Season 2 |
Episode 5: Cultivating Curiosity with Dr. Barbara Wakimoto
[00:00:00] RORI: Welcome back to Science Wise. This is a show where we talk to established scientists to learn from their stories and their wisdom. I'm Rori Rolfs, Associate Professor in Data Science at the University of Oregon.
[00:00:11] EMILIA: And I'm Emilia Huerta Sanchez, Associate Professor in Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology at Brown University.
[00:00:18] RORI: Today, I am so excited that we're going to be talking with Dr. Barbara Wakamoto, geneticist and professor emerita at the University of Washington in the departments of biology and genome sciences. I first met Dr. Wakamoto as a grad student at the UW when I was on a training grant that she was in charge of.
Thank you, Dr. Wakimoto, for that. After I finished my PhD and before I started my postdoc, I took some time to teach a molecular evolution course at the UW. It was my first time as the instructor of record for a course, and I clearly remember going to Dr. Wakimoto to ask her about how one does go about teaching an engaging, growthful, and accessible class.
Thanks. She took the time to explain backward course design to me and talk about active learning, and when I was struggling to soak it all in, she gave me a book right there on the spot, which I read and referenced a ton as I taught the course. Dr. Wakamoto has been doing research about the challenging and mysterious topic of heterochromatin since before it was cool, and was a Washington Research Foundation Professor of Basic Biological Sciences from 2005 to 2007 and became a fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science in 2007.
Listeners, I am so excited to share our conversation with Dr. Wakimoto with you today.
Dr. Barbara Wakimoto, we are so thrilled to talk with you today. Thank you for joining us here on Science Wise.
[00:01:43] BARBARA: Thank you for the opportunity.
[00:01:44] EMILIA: We're very excited to have you today,
[00:01:46] RORI: Barbara. Back when I was a student at UW, I learned a lot from you that really impacted me, but something I didn't learn about and I didn't ask about then, it would have felt really bold, is about you.
But now, here I am as an associate professor and I get to talk to you in this very different context, so I would love to hear about it. Like, where did you grow up? What did your parents do?
[00:02:05] BARBARA: I actually am a daughter of farmers in Arizona. And I like to tell this story, especially to my first-generation students.
[00:02:15] EMILIA: What kind of farming?
[00:02:16] BARBARA: We did vegetables, cotton, alfalfa, and I was the youngest of five kids. Wow. And we would literally start weeding. The rows of the field and I was the squirt, you know, the little, the little one. So we'd all start at the beginning of the row and start weeding or start seeding the corn or whatever.
And then they'd all go ahead and then they'd turn around and have to pick me up. That's where we spent our time when we weren't going to school during the summers. We would all farm as a family. So it's a very close-knit and I have to say incredibly hardworking family. So when people say. you're working hard I just kind of say we've done that before. But yeah, it was interesting to me because I had no idea that a woman could be a scientist. I was just talking to one of my sisters the other day and asked her what she would have been if she hadn't done her career path. She said, you know, we were girls. If we had been boys, we would all be farmers.
And, and that would be true.
[00:03:15] RORI: Oh, interesting. So what did you, what did you picture women did?
[00:03:17] BARBARA: Well, my mother was essentially a farmer, too, because she and my father ran the farm. She did the books. So I didn't distinguish a gender between the two, but as an occupation, it was a full-time. And it occurred to me, too, as sort of I grew up, how, you know, Bold and creative.
My father had to be a farmer and how many risks they took. And they raised a family of five on a farmer's income. And we didn't, they didn't dwell on how hard it was, but I look back and they had bought their house in Phoenix for 8, 000. And had to mortgage it and re-mortgage it and re-mortgage it to keep the farm running.
So it sort of puts things in perspective that helps me identify. And I know, Emilia, you worked with a lot of those kids that you were set in. Rori at SFSU, those first generation kids that were farmers, sons and daughters are farmers. I identified with them immediately because they go home and they help their fathers cherry pick, or they, they're looking at every single dime and dollar when you go out to eat.
So I. I think that gives me a perspective that makes me happy that I'm in this field because I never ever envisioned it when I was young. The thing my parents did do though is they, we, they just told us you're going to college. There was no question, no assumptions.
[00:04:36] RORI: They had not gone to college. Why do you think they made it such a clear priority for you and all your siblings?
[00:04:41] BARBARA: All my siblings got college degrees. I have two older brothers and two older sisters. And it's interesting because my father and mother insisted we go to college. My brothers ended up being farmers. So they got degrees in agronomy or. management and they came back to the farm. My two sisters ended up both being dietitians and then there was me, right?
So I want to get back to Rori's question because I think this is really important and it's only been like one or two generations away. My parents, they were in their 20s when World War II began. They were American-born, but their parents were from Japan, immigrated from Japan in the late 1800s. And in 1942, you've all heard about this, especially if you're on the West Coast, President Roosevelt had an executive order that said all Japanese ancestors Pick up your stuff, we're moving you to the desert because you're a threat to national security.
[00:05:33] RORI: So your parents were interned, right?
[00:05:35] BARBARA: Yeah, they were interned for three years in their 20s, so they didn't have a choice.
[00:05:40] EMILIA: Were they married already, or?
[00:05:42] BARBARA: No, they met in camp and got married.
[00:05:44] RORI: Wow, they were like having their young lives.
[00:05:47] BARBARA: Yeah, and that really makes me appreciate how world forces can impact so many lives.
I mean, even today, the global struggles in Ukraine and the Middle East, and we see our students going through that, with their families or their, or their grandparents. And so that kind of reality to me strikes home. That I think a lot of our privileged students may not realize. And that to me is the value of having formats like this and allowing diverse students to mix in a classroom because otherwise, they might not know.
[00:06:19] RORI: Yeah. Did your parents live in Arizona before they were sent to internment camps or did they live in other places?
[00:06:25] BARBARA: They were like most Japanese in Southern California or on the West Coast. They were, you know, 120, 000 or so individuals that were moved. So my parents were put in the desert in Arizona. It's called Poston Internment Camp.
And then after the war, they literally had nothing to go back to. They were a young married couple and they had to figure out what are we gonna do. And going to school was not an option. Right?
[00:06:49] RORI: Yeah, yeah. So they stayed in Arizona.
[00:06:52] BARBARA: Yeah. And they moved to the Phoenix area and that's where I was raised and went to school.
And it's interesting to me, 'cause the only Asians I knew were my family and my cousins two blocks away.
[00:07:04] RORI: Wow.
Okay. So it wasn't a common path that people who were interned in that camp stayed in Arizona and moved to Phoenix. It wasn't, there wasn't like a big Japanese American community.
[00:07:14] BARBARA: They were in and around and they were farmers, but they were dispersed, but we didn't have them as our neighbors or in our schools.
And it wasn't until, and I find this kind of funny, until I came to the University of Washington. And I taught my first class of like 300 intro bio students that I looked up to the auditorium. I thought, where are all these Asians coming from?
[00:07:36] RORI: You were like in an Asian majority space, like maybe for the first time.
[00:07:40] BARBARA: Many students. I hadn't seen that concentration because I was, it stopped me at any time, but I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. And then I went to graduate school in Bloomington, Indiana, which is like, there are no minorities. At the time in Bloomington, just a college town.
[00:07:55] RORI: Well, before you tell us more about Bloomington, what was it like going to high school?
Was it like growing up in Phoenix being like the Asian American family amongst a lot of Latina and white families? What was that experience like?
[00:08:07] BARBARA: I don't know about you, but I didn't get a lot out of high
school. I don't remember much about the high school activities and like that,
but
[00:08:15] EMILIA: So what, what was your mindset, let's say, but as a senior in high school or junior, like there was an expectation that you were going to go to college, but did you know what you wanted to study or where you wanted to go?
[00:08:25] BARBARA: I knew I didn't want to go to community college and my parents had sent my brothers, they'll laugh at me when I tell them this, but to all the way from Phoenix to Tucson, they had and it was like, oh my God, they were kind of like too independent and my father got really worried about the girls. So he made my two older sisters go to community college, Phoenix College, like 10 miles away before they could go to the university.
And here I am. The Pipsqueak. Right? And I'm thinking, I want to go to the university. So I took Phoenix college classes during high school. So I can say to him, I'm sorry, dad, I got to go to college with my sisters. Cause I already did the community college thing. So I actually got to go to Arizona state university, which is 12 miles away.
But it was a big, you know, it's a big deal.
[00:09:14] RORI: But you got to start there.
[00:09:15] BARBARA: Yeah, I got to start there. Yeah.
[00:09:17] RORI: And were your sisters at ASU as well, or?
[00:09:19] BARBARA: Yeah.
[00:09:20] RORI: Okay.
[00:09:20] BARBARA: We're only a year and a half apart, each of us, so we're like this little academic ladder.
[00:09:25] RORI: Yeah. Yeah. So you were all in school together?
[00:09:28] BARBARA: Yeah, pretty much.
[00:09:29] RORI: That's really special.
What did they study in school?
[00:09:31] BARBARA: Food and nutrition. I tried that and I thought, I can't do that. I don't know about your summer jobs, but I tried working with like at restaurants and I go, I can't do that. But then it's always one of my favorite party things to do. And you guys may do this too, is go around and ask my SciTicket friends, how did you start in science like you're doing now?
