind of new reality of most people in our labs are not going to seek a academic jobs and we need to make sure that they’re getting the training that they need both in terms of networking the skills that they need in order to be successful at the jobs that they ultimately will seek. And I think when I was a graduate student it was almost unheard of. That there would be these kinds of workshops. But now, if you don’t have these workshops, I think you’re kind of missing the boat.

J: Yeah, yeah, definitely. So before we move into some more fun questions, do you have any, you know, parting words and any last minute advice for early career researchers or those aspiring to be professors or part of the next generation of scientists?

160 00:32:09.680 –> 00:32:13.032 Harmit Malik: I will just simply say that. You know there is a lot of I think honest conversation about the nature of the job and the difficulties. But I also think that this job just provides a lot of opportunity for fulfillment. You know both both personal fulfillment and professional fulfillment. The stress is not like something that ever kind of goes away entirely. But you can definitely get to a place where you feel pretty comfortable. And then you realize you’re actually making a huge difference in both in terms of science, but also in terms of training people that you like. And you can, you can create like this atmosphere. So I think we’ve not talked so much about all the good that comes with like a tenure track academic position. Just the conversation is swayed too much to the point of what is toxic about academia, and I’m not here to say that there aren’t things that we should improve about academia. But I think you know, there are definitely some huge advantages, you know, including flexibilities of jobs, etc, that academia has provided. And you know again. For some people this is the perfect job, and I think there might be some trainees who are in that category, but might be thinking maybe they shouldn’t do an academic job. And I, all I would basically advise is just you know, look under every rock because you definitely want. If this is the kind of job for you, I don’t think other jobs will provide the same degree of fulfillment. But if this isn’t the job for you, you should, you know, try to find that out as soon as you can. So you can actually pick up the skills you need for the job that you ultimately want.

J: Yeah, definitely, that was perfect. Do you listen to music?

H: I do listen to music.

J: Okay, let’s say you and all your mentees won the Nobel Prize. What is your celebratory song?

H: Well, my lab claims that I listen to too much Coldplay, quote unquote, too much Coldplay. So it might actually end up being like a Coldplay song. But I do listen to a lot of instrumental music. I do listen to a lot of you know, instrumental music, like, for instance, the soundtrack of the movie Arrival. I kind of really like this thing that puts me in the mood. I think I really like that musician. Unfortunately he passed away in his prime. And so I do like listening to sort of things that I listen to repeatedly, especially because if it’s not new, my brain doesn’t pay that much attention to it. It’s not that it’s interesting, but not in a way that my brain and so it becomes like perfect thing for me to listen to while I’m reading or writing a grant, or whatever. I think Coldplay to me has become a little bit like that. It’s a little bit like a earworm. I’m listening to it long enough. I still enjoy listening to it, and once in a while I’ll sit back and I’ll listen to it just for its own sake. But I can also work while listening to it, whereas there’s a lot of music that is new to me, that it’s hard for me to listen to. I do listen to a lot of Taylor Swift. I don’t know whether.

J: Yes, I didn’t know you were a Swifty!

H: I wouldn’t say I’m a Swifty.

J: Not a Swifty.

H: But I wouldn’t say that I know the entire oeuvre like some people in my lab, but there are some of her songs that I like a lot. And are definitely in my playlist. Yeah.

J: Yeah, yeah, I’m a. I’m a big Taylor swift fan. So I’m glad you said that. What is your favorite thing to do outside of science? I know you’re in a beautiful area. I’ve I’ve seen Mount Rainier a bunch. I almost went to the University of Puget Sound. What do you like to do there? It may not be naturery so.