Yeah. What was your first memory that science was for you?
[00:09:54] RORI: Yeah, that's our question. I'm like, you took the words from our mouth.
[00:09:58] BARBARA: Yeah, okay. For me, it was the elementary school teachers that did science fairs that I would win in our school and he would put me up there and he would say, demo your little experiment.
But I also remember a fair. teacher. I was very shy and people find it hard to believe because I yak too much now, but the fifth-grade teacher who invented a play and she put me in a lab coat and she told me I had a role as Arky, the archeologist. And I stood up there, I wasn't a rock or an animal or a bunch of bones.
And you know, and I, one of my things I want to tell you talk about because I just talked to somebody, I think he was at either OSU or U of O doing a master's thesis on education and the impact of small things like field trips, you know, or those sorts of engagements and how you might sit down and have a cup of coffee and think about what you remember during your school years.
And it's those things, right?
[00:10:58] RORI: Those special moments. And I'm, now it's so interesting, I'm like, you were, you were just playing the part of a scientist in this school play, but you, you got to wear a lab coat, you got to like, kind of try on, what would it feel like, you're like, little Barbara's like, what would it feel like if I was Arky, the archaeologist?
[00:11:13] BARBARA: I had a, I had a clipboard. Clipboard and a pen.
[00:11:17] RORI: It's interesting because that's not the kind of science you're doing. Like, I don't, you know, I've seen your lab, but the idea, hell, that's so cool. And that's so cool that back when you were in elementary school, you got kind of enthusiasm and support for your projects.
[00:11:30] EMILIA: I
I think maybe that was the first time you became aware that maybe a scientist was in the realm of professions. But when did you actually feel like you were You wanted to be a scientist?
[00:11:41] BARBARA: Well, indulge me with a tiny little story about my fifth-grade science teacher who said, you're going to do a science project for fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grade.
You know how they did all the science things. And I can remember every single project I did. And then he would bring you up to the front row if he thought your project was good. And then he selected four or five kids to take to the state science fair. And that was the first time I set out on Arizona State University because Mr.
Martindale took a pack of kids in his station wagon. And guess what, gals? They were all boys except for me. And I said to him, I don't want to go.
[00:12:24] RORI: Because of the gender situation, you're like,
[00:12:26] BARBARA: I don't want to be in that car with all those boys. And I remember always being at the top of the class with them, but I'm thinking a whole day with these guys.
And this is my lesson, I guess, about the little gestures that make a lifetime. can make a difference. He said, don't worry, Barbara, you just show up on Saturday and I will bring a girl. And he brought Mrs. Martin. And she took me by the hand and she spent the whole day with me, just the two of us walking together.
And I thought to myself, you know, those are the kinds of impactful little things that will stick in a mind with a little girl that says, okay, this is doable. And that was my first experience. I think I was maybe nine or so, so I said, okay, the girls can do this. And I go to this big fair and they're mostly boys, but they're wearing their little ties and there's me and Mrs.Martindale and some other girls. So I think, um, for us, you know, that don't envision ourselves as scientists yet, that to me was the landmark. But my next big thing was, as I said, my sisters and I, and my brothers worked hard our way to pay tuition for college. It was a lot of money when you were on a farming income.
Um, It's like you go to class, you get in your car and you drive to your job. And then I go into an elevator and a technician is posting those little signs up that say lab assistant. And I tell my undergraduates, this is kind of cheating. They used to have the telephone number and they cut little things and you're supposed to tear off one of them.
Well, I took the whole thing.
[00:13:58] RORI: You were like, no one else is calling in for this job.
[00:14:02] BARBARA: Well, and then I thought, well, then I realized I probably shouldn't have done that. The minute she posted it and got off her floor, I just took it down. I applied for the job and I got it. And then I started working in a lab.
And that was how over time people might, the technician would say, you know, you're really good at this. You shouldn't have to just rinse dishes all day. Let me help you on a project. And then the PI said, here's the project. And that started the whole thing. They were so welcoming and opening. And my pi, Dr.
McCoy said, you know, you should go to graduate school. Okay. I don't know how you guys learned about graduate school, but I said, what's that?
[00:14:41] RORI: Uhhuh? And wait, what kind of science were you doing with Dr. McCoy? What lab was it?
[00:14:45] BARBARA: Oh, very good. Science for me. 'cause it set what my interests were. We were in vitro culturing, mammalian, cytes.
[00:14:52] RORI: Oh, okay.
[00:14:53] BARBARA: To get myotic maturation. So he would send me to the butcher to get it. pig reproductive tracts. I would bring them back and we would harvest the oocytes and we would culture them in various amounts of progesterone and estrogen to see what kinds of combinations would allow it to go past meiosis one to meiosis two in completion.
[00:15:12] RORI: Wow. And this is like IVF before in vitro fertilization was a thing. Is that right?
[00:15:18] BARBARA: It was, although Dr. Mulgoy was connected to people that did some of the first in vitro fertilization things and those individuals. would start looking out for you. He said, you should go to graduate school. Then he said, oh, you got to take this test called the G.
I said, what's that? He said, I don't know. He goes, well, just sign up. So I took two, two or three pencils. I didn't have a clue what that test was. I took it and I did. I just did awful. But I had really good grades and I had good letters of recommendation. But I say this because my PhD advisor, who I'm going to have to remind him about this story, said to me, God, you seem so smart.
Why'd you do so terribly on that exam? And I remember hearing that from him several times. That's why when someone said, I don't know about your graduate programs, but no more GREs, I thought,
[00:16:08] RORI: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:16:09] BARBARA: So, you know, those little hurdles. That people don't recognize that some of us come in completely unprepared for.
[00:16:15] EMILIA: Yeah, you didn't take hours and hours of like training.
[00:16:18] RORI: Yeah, you didn't like read the book or take a class or anything. You just were like, Oh, I guess I need to solve it.
[00:16:24] BARBARA: Yeah. He said, go get a PhD. And I go, what? Are you trying? And he had connections as did my, my other mentor at ASU. And I applied for just master's programs because I thought, what?
I got to check this out. Then I landed in Bloomington and my mentor said, you should apply for PhDs. And I said, Oh, okay. Right. So I kind of feel like I was so naive, but my mentors took care of me.
[00:16:49] RORI: Uh huh.
[00:16:50] BARBARA: And every step of the way they said you could do this, I was a little cautious and I said, um, okay, I'll try it.
And that's what happened to me. And then when I finished my PhD, uh, one of the great, really wonderful postdocs in the department was just starting his lab at the Carnegie and I met him at a Xerox machine and he said he was just starting his lab and I knew he was really great and I said, can I do a postdoc with you?
He said, okay.
[00:17:13] RORI: Oh my God, just like over the Xerox machine? Oh my Wow. Dang it.
[00:17:19] EMILIA: When you saw that person, did you know, I'm going to ask them right now if they, if I can do a postdoc with them?
[00:17:24] BARBARA: Everybody was buzzing about him.
At least in my field, he's a real superstar. His name is Alan Spradling. And he invented this technique called P element gene transformation in Drosophila.
[00:17:36] RORI: What's that?
[00:17:36] BARBARA: It means that it was the first time we were able to introduce genes into the fruit fly, which is what I work on.
[00:17:42] RORI: Okay.
[00:17:43] BARBARA: and manipulate. I do forward genetics, genetic mutations, but then you could make these constructs, And I was very lucky because as a graduate student, I worked, I was one of the first graduate students in the labs I worked in as a postdoc.
Postdoc, I was his first postdoc. So, uh, it's sort of an opportune times where these technologies allowed me then to get a good footing.
[00:18:07] EMILIA: What did your family think about you becoming a scientist and doing a postdoc
[00:18:13] BARBARA: I wish I could ask them more directly now.
[00:18:16] RORI: Of course.
[00:18:17] BARBARA: You know, they're long gone, but I remember my father coming to visit in Indiana and I remember him saying, You moved all the way out here to do that.
[00:18:28] RORI: Oh, he was unimpressed, huh?
[00:18:30] EMILIA: He sounds like my dad.
[00:18:32] BARBARA: Well, and you know, he's very practical. And I was working, Emilia, on these funny little amphibians at the time called axolotls, which are called mud puppies. And he said, I could have gotten you some of those. But then when I got this job and I'm sitting in my living room where I remember at a blue chair, when he came and he says, where's your furniture?
I said, dad, I'm saving for a computer. And he goes, get your priorities straight. We went and we bought him this blue chair that sits right across from me. And he did say to me, Oh, I get it now. You're a teacher. And he says, Are you going to start dressing decently?
[00:19:11] RORI: Wow.
[00:19:12] BARBARA: I never resented it because it wasn't where he was coming from.
And all he did was really support us to go to college and he'd save up and he'd help me buy my first car and he'd save all of us and help put a down payment on our house.
[00:19:24] RORI: Yeah.
[00:19:25] BARBARA: on a farmer's salary. My mother was more like, she goes, I once wanted to be a med tech. I bet that's why you're a scientist.
[00:19:33] EMILIA: She was proud. She was proud.
[00:19:35] BARBARA: But then my dad, I overheard my dad with a conversation with one of his best friends, whose son was getting a PhD in chemistry at Stanford. And Mike was talking all about Ralphie and how proud he was. And he said to my dad, what about Barbara? And I was in the kitchen studying. He goes, I don't know what she's doing, but she seems happy.
[00:19:53] RORI: Is that just a statement or what?
[00:19:55] BARBARA: Yeah, but I love remembering his perspective. He came to visit me at the Carnegie and you know how we put posters on the walls of our scientific discoveries and meetings and he's a farmer so he knew about caenorhabdite, he knew about nematodes. in the big wrist, but I mean, a fruit fly, what do you study a fruit fly for?
So he's meandering in the halls waiting for me and he points to somebody else's poster on Sea Elegance and he actually says to me, now there's It helps put your feet on the ground, right? And to know that a lot of our students out there, they're experiencing the same thing that I think it's sometimes it's hard for them to pull themselves out of these massively large classes that we have at the University of Washington and not feel unusual or at it.
And I think I mentioned to Rori, now I, I'm sort of overseeing these two young Hispanic guys that are first in the generation. And one of them said to me, can I ask you a question? And he said, did you get a lot out of college? And I know that's a question he would not have asked a lot of his peers or some of his other professors because I had told him I was first generation also.
So to me, those are the meaningful one-on-one kind of quiet interactions that I had, maybe you had, that made a difference, that you could have an honest talk in a safe space. I think that's really a privilege that we have as instructors and guidance, you know. Trainers of undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs to say, yeah, I get it.I hear you. I see you. So
[00:21:27] EMILIA: yeah, no, for sure. These random interactions sometimes can lead or, you know, can provide like a new path or like when somebody said to you, Oh, you should do a PhD. You're like, what's that? It's just a comment, but there you, you, you took that path.
[00:21:42] BARBARA: And I want to, um, make that a message.
I think I had the privilege of listening to your interviews for many other women who do really big things. And
[00:21:51] RORI: I felt sort of humbled,
[00:21:53] BARBARA: But then I thought, you know what? We're each in our own little environments, right? And we know the world needs to change and it needs to change in a big way. And we're impatient because we're problem solvers.
And the things that boys me up sometimes is to realize the privilege we have in interacting with Barbaras who might not have seen themselves in the academic pathway.
[00:22:16] RORI: That's the most motivating, right?
I want to hear just a little bit about the science. Like you got so into the science. It sounds like you had great timing.
You were in labs who were developing technologies that were like kind of that were like really changing what was possible and you got really stoked about DNA packaging and kind of molecular mechanisms for gene expression regulation and exceptions to that. Like what fascinated you about that subject and like why did you get into it?
[00:22:43] BARBARA: Yeah, it's a question I think about and you think about all the time when you're writing the next grant and is this the right time to continue in this field or whatever. And I've always used the gut check about what questions keep me up at night. And those are the ones that I'll do anything to try to pursue within my human capacity.
I think it's really hard for young scientists. that feel like they kind of had to crank the wheel sometimes and respond to the trends. I never did that. I might have been more successful in science if I had, but I was very lucky. The one transition I want to tell you about, it was a very small lab, but my mentor, who I just talked to a couple of months ago, started treating me like a colleague instead of a graduate student, and that was empowering.
And I went in with a crazy model that I wouldn't tell him about because it was crazy, and I went to his office. You'll have experiences like this and told him about the model and he just stood still. I thought, oh, it's really stupid. And then he opened the front door in his office and pulled out a model that was very much like it.
And then when I turned in my dissertation, he said, we're going to publish your first chapter as a chapter in a book. So that to me gave me the confidence that I really needed to continue on in science and I probably wouldn't have otherwise. My postdoc. where they invented this new technology. And my lesson there was that we were so excited about the technology.
All of the postdocs in my lab, in Jerry Rubin's lab, jumped on it, jumped on a set of genes and did pretty much the same thing. There were like eight of us. That was at the time, really good for the labs, really good for the science, but it was terrible for the postdocs, in my opinion. Going out to the job market, there'd be three of us on the job market every year.
And I thought, You just changed the name of the gene and, you know, put a new mask on and it's the same story. That to me was a lesson in what's good for the lab may not be good for the trainees. It's a kind of hard thing as a young person. person starting your lab because you don't want person X like Rori to walk in and she'd be specific game one and Emilia walk in and she'd be specific game two. But I kind of worry that sometimes that is what happens because of our granting cycles. So what I learned from that is that I didn't want a large lab. I wanted a small lab where everyone could have their individual projects. So my lab environments have always been small. We should have published more. I should have gotten more money.
[00:25:11] RORI: I mean, it is your lab. It's like the Wakamoto lab. The way you make it has to be something you love.
[00:25:15] BARBARA: Yeah. But you have a responsibility to keep those, those individuals that want to work with you funded. So it's, it's a hard thing.
[00:25:23] RORI: So you were on the job market. Along with all these other postdocs, how did it go? I mean, did you, you got your job at U Dub, but tell us the tale that got you there.
[00:25:31] BARBARA: Well, it went great because the technology was overwhelmingly so needed. It was a P element transformation and Jerry Rubin and Alan Spradley invented it themselves and their whole cohort of postdocs. We all got jobs. We were very lucky people recognized that it opened up a new thing.
But it said to me, I took the technique, but I didn't take the questions with me when I went to my new lab. And that's very unusual. So I started a whole new project that was very hard to do because people usually take their postdoc questions.
[00:26:04] RORI: Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:04] BARBARA: For lab. But I decided I would go back to questions that again, kept me up at night.
[00:26:09] EMILIA: Was this because you didn't like those questions?
[00:26:11] BARBARA: They didn't keep me up at night. And I thought there were enough people working on them. And then for better or worse, I get interested in things that are, are maybe understudied. At the time I was a tenure, I did, people said, you don't have enough publications and I had to explain my way out of this box that say, if you don't bring tools with you, you've got to develop them.
And people around my university, the ones that really counted, came through for me and I got them. And I got tenure, but it wasn't because I published six or seven papers. I did get my grants, but I only had three papers, so that was hard. I decided I wanted to go back and study heterochromatin. Now, everybody knows what heterochromatin is now, but in, when I started in the mid 80s, everyone said, what are you, nuts?
Why don't you go back to what you did your graduate work on or your postdoc? It was risky for me, but I found this university as opposed to many other universities I went to that said, okay, you got a good record, take this job. But I would look at people at my stage or a little bit before, and they weren't doing experiments anymore.
They were in their labs writing grants, you know, at the Princeton's, the Yale's, MIT's. And then I came here at the University of Washington and the PIs were in their labs on a Saturday and I thought that's more comfortable for me. So I knew myself well enough to say, okay, I want a small lab and I still want to work with my hands.
And it was a good decision for me. When you start a new lab, no matter where you are, it's hard. The first few years are really hard and you have to define. You're always questioning the right decisions or not. You need a supportive intellectual environment. Here I had people at the Hutch, people with genetics or genome science that said, Oh, good for you.
Go for it. And that's why I ended up here. And I haven't moved. I'm like a rock.
[00:27:56] RORI: Well, that's interesting too, though. You've been there 39 years?
[00:28:00] EMILIA: Did you ever consider moving?
[00:28:01] BARBARA: I did. I did when it was questionable. I mean, I'm not afraid to admit this. It was questionable whether I would get tenure because they said I didn't publish enough, even though I had grant support and good reviews.
So I went out there and I started applying for jobs and then it came through. And then I love working here. I love the, and I think as Rori can attest, people come to the Northwest, to the University of Oregon University to stay. I think. It's very special.
[00:28:30] RORI: Pacific Northwest is very special. Seattle is a great town.
[00:28:33] BARBARA: I think we invest in each other and we invest in each other's success and we sort of put on these little earphones when somebody tries to recruit our peers away from us and we just hope they like Seattle well enough to stay. And we've been really lucky in that regard. I think the quality of the science is so good.
[00:28:51] EMILIA: I think the fact that you've been there for 39 years makes us think that you must have so much knowledge, right? Like, you know, this institution so well, you know how things work. I was talking before the interview that one of the things that was really difficult was, you know, you move, you lose what you know, and you have to like, navigate this new system, but you, you're like full of knowledge.
And so does that make it easier to create change at an institution?
[00:29:17] BARBARA: Well, I would say the advice from several people, as I was going from assistant to associate to full professor, um, you know, you get all sorts of advice and you have to decide what you're going to listen to and how you're going to continue to grow.
And it's very easy to just stop growing. But I think the things that we have going for us, I always say, is that we love to solve problems, right? And, you know, discovery is kind of, to me, the luxury of sitting in a day in your lab and being the first to figure out what this gene does. I mean, I love that.
And when you see, the institution locked into some old-fashioned ideas and you've been here. You just gotta change it. And this is my advice to you too, right? We have to figure out when's the right time for you to make that change. Because it can come at the cost of your valuable time. And if I were to go back and look at my CV, which I did when I prepared all my retirement stuff, is I thought, oh, I thought, oh my god, I did so much service.