H: Honestly, there are days where we just take ferry rides, you know, as you know, since we’ve been here, there are ferry rides. We live very close to the ferry that goes from Edmonds to King, you know, to Kingston on the other side. And it’s actually one of my favorite things to do is just with my son. Just kinda get on the ferry. We just walk on. We get onto the ferry. We are on the upper deck, and we just enjoy views of the sound. It’s much nicer to do that nowadays. When the weather is super nice. It’s a little bit like forbidding when you know it’s really cold and wet. But we are coming to those days, and I really do enjoy that in terms of other things I do enjoy cooking. I’m not a very good cook, but I do enjoy cooking and experimenting with different things sometimes from recipe books, sometimes just winging it like an iron chef, you know. Like, if there was an iron chef competition for, like the worst cooks I’d probably be participating. You have a few ingredients because you forgot to go shopping, and you wanna make something out of that. Yeah, I mean, I I enjoy reading a lot like I that my favorite thing to do is listening to music and reading usually some sort of murder mysteries of some sort.

J: And yeah, you’ve traveled all around the world. Really, do you have any favorite food, favorite food, favorite cuisine, like, what is your most favorite thing? After traveling.

H: My favorite, I mean I I grew up in India, so of course I have a soft spot for my mom’s cooking, and especially Indian food. But I would say that my favorite favorite food experience has been when I went to Japan. And you know I had, you know, just absolutely fantastic sushi and ramen like, you know, which you know we are in Seattle. We have fantastic.

J: Yeah, yeah.

H: Food options here, but like I realized that you know that that was like a notch above. And it wasn’t even in the Michelin starred restaurant. It was just like in a sort of a hole in the wall restaurant I had like this amazing food. And and and I think that’s one of the things that I really enjoy was is going to, you know. I I went. I went to similar hole in the wall places in like Taipei or in Rome, not like the places that you’d be like. Okay, this is like a event like I. I really don’t like food that is like super pretentious unless I’m you know, we are really celebrating something. I really like the very non pretentious but fantastic tasting food, you know, like a food truck. So sort of ambience. And and there are some amazing experiences that I’ve had. Most of the time. The food is made more special because of the people you are with, you know whether they’re my family or they’re students or colleagues that I’ve met at meetings.

J: Yeah, yeah, I’m I’m Filipino. And you know, Filipino food here in the in the US is very different from the Filipino food in the Philippines. So I definitely resonate with that but that was.

H: 1 one very fantastic Filipino restaurant in Seattle, if you’re ever in the area called Musang.

J: I was there. I was there last summer. Yeah.

H: It’s not not the world’s cheapest restaurant, but it is very good. Yeah.

J: Yeah, yeah. My partner and I went last summer. We actually vacationed. We went to Portland, and then we drove up to to Seattle. So I love the Pacific Northwest. Yeah. But that’s all my questions. I was trying to get you out before the hour or before the hour. So yeah, I wanna thank you again so much for doing this. And yeah.

H: Pleasure talking with you. I enjoyed hearing about your journey as well, and, like all the aspirations you have, so I hope someday you get somebody else to interview you, I think there’d be a lot of people interested like I said, I think I’m so so many career stages ahead of people who might listen to your podcast that it might be more useful for them to listen to what your journey has been like.

J: Well, we gotta learn from all the mentors, you know. So are you going to any conferences, by the way, just so I can put them on my radar?

H: Well, I usually go to the Gordon Conference on centromere biology that’s held every 2 years. It’s gonna be held this year. So that’s like the one conference that I’m going to. I actually organized a very big conference by the Genetics Society of America earlier this year. So I usually go to one meeting from GSA. And one meeting from the Molecular Biology and Evolution Conference, which this year is in Mexico, which is usually like a really fun conference, although this year I’m not going to go there because of a clash of dates. Yeah. So usually, I do like 2 or 3 conferences a year, and 2 of them are usually like the drosophila meeting affectionately called the fly meeting, and then the MBE Conference.

J: Cool. Yeah, I was. I was just wondering, yeah, yeah. And thank you again for the conversation at this start. I really appreciate it. And if you ever need a graduate students, opinion or like, think of an opportunity for me, just let me know.

H: Thank you. JP, if you’re in town, let me know, and we might, you know, hit up Musang again.

J: Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, thank you so much. Have a good day, bye.