Which one of these service components was really worth it? I did a lot of training. I ran a training grant. I ran a huge science education grant. I served on the college camp. I could go on and on. And there's nothing like running a training grant. I don't know if you two have done that. Yeah. To show, to learn how not to train students from the colleagues that make mistakes or the students that come and tell you as a neutral party, what went and what didn't go wrong.
I learned a lot from those experiences, but I think Um, I was talking to another colleague. I said, why did we do so much service? And she said, I guess I thought it was part of the job. And then I looked up and I noticed all these males weren't doing it. So that's what I would say that, Emilia said, I have, I have a lot of knowledge about what doesn't work in institutions, even my own, such a big institution.
And I know what projects now to just wait on until you get the right leader in place. That's not going to make it disappear.
[00:31:11] EMILIA: Like you mentioned, there are differences between the amount of service that the women were doing versus the men. It's not transparent, like who's doing more service necessarily. I guess, how do you know that you're doing too much service?
[00:31:25] BARBARA: I think I would say, and I doubt if very many males in my department are going to listen to me on this podcast, but when I look around to them, they are professors or way past by the time they started doing stuff I was doing as a young associate prof. And they say to me, God, you know, it takes a lot of time.
And I said, what have you been doing all these years? And I figure out they, they're very more. self-centered about what they choose. So I would say choose one or two things that are really important to you. And I think for us, for me in particular, it's this idea about diversity and, and access. And if I had put all my energies in that, I would find it still incredibly rewarding.
That would be my advice. I'm proud of my record. But the change is very slow, but your time is your superpower, you know.
[00:32:16] RORI: It's the most valuable. And it's interesting, I mean, I hear you and I'm listening when you're encouraging Emilia and I, who are associate professors, to think deeply about one or two kinds of service projects that we would like to do.
And I mean, clearly we're we're investing in Science Wise right now. That's one thing that we're doing. But I think about, and Barbara, you and I had talked another time about this, people who are at an even earlier career stage, people who are in undergrad or in grad school and the asks that are being made of them.
And I'm curious how, you know, you were at, you continue to be at U Dub for 39 years. How have you seen that change?
[00:32:52] BARBARA: I think we're asking our students to do a lot more than we should. You know, and I understand the most important thing for them to learn is how to be a good scientist, how to write, and how to communicate.
But they're being bombarded. We're putting them on departmental committees. I mean, some of, some of them actually want to do that, and they want to be graduate representatives in faculty meetings. And I go, don't do that. And also the demands of the public, making a publication now. I think I will get higher and higher and higher.
The demand for them to be collaborators is higher and higher and higher. I think we have to really advise individuals as individuals and make sure that it's the end of their PhD. They have ownership of an important part of a project, not just as because when they go on the job market, as you both know, and I know this kind of scares graduate students.
It's not enough to have a really good PhD and a not-so-good postdoc or a really good postdoc and an inconsequential graduate student. You'll rise to the top if you've got accomplishments that you can own at both levels. Because when we look for new colleagues, right, like in your new department, you're looking for someone who has a record of being exceptional at all stages.
And I think we romanticize the science sometimes to our students about being a team player and a collaborative, and then they end up being one. name on a whole list on a publication, and they got to move their way to the top. But I think we really need to take care of individuals, training and graduates, not sort of let our postdocs train our graduate students, and our technicians train our graduate students, which happens in bigger labs, I think.
[00:34:40] RORI: Also, I feel like sometimes because grad school can be much more free form than faculty life, we can be like, Oh, this can fit in with this person's agenda too. Oh, also they could be on that committee. Or maybe they should write this other thing that's, you know, public writing. And all of these are, you know, useful and wonderful things.
But when we ask so much of our students, then it can be difficult for them to balance that with kind of developing the academic currency of authorship and grants, which for better or for worse is still how a lot of decisions are made.
[00:35:14] BARBARA: And they're so big-hearted and idealistic. They want to do it. It's hard to keep them from volunteering to do it.
I don't know if you find that at Brown, Emilia, because, but I actually think we're pulling them in too many different directions.
[00:35:26] EMILIA: Yeah. Yeah. If I think back about my own experience, I mean, there were a couple of things that I was committed to, but I did have a lot of space to think and to do. And I think that was really good because that's when you are creative or you start when you have that space, not when you're, you know, being pulled in all these different directions.
[00:35:47] BARBARA: And I always say to them, I guarantee it, you'll be able to do outreach to your heart's desire later.
[00:35:53] EMILIA: Yeah.
[00:35:54] BARBARA: Right now, study for your oral exam. Protecting our graduate students is a good idea. And I think postdocs too, I think we have to really keep in mind the short timeline they have to accomplish what they need to accomplish.
I think sometimes we keep them here as postdocs these days.
[00:36:13] EMILIA: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:36:14] BARBARA: That's Longer than in their best interest sometimes.
[00:36:17] RORI: Like, it's not like you should do zero outreach and be in zero meetings and zero committees and zero mentoring in grad school. Like, that might feel awful for some people because that is what feeds them.
[00:36:29] BARBARA: Too isolated.
[00:36:30] RORI: Yeah, and there's like some kind of balance that needs to be found.
[00:36:35] BARBARA: Yeah, pick one or two, you know, ask them what's more important to you and do it well. Do it consistently with a track record.
And then I think it does help to say, trust me, you'll have plenty of time. Yeah, so.
[00:36:51] RORI: Other people can do this work too.
[00:36:53] EMILIA: I completely agree with that. You mentioned to invest in professional societies. Are you talking about becoming a leader in those societies or what type of investing were you thinking?
[00:37:05] BARBARA: So my PhD advisor told me don't do anything at the departmental level because it'll disappear with the next year. I didn't listen to that, but he's right.
So I started finding more satisfaction working at the college and level because the people that are generally college leaders are people that are trained to lead. And so I would pick the committees carefully. I think the society, professional societies if it's the right one, if it's a good society for you, it'll give you those professional networks.
[00:37:41] RORI: You want to be on a committee and you want to make the connection so that like when somebody is developing a new technology, they're like, Hey, can I collaborate in your system? Or, Hey, I'm making data and you have a method that I want to apply, or you want somebody to like nominate you for the award, like you want these people.
[00:37:56] BARBARA: Right. But don't you, I don't know which societies you're in, but for me, it's the Genetic Society of America or the American Society for Cell Biology. The nice thing about being active and staying active in those is they start to develop projects that you don't have to. So I just mean, sometimes your situation could differ, especially Rori, because you've got this new exciting department.
So you're really making important decisions in this timeframe. But in my department, which is a very big. old-fashioned department. I just found that we women weren't having the impact that we needed to know. And somebody said to me, just stop, stop banging your head against the brick wall. And I go, that's what I needed to hear.
[00:38:37] RORI: Which was also true. You, you were.
[00:38:39] BARBARA: Then you got to make the decision of when to move on. That's an important one. Because you turn out to be so good, you've gotten training grants twice, they just want you to do it all. And then you get a certain interval that you feel like you're going to learn and then say, okay, I got it.
I learned everything. I'm leaving. And then put your foot down and say, I'm not doing it anymore because otherwise you'll be doing it for decades. And that's totally. That's like too much.
[00:39:03] EMILIA: So have you, are you planning to retire? Were you in that transition?
[00:39:07] BARBARA: I retired a year and a half ago. I wasn't really thinking about it and then a switch flipped and I decided to do it.
And the reason I'm doing it is because. I wanted to get back to the bench 100 percent of the time because I'd been away from it so long. I can have a little retirement lab and do my own. I have a collaborator, ex postdoc at Seattle U and now I'm working in my lab and I can go in when I want, but I'm still doing like, gosh, I wonder what this gene does and I'm having a blast.
I call this my learning for luxury because I don't have to read anything that I think is irrelevant. I can start reading a paper and finish it.
So that's what I've actually really looked forward to and I think, uh, people's journeys are very different, but mine, I'm really happy after a year and a half at least, you know, going to my lab and figuring out what this gene does or that nobody else has even thought was interesting.
[00:40:06] RORI: You're making retirement sound real good, joining it and getting to pursue your passion questions.
[00:40:13] BARBARA: It's the transition though, because I realize now how very busy I was on a day-to-day basis of balancing all those things. So when you get to retirement, you deserve that time, but it's a lot to ask of faculty to do what they do in these institutions that we're at.
[00:40:31] RORI: Okay, Barbara, now we're gonna do our little segment called Revise and Resubmit, where we invite you to share with us something that, in retrospect, you would change about your career or about some aspect of science culture.
[00:40:44] BARBARA: Ooh. I think personally, I'll say to you, because I'm, I'm really excited about your career at your stage, is also this idea about choosing what you do for your service carefully and selfishly so it'll benefit you. I think I did way too much service to tell you the truth at the cost of my formative years where I could have really concentrated on my science more.
I actually think, and I listened to a couple of your other interviewees, this idea about where we sit today for DEI efforts and why we aren't further ahead is huge to me. And I keep thinking what in the world is going on. And I've mentioned this to Rori recently when I see in the news that universities are being pounded for investing in DEIJ efforts.
And I wonder what is going wrong with the communication. Why should anybody question the importance of access? I, I just, I don't know what we're doing wrong. So that's what I would change. I would change the system in some ways to educate. us all that there should be no question about access and equity and diversity.
As you guys know, if we don't get that right, we are like, we're sort of failing.
[00:42:05] RORI: No, we're just digging ourselves into a hole.
[00:42:08] BARBARA: Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I would say. I'd say I would have to think harder about that. what we're doing, where we invest our energies to educate the public about. There should be no question about giving access to public higher education to anybody out there that has the talent.
[00:42:23] RORI: Well I love that revise and resubmit because like you said it's not just revising academia or science it's actually a whole cultural shift and I couldn't agree more. Well, Barbara, thank you so much for joining us here today. I feel like I've learned a ton from your stories and your perspectives and even your straight-up advice for us.
We're taking notes here. Thank you so much for joining us.
[00:42:48] BARBARA: Well, thank you for your time and your generosity in doing this.
[00:42:52] EMILIA: I definitely took some notes and it's been super helpful and I will reflect on what you said more in the coming days. So thank you for being with us.
[00:43:02] BARBARA: Thank you again.
[00:43:04] EMILIA: Thanks for listening.
[00:43:05] RORI: Check out Dr. Wakimoto's University of Washington grad student equity and excellence program. We'll put a link in the show notes.
[00:43:12] EMILIA: This episode was produced and edited by Maribel Quesada. Smith Sound Engineering by Keegan Stromberg. Special thanks to Dr. Barbara Wakimoto. The hosts of Science Wise are Rori Rolfes and me, Emilia Huerta Sanchez.
[00:00:11] EMILIA: And I'm Emilia Huerta Sanchez, Associate Professor in Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology at Brown University.
[00:00:18] RORI: Today, I am so excited that we're going to be talking with Dr. Barbara Wakamoto, geneticist and professor emerita at the University of Washington in the departments of biology and genome sciences. I first met Dr. Wakamoto as a grad student at the UW when I was on a training grant that she was in charge of.
Thank you, Dr. Wakimoto, for that. After I finished my PhD and before I started my postdoc, I took some time to teach a molecular evolution course at the UW. It was my first time as the instructor of record for a course, and I clearly remember going to Dr. Wakimoto to ask her about how one does go about teaching an engaging, growthful, and accessible class.
Thanks. She took the time to explain backward course design to me and talk about active learning, and when I was struggling to soak it all in, she gave me a book right there on the spot, which I read and referenced a ton as I taught the course. Dr. Wakamoto has been doing research about the challenging and mysterious topic of heterochromatin since before it was cool, and was a Washington Research Foundation Professor of Basic Biological Sciences from 2005 to 2007 and became a fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science in 2007.
Listeners, I am so excited to share our conversation with Dr. Wakimoto with you today.
Dr. Barbara Wakimoto, we are so thrilled to talk with you today. Thank you for joining us here on Science Wise.
[00:01:43] BARBARA: Thank you for the opportunity.
[00:01:44] EMILIA: We're very excited to have you today,
[00:01:46] RORI: Barbara. Back when I was a student at UW, I learned a lot from you that really impacted me, but something I didn't learn about and I didn't ask about then, it would have felt really bold, is about you.
But now, here I am as an associate professor and I get to talk to you in this very different context, so I would love to hear about it. Like, where did you grow up? What did your parents do?
[00:02:05] BARBARA: I actually am a daughter of farmers in Arizona. And I like to tell this story, especially to my first-generation students.
[00:02:15] EMILIA: What kind of farming?
[00:02:16] BARBARA: We did vegetables, cotton, alfalfa, and I was the youngest of five kids. Wow. And we would literally start weeding. The rows of the field and I was the squirt, you know, the little, the little one. So we'd all start at the beginning of the row and start weeding or start seeding the corn or whatever.
And then they'd all go ahead and then they'd turn around and have to pick me up. That's where we spent our time when we weren't going to school during the summers. We would all farm as a family. So it's a very close-knit and I have to say incredibly hardworking family. So when people say. you're working hard I just kind of say we've done that before. But yeah, it was interesting to me because I had no idea that a woman could be a scientist. I was just talking to one of my sisters the other day and asked her what she would have been if she hadn't done her career path. She said, you know, we were girls. If we had been boys, we would all be farmers.
And, and that would be true.
[00:03:15] RORI: Oh, interesting. So what did you, what did you picture women did?
[00:03:17] BARBARA: Well, my mother was essentially a farmer, too, because she and my father ran the farm. She did the books. So I didn't distinguish a gender between the two, but as an occupation, it was a full-time. And it occurred to me, too, as sort of I grew up, how, you know, Bold and creative.
My father had to be a farmer and how many risks they took. And they raised a family of five on a farmer's income. And we didn't, they didn't dwell on how hard it was, but I look back and they had bought their house in Phoenix for 8, 000. And had to mortgage it and re-mortgage it and re-mortgage it to keep the farm running.
So it sort of puts things in perspective that helps me identify. And I know, Emilia, you worked with a lot of those kids that you were set in. Rori at SFSU, those first generation kids that were farmers, sons and daughters are farmers. I identified with them immediately because they go home and they help their fathers cherry pick, or they, they're looking at every single dime and dollar when you go out to eat.
So I. I think that gives me a perspective that makes me happy that I'm in this field because I never ever envisioned it when I was young. The thing my parents did do though is they, we, they just told us you're going to college. There was no question, no assumptions.
[00:04:36] RORI: They had not gone to college. Why do you think they made it such a clear priority for you and all your siblings?
[00:04:41] BARBARA: All my siblings got college degrees. I have two older brothers and two older sisters. And it's interesting because my father and mother insisted we go to college. My brothers ended up being farmers. So they got degrees in agronomy or. management and they came back to the farm. My two sisters ended up both being dietitians and then there was me, right?
So I want to get back to Rori's question because I think this is really important and it's only been like one or two generations away. My parents, they were in their 20s when World War II began. They were American-born, but their parents were from Japan, immigrated from Japan in the late 1800s. And in 1942, you've all heard about this, especially if you're on the West Coast, President Roosevelt had an executive order that said all Japanese ancestors Pick up your stuff, we're moving you to the desert because you're a threat to national security.
[00:05:33] RORI: So your parents were interned, right?
[00:05:35] BARBARA: Yeah, they were interned for three years in their 20s, so they didn't have a choice.
[00:05:40] EMILIA: Were they married already, or?
[00:05:42] BARBARA: No, they met in camp and got married.
[00:05:44] RORI: Wow, they were like having their young lives.
[00:05:47] BARBARA: Yeah, and that really makes me appreciate how world forces can impact so many lives.
I mean, even today, the global struggles in Ukraine and the Middle East, and we see our students going through that, with their families or their, or their grandparents. And so that kind of reality to me strikes home. That I think a lot of our privileged students may not realize. And that to me is the value of having formats like this and allowing diverse students to mix in a classroom because otherwise, they might not know.
[00:06:19] RORI: Yeah. Did your parents live in Arizona before they were sent to internment camps or did they live in other places?
[00:06:25] BARBARA: They were like most Japanese in Southern California or on the West Coast. They were, you know, 120, 000 or so individuals that were moved. So my parents were put in the desert in Arizona. It's called Poston Internment Camp.
And then after the war, they literally had nothing to go back to. They were a young married couple and they had to figure out what are we gonna do. And going to school was not an option. Right?
[00:06:49] RORI: Yeah, yeah. So they stayed in Arizona.
[00:06:52] BARBARA: Yeah. And they moved to the Phoenix area and that's where I was raised and went to school.
And it's interesting to me, 'cause the only Asians I knew were my family and my cousins two blocks away.
[00:07:04] RORI: Wow.
Okay. So it wasn't a common path that people who were interned in that camp stayed in Arizona and moved to Phoenix. It wasn't, there wasn't like a big Japanese American community.
[00:07:14] BARBARA: They were in and around and they were farmers, but they were dispersed, but we didn't have them as our neighbors or in our schools.
And it wasn't until, and I find this kind of funny, until I came to the University of Washington. And I taught my first class of like 300 intro bio students that I looked up to the auditorium. I thought, where are all these Asians coming from?
[00:07:36] RORI: You were like in an Asian majority space, like maybe for the first time.
[00:07:40] BARBARA: Many students. I hadn't seen that concentration because I was, it stopped me at any time, but I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. And then I went to graduate school in Bloomington, Indiana, which is like, there are no minorities. At the time in Bloomington, just a college town.
[00:07:55] RORI: Well, before you tell us more about Bloomington, what was it like going to high school?
Was it like growing up in Phoenix being like the Asian American family amongst a lot of Latina and white families? What was that experience like?
[00:08:07] BARBARA: I don't know about you, but I didn't get a lot out of high
school. I don't remember much about the high school activities and like that,
but
[00:08:15] EMILIA: So what, what was your mindset, let's say, but as a senior in high school or junior, like there was an expectation that you were going to go to college, but did you know what you wanted to study or where you wanted to go?
[00:08:25] BARBARA: I knew I didn't want to go to community college and my parents had sent my brothers, they'll laugh at me when I tell them this, but to all the way from Phoenix to Tucson, they had and it was like, oh my God, they were kind of like too independent and my father got really worried about the girls. So he made my two older sisters go to community college, Phoenix College, like 10 miles away before they could go to the university.
And here I am. The Pipsqueak. Right? And I'm thinking, I want to go to the university. So I took Phoenix college classes during high school. So I can say to him, I'm sorry, dad, I got to go to college with my sisters. Cause I already did the community college thing. So I actually got to go to Arizona state university, which is 12 miles away.
But it was a big, you know, it's a big deal.
[00:09:14] RORI: But you got to start there.
[00:09:15] BARBARA: Yeah, I got to start there. Yeah.
[00:09:17] RORI: And were your sisters at ASU as well, or?
[00:09:19] BARBARA: Yeah.
[00:09:20] RORI: Okay.
[00:09:20] BARBARA: We're only a year and a half apart, each of us, so we're like this little academic ladder.
[00:09:25] RORI: Yeah. Yeah. So you were all in school together?
[00:09:28] BARBARA: Yeah, pretty much.
[00:09:29] RORI: That's really special.
What did they study in school?
[00:09:31] BARBARA: Food and nutrition. I tried that and I thought, I can't do that. I don't know about your summer jobs, but I tried working with like at restaurants and I go, I can't do that. But then it's always one of my favorite party things to do. And you guys may do this too, is go around and ask my SciTicket friends, how did you start in science like you're doing now?
Yeah. What was your first memory that science was for you?
[00:09:54] RORI: Yeah, that's our question. I'm like, you took the words from our mouth.
[00:09:58] BARBARA: Yeah, okay. For me, it was the elementary school teachers that did science fairs that I would win in our school and he would put me up there and he would say, demo your little experiment.
But I also remember a fair. teacher. I was very shy and people find it hard to believe because I yak too much now, but the fifth-grade teacher who invented a play and she put me in a lab coat and she told me I had a role as Arky, the archeologist. And I stood up there, I wasn't a rock or an animal or a bunch of bones.
And you know, and I, one of my things I want to tell you talk about because I just talked to somebody, I think he was at either OSU or U of O doing a master's thesis on education and the impact of small things like field trips, you know, or those sorts of engagements and how you might sit down and have a cup of coffee and think about what you remember during your school years.
And it's those things, right?
[00:10:58] RORI: Those special moments. And I'm, now it's so interesting, I'm like, you were, you were just playing the part of a scientist in this school play, but you, you got to wear a lab coat, you got to like, kind of try on, what would it feel like, you're like, little Barbara's like, what would it feel like if I was Arky, the archaeologist?
[00:11:13] BARBARA: I had a, I had a clipboard. Clipboard and a pen.
[00:11:17] RORI: It's interesting because that's not the kind of science you're doing. Like, I don't, you know, I've seen your lab, but the idea, hell, that's so cool. And that's so cool that back when you were in elementary school, you got kind of enthusiasm and support for your projects.
[00:11:30] EMILIA: I
I think maybe that was the first time you became aware that maybe a scientist was in the realm of professions. But when did you actually feel like you were You wanted to be a scientist?
[00:11:41] BARBARA: Well, indulge me with a tiny little story about my fifth-grade science teacher who said, you're going to do a science project for fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grade.
You know how they did all the science things. And I can remember every single project I did. And then he would bring you up to the front row if he thought your project was good. And then he selected four or five kids to take to the state science fair. And that was the first time I set out on Arizona State University because Mr.
Martindale took a pack of kids in his station wagon. And guess what, gals? They were all boys except for me. And I said to him, I don't want to go.
[00:12:24] RORI: Because of the gender situation, you're like,
[00:12:26] BARBARA: I don't want to be in that car with all those boys. And I remember always being at the top of the class with them, but I'm thinking a whole day with these guys.
And this is my lesson, I guess, about the little gestures that make a lifetime. can make a difference. He said, don't worry, Barbara, you just show up on Saturday and I will bring a girl. And he brought Mrs. Martin. And she took me by the hand and she spent the whole day with me, just the two of us walking together.
And I thought to myself, you know, those are the kinds of impactful little things that will stick in a mind with a little girl that says, okay, this is doable. And that was my first experience. I think I was maybe nine or so, so I said, okay, the girls can do this. And I go to this big fair and they're mostly boys, but they're wearing their little ties and there's me and Mrs.Martindale and some other girls. So I think, um, for us, you know, that don't envision ourselves as scientists yet, that to me was the landmark. But my next big thing was, as I said, my sisters and I, and my brothers worked hard our way to pay tuition for college. It was a lot of money when you were on a farming income.
Um, It's like you go to class, you get in your car and you drive to your job. And then I go into an elevator and a technician is posting those little signs up that say lab assistant. And I tell my undergraduates, this is kind of cheating. They used to have the telephone number and they cut little things and you're supposed to tear off one of them.
Well, I took the whole thing.
[00:13:58] RORI: You were like, no one else is calling in for this job.
[00:14:02] BARBARA: Well, and then I thought, well, then I realized I probably shouldn't have done that. The minute she posted it and got off her floor, I just took it down. I applied for the job and I got it. And then I started working in a lab.
And that was how over time people might, the technician would say, you know, you're really good at this. You shouldn't have to just rinse dishes all day. Let me help you on a project. And then the PI said, here's the project. And that started the whole thing. They were so welcoming and opening. And my pi, Dr.
McCoy said, you know, you should go to graduate school. Okay. I don't know how you guys learned about graduate school, but I said, what's that?
[00:14:41] RORI: Uhhuh? And wait, what kind of science were you doing with Dr. McCoy? What lab was it?
[00:14:45] BARBARA: Oh, very good. Science for me. 'cause it set what my interests were. We were in vitro culturing, mammalian, cytes.
[00:14:52] RORI: Oh, okay.
[00:14:53] BARBARA: To get myotic maturation. So he would send me to the butcher to get it. pig reproductive tracts. I would bring them back and we would harvest the oocytes and we would culture them in various amounts of progesterone and estrogen to see what kinds of combinations would allow it to go past meiosis one to meiosis two in completion.
[00:15:12] RORI: Wow. And this is like IVF before in vitro fertilization was a thing. Is that right?
[00:15:18] BARBARA: It was, although Dr. Mulgoy was connected to people that did some of the first in vitro fertilization things and those individuals. would start looking out for you. He said, you should go to graduate school. Then he said, oh, you got to take this test called the G.
I said, what's that? He said, I don't know. He goes, well, just sign up. So I took two, two or three pencils. I didn't have a clue what that test was. I took it and I did. I just did awful. But I had really good grades and I had good letters of recommendation. But I say this because my PhD advisor, who I'm going to have to remind him about this story, said to me, God, you seem so smart.
Why'd you do so terribly on that exam? And I remember hearing that from him several times. That's why when someone said, I don't know about your graduate programs, but no more GREs, I thought,
[00:16:08] RORI: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:16:09] BARBARA: So, you know, those little hurdles. That people don't recognize that some of us come in completely unprepared for.
[00:16:15] EMILIA: Yeah, you didn't take hours and hours of like training.
[00:16:18] RORI: Yeah, you didn't like read the book or take a class or anything. You just were like, Oh, I guess I need to solve it.
[00:16:24] BARBARA: Yeah. He said, go get a PhD. And I go, what? Are you trying? And he had connections as did my, my other mentor at ASU. And I applied for just master's programs because I thought, what?
I got to check this out. Then I landed in Bloomington and my mentor said, you should apply for PhDs. And I said, Oh, okay. Right. So I kind of feel like I was so naive, but my mentors took care of me.
[00:16:49] RORI: Uh huh.
[00:16:50] BARBARA: And every step of the way they said you could do this, I was a little cautious and I said, um, okay, I'll try it.
And that's what happened to me. And then when I finished my PhD, uh, one of the great, really wonderful postdocs in the department was just starting his lab at the Carnegie and I met him at a Xerox machine and he said he was just starting his lab and I knew he was really great and I said, can I do a postdoc with you?
He said, okay.
[00:17:13] RORI: Oh my God, just like over the Xerox machine? Oh my Wow. Dang it.
[00:17:19] EMILIA: When you saw that person, did you know, I'm going to ask them right now if they, if I can do a postdoc with them?
[00:17:24] BARBARA: Everybody was buzzing about him.
At least in my field, he's a real superstar. His name is Alan Spradling. And he invented this technique called P element gene transformation in Drosophila.
[00:17:36] RORI: What's that?
[00:17:36] BARBARA: It means that it was the first time we were able to introduce genes into the fruit fly, which is what I work on.
[00:17:42] RORI: Okay.
[00:17:43] BARBARA: and manipulate. I do forward genetics, genetic mutations, but then you could make these constructs, And I was very lucky because as a graduate student, I worked, I was one of the first graduate students in the labs I worked in as a postdoc.
Postdoc, I was his first postdoc. So, uh, it's sort of an opportune times where these technologies allowed me then to get a good footing.
[00:18:07] EMILIA: What did your family think about you becoming a scientist and doing a postdoc
[00:18:13] BARBARA: I wish I could ask them more directly now.
[00:18:16] RORI: Of course.
[00:18:17] BARBARA: You know, they're long gone, but I remember my father coming to visit in Indiana and I remember him saying, You moved all the way out here to do that.
[00:18:28] RORI: Oh, he was unimpressed, huh?
[00:18:30] EMILIA: He sounds like my dad.
[00:18:32] BARBARA: Well, and you know, he's very practical. And I was working, Emilia, on these funny little amphibians at the time called axolotls, which are called mud puppies. And he said, I could have gotten you some of those. But then when I got this job and I'm sitting in my living room where I remember at a blue chair, when he came and he says, where's your furniture?
I said, dad, I'm saving for a computer. And he goes, get your priorities straight. We went and we bought him this blue chair that sits right across from me. And he did say to me, Oh, I get it now. You're a teacher. And he says, Are you going to start dressing decently?
[00:19:11] RORI: Wow.
[00:19:12] BARBARA: I never resented it because it wasn't where he was coming from.
And all he did was really support us to go to college and he'd save up and he'd help me buy my first car and he'd save all of us and help put a down payment on our house.
[00:19:24] RORI: Yeah.
[00:19:25] BARBARA: on a farmer's salary. My mother was more like, she goes, I once wanted to be a med tech. I bet that's why you're a scientist.
[00:19:33] EMILIA: She was proud. She was proud.
[00:19:35] BARBARA: But then my dad, I overheard my dad with a conversation with one of his best friends, whose son was getting a PhD in chemistry at Stanford. And Mike was talking all about Ralphie and how proud he was. And he said to my dad, what about Barbara? And I was in the kitchen studying. He goes, I don't know what she's doing, but she seems happy.
[00:19:53] RORI: Is that just a statement or what?
[00:19:55] BARBARA: Yeah, but I love remembering his perspective. He came to visit me at the Carnegie and you know how we put posters on the walls of our scientific discoveries and meetings and he's a farmer so he knew about caenorhabdite, he knew about nematodes. in the big wrist, but I mean, a fruit fly, what do you study a fruit fly for?
So he's meandering in the halls waiting for me and he points to somebody else's poster on Sea Elegance and he actually says to me, now there's It helps put your feet on the ground, right? And to know that a lot of our students out there, they're experiencing the same thing that I think it's sometimes it's hard for them to pull themselves out of these massively large classes that we have at the University of Washington and not feel unusual or at it.
And I think I mentioned to Rori, now I, I'm sort of overseeing these two young Hispanic guys that are first in the generation. And one of them said to me, can I ask you a question? And he said, did you get a lot out of college? And I know that's a question he would not have asked a lot of his peers or some of his other professors because I had told him I was first generation also.
So to me, those are the meaningful one-on-one kind of quiet interactions that I had, maybe you had, that made a difference, that you could have an honest talk in a safe space. I think that's really a privilege that we have as instructors and guidance, you know. Trainers of undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs to say, yeah, I get it.I hear you. I see you. So
[00:21:27] EMILIA: yeah, no, for sure. These random interactions sometimes can lead or, you know, can provide like a new path or like when somebody said to you, Oh, you should do a PhD. You're like, what's that? It's just a comment, but there you, you, you took that path.
[00:21:42] BARBARA: And I want to, um, make that a message.
I think I had the privilege of listening to your interviews for many other women who do really big things. And
[00:21:51] RORI: I felt sort of humbled,
[00:21:53] BARBARA: But then I thought, you know what? We're each in our own little environments, right? And we know the world needs to change and it needs to change in a big way. And we're impatient because we're problem solvers.
And the things that boys me up sometimes is to realize the privilege we have in interacting with Barbaras who might not have seen themselves in the academic pathway.
[00:22:16] RORI: That's the most motivating, right?
I want to hear just a little bit about the science. Like you got so into the science. It sounds like you had great timing.
You were in labs who were developing technologies that were like kind of that were like really changing what was possible and you got really stoked about DNA packaging and kind of molecular mechanisms for gene expression regulation and exceptions to that. Like what fascinated you about that subject and like why did you get into it?
[00:22:43] BARBARA: Yeah, it's a question I think about and you think about all the time when you're writing the next grant and is this the right time to continue in this field or whatever. And I've always used the gut check about what questions keep me up at night. And those are the ones that I'll do anything to try to pursue within my human capacity.
I think it's really hard for young scientists. that feel like they kind of had to crank the wheel sometimes and respond to the trends. I never did that. I might have been more successful in science if I had, but I was very lucky. The one transition I want to tell you about, it was a very small lab, but my mentor, who I just talked to a couple of months ago, started treating me like a colleague instead of a graduate student, and that was empowering.
And I went in with a crazy model that I wouldn't tell him about because it was crazy, and I went to his office. You'll have experiences like this and told him about the model and he just stood still. I thought, oh, it's really stupid. And then he opened the front door in his office and pulled out a model that was very much like it.
And then when I turned in my dissertation, he said, we're going to publish your first chapter as a chapter in a book. So that to me gave me the confidence that I really needed to continue on in science and I probably wouldn't have otherwise. My postdoc. where they invented this new technology. And my lesson there was that we were so excited about the technology.
All of the postdocs in my lab, in Jerry Rubin's lab, jumped on it, jumped on a set of genes and did pretty much the same thing. There were like eight of us. That was at the time, really good for the labs, really good for the science, but it was terrible for the postdocs, in my opinion. Going out to the job market, there'd be three of us on the job market every year.
And I thought, You just changed the name of the gene and, you know, put a new mask on and it's the same story. That to me was a lesson in what's good for the lab may not be good for the trainees. It's a kind of hard thing as a young person. person starting your lab because you don't want person X like Rori to walk in and she'd be specific game one and Emilia walk in and she'd be specific game two. But I kind of worry that sometimes that is what happens because of our granting cycles. So what I learned from that is that I didn't want a large lab. I wanted a small lab where everyone could have their individual projects. So my lab environments have always been small. We should have published more. I should have gotten more money.
[00:25:11] RORI: I mean, it is your lab. It's like the Wakamoto lab. The way you make it has to be something you love.
[00:25:15] BARBARA: Yeah. But you have a responsibility to keep those, those individuals that want to work with you funded. So it's, it's a hard thing.
[00:25:23] RORI: So you were on the job market. Along with all these other postdocs, how did it go? I mean, did you, you got your job at U Dub, but tell us the tale that got you there.
[00:25:31] BARBARA: Well, it went great because the technology was overwhelmingly so needed. It was a P element transformation and Jerry Rubin and Alan Spradley invented it themselves and their whole cohort of postdocs. We all got jobs. We were very lucky people recognized that it opened up a new thing.
But it said to me, I took the technique, but I didn't take the questions with me when I went to my new lab. And that's very unusual. So I started a whole new project that was very hard to do because people usually take their postdoc questions.
[00:26:04] RORI: Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:04] BARBARA: For lab. But I decided I would go back to questions that again, kept me up at night.
[00:26:09] EMILIA: Was this because you didn't like those questions?
[00:26:11] BARBARA: They didn't keep me up at night. And I thought there were enough people working on them. And then for better or worse, I get interested in things that are, are maybe understudied. At the time I was a tenure, I did, people said, you don't have enough publications and I had to explain my way out of this box that say, if you don't bring tools with you, you've got to develop them.
And people around my university, the ones that really counted, came through for me and I got them. And I got tenure, but it wasn't because I published six or seven papers. I did get my grants, but I only had three papers, so that was hard. I decided I wanted to go back and study heterochromatin. Now, everybody knows what heterochromatin is now, but in, when I started in the mid 80s, everyone said, what are you, nuts?
Why don't you go back to what you did your graduate work on or your postdoc? It was risky for me, but I found this university as opposed to many other universities I went to that said, okay, you got a good record, take this job. But I would look at people at my stage or a little bit before, and they weren't doing experiments anymore.
They were in their labs writing grants, you know, at the Princeton's, the Yale's, MIT's. And then I came here at the University of Washington and the PIs were in their labs on a Saturday and I thought that's more comfortable for me. So I knew myself well enough to say, okay, I want a small lab and I still want to work with my hands.
And it was a good decision for me. When you start a new lab, no matter where you are, it's hard. The first few years are really hard and you have to define. You're always questioning the right decisions or not. You need a supportive intellectual environment. Here I had people at the Hutch, people with genetics or genome science that said, Oh, good for you.
Go for it. And that's why I ended up here. And I haven't moved. I'm like a rock.
[00:27:56] RORI: Well, that's interesting too, though. You've been there 39 years?
[00:28:00] EMILIA: Did you ever consider moving?
[00:28:01] BARBARA: I did. I did when it was questionable. I mean, I'm not afraid to admit this. It was questionable whether I would get tenure because they said I didn't publish enough, even though I had grant support and good reviews.
So I went out there and I started applying for jobs and then it came through. And then I love working here. I love the, and I think as Rori can attest, people come to the Northwest, to the University of Oregon University to stay. I think. It's very special.
[00:28:30] RORI: Pacific Northwest is very special. Seattle is a great town.
[00:28:33] BARBARA: I think we invest in each other and we invest in each other's success and we sort of put on these little earphones when somebody tries to recruit our peers away from us and we just hope they like Seattle well enough to stay. And we've been really lucky in that regard. I think the quality of the science is so good.
[00:28:51] EMILIA: I think the fact that you've been there for 39 years makes us think that you must have so much knowledge, right? Like, you know, this institution so well, you know how things work. I was talking before the interview that one of the things that was really difficult was, you know, you move, you lose what you know, and you have to like, navigate this new system, but you, you're like full of knowledge.
And so does that make it easier to create change at an institution?
[00:29:17] BARBARA: Well, I would say the advice from several people, as I was going from assistant to associate to full professor, um, you know, you get all sorts of advice and you have to decide what you're going to listen to and how you're going to continue to grow.
And it's very easy to just stop growing. But I think the things that we have going for us, I always say, is that we love to solve problems, right? And, you know, discovery is kind of, to me, the luxury of sitting in a day in your lab and being the first to figure out what this gene does. I mean, I love that.
And when you see, the institution locked into some old-fashioned ideas and you've been here. You just gotta change it. And this is my advice to you too, right? We have to figure out when's the right time for you to make that change. Because it can come at the cost of your valuable time. And if I were to go back and look at my CV, which I did when I prepared all my retirement stuff, is I thought, oh, I thought, oh my god, I did so much service.
Which one of these service components was really worth it? I did a lot of training. I ran a training grant. I ran a huge science education grant. I served on the college camp. I could go on and on. And there's nothing like running a training grant. I don't know if you two have done that. Yeah. To show, to learn how not to train students from the colleagues that make mistakes or the students that come and tell you as a neutral party, what went and what didn't go wrong.
I learned a lot from those experiences, but I think Um, I was talking to another colleague. I said, why did we do so much service? And she said, I guess I thought it was part of the job. And then I looked up and I noticed all these males weren't doing it. So that's what I would say that, Emilia said, I have, I have a lot of knowledge about what doesn't work in institutions, even my own, such a big institution.
And I know what projects now to just wait on until you get the right leader in place. That's not going to make it disappear.
[00:31:11] EMILIA: Like you mentioned, there are differences between the amount of service that the women were doing versus the men. It's not transparent, like who's doing more service necessarily. I guess, how do you know that you're doing too much service?
[00:31:25] BARBARA: I think I would say, and I doubt if very many males in my department are going to listen to me on this podcast, but when I look around to them, they are professors or way past by the time they started doing stuff I was doing as a young associate prof. And they say to me, God, you know, it takes a lot of time.
And I said, what have you been doing all these years? And I figure out they, they're very more. self-centered about what they choose. So I would say choose one or two things that are really important to you. And I think for us, for me in particular, it's this idea about diversity and, and access. And if I had put all my energies in that, I would find it still incredibly rewarding.
That would be my advice. I'm proud of my record. But the change is very slow, but your time is your superpower, you know.
[00:32:16] RORI: It's the most valuable. And it's interesting, I mean, I hear you and I'm listening when you're encouraging Emilia and I, who are associate professors, to think deeply about one or two kinds of service projects that we would like to do.
And I mean, clearly we're we're investing in Science Wise right now. That's one thing that we're doing. But I think about, and Barbara, you and I had talked another time about this, people who are at an even earlier career stage, people who are in undergrad or in grad school and the asks that are being made of them.
And I'm curious how, you know, you were at, you continue to be at U Dub for 39 years. How have you seen that change?
[00:32:52] BARBARA: I think we're asking our students to do a lot more than we should. You know, and I understand the most important thing for them to learn is how to be a good scientist, how to write, and how to communicate.
But they're being bombarded. We're putting them on departmental committees. I mean, some of, some of them actually want to do that, and they want to be graduate representatives in faculty meetings. And I go, don't do that. And also the demands of the public, making a publication now. I think I will get higher and higher and higher.
The demand for them to be collaborators is higher and higher and higher. I think we have to really advise individuals as individuals and make sure that it's the end of their PhD. They have ownership of an important part of a project, not just as because when they go on the job market, as you both know, and I know this kind of scares graduate students.
It's not enough to have a really good PhD and a not-so-good postdoc or a really good postdoc and an inconsequential graduate student. You'll rise to the top if you've got accomplishments that you can own at both levels. Because when we look for new colleagues, right, like in your new department, you're looking for someone who has a record of being exceptional at all stages.
And I think we romanticize the science sometimes to our students about being a team player and a collaborative, and then they end up being one. name on a whole list on a publication, and they got to move their way to the top. But I think we really need to take care of individuals, training and graduates, not sort of let our postdocs train our graduate students, and our technicians train our graduate students, which happens in bigger labs, I think.
[00:34:40] RORI: Also, I feel like sometimes because grad school can be much more free form than faculty life, we can be like, Oh, this can fit in with this person's agenda too. Oh, also they could be on that committee. Or maybe they should write this other thing that's, you know, public writing. And all of these are, you know, useful and wonderful things.
But when we ask so much of our students, then it can be difficult for them to balance that with kind of developing the academic currency of authorship and grants, which for better or for worse is still how a lot of decisions are made.
[00:35:14] BARBARA: And they're so big-hearted and idealistic. They want to do it. It's hard to keep them from volunteering to do it.
I don't know if you find that at Brown, Emilia, because, but I actually think we're pulling them in too many different directions.
[00:35:26] EMILIA: Yeah. Yeah. If I think back about my own experience, I mean, there were a couple of things that I was committed to, but I did have a lot of space to think and to do. And I think that was really good because that's when you are creative or you start when you have that space, not when you're, you know, being pulled in all these different directions.
[00:35:47] BARBARA: And I always say to them, I guarantee it, you'll be able to do outreach to your heart's desire later.
[00:35:53] EMILIA: Yeah.
[00:35:54] BARBARA: Right now, study for your oral exam. Protecting our graduate students is a good idea. And I think postdocs too, I think we have to really keep in mind the short timeline they have to accomplish what they need to accomplish.
I think sometimes we keep them here as postdocs these days.
[00:36:13] EMILIA: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:36:14] BARBARA: That's Longer than in their best interest sometimes.
[00:36:17] RORI: Like, it's not like you should do zero outreach and be in zero meetings and zero committees and zero mentoring in grad school. Like, that might feel awful for some people because that is what feeds them.
[00:36:29] BARBARA: Too isolated.
[00:36:30] RORI: Yeah, and there's like some kind of balance that needs to be found.
[00:36:35] BARBARA: Yeah, pick one or two, you know, ask them what's more important to you and do it well. Do it consistently with a track record.
And then I think it does help to say, trust me, you'll have plenty of time. Yeah, so.
[00:36:51] RORI: Other people can do this work too.
[00:36:53] EMILIA: I completely agree with that. You mentioned to invest in professional societies. Are you talking about becoming a leader in those societies or what type of investing were you thinking?
[00:37:05] BARBARA: So my PhD advisor told me don't do anything at the departmental level because it'll disappear with the next year. I didn't listen to that, but he's right.
So I started finding more satisfaction working at the college and level because the people that are generally college leaders are people that are trained to lead. And so I would pick the committees carefully. I think the society, professional societies if it's the right one, if it's a good society for you, it'll give you those professional networks.
[00:37:41] RORI: You want to be on a committee and you want to make the connection so that like when somebody is developing a new technology, they're like, Hey, can I collaborate in your system? Or, Hey, I'm making data and you have a method that I want to apply, or you want somebody to like nominate you for the award, like you want these people.
[00:37:56] BARBARA: Right. But don't you, I don't know which societies you're in, but for me, it's the Genetic Society of America or the American Society for Cell Biology. The nice thing about being active and staying active in those is they start to develop projects that you don't have to. So I just mean, sometimes your situation could differ, especially Rori, because you've got this new exciting department.
So you're really making important decisions in this timeframe. But in my department, which is a very big. old-fashioned department. I just found that we women weren't having the impact that we needed to know. And somebody said to me, just stop, stop banging your head against the brick wall. And I go, that's what I needed to hear.
[00:38:37] RORI: Which was also true. You, you were.
[00:38:39] BARBARA: Then you got to make the decision of when to move on. That's an important one. Because you turn out to be so good, you've gotten training grants twice, they just want you to do it all. And then you get a certain interval that you feel like you're going to learn and then say, okay, I got it.
I learned everything. I'm leaving. And then put your foot down and say, I'm not doing it anymore because otherwise you'll be doing it for decades. And that's totally. That's like too much.
[00:39:03] EMILIA: So have you, are you planning to retire? Were you in that transition?
[00:39:07] BARBARA: I retired a year and a half ago. I wasn't really thinking about it and then a switch flipped and I decided to do it.
And the reason I'm doing it is because. I wanted to get back to the bench 100 percent of the time because I'd been away from it so long. I can have a little retirement lab and do my own. I have a collaborator, ex postdoc at Seattle U and now I'm working in my lab and I can go in when I want, but I'm still doing like, gosh, I wonder what this gene does and I'm having a blast.
I call this my learning for luxury because I don't have to read anything that I think is irrelevant. I can start reading a paper and finish it.
So that's what I've actually really looked forward to and I think, uh, people's journeys are very different, but mine, I'm really happy after a year and a half at least, you know, going to my lab and figuring out what this gene does or that nobody else has even thought was interesting.
[00:40:06] RORI: You're making retirement sound real good, joining it and getting to pursue your passion questions.
[00:40:13] BARBARA: It's the transition though, because I realize now how very busy I was on a day-to-day basis of balancing all those things. So when you get to retirement, you deserve that time, but it's a lot to ask of faculty to do what they do in these institutions that we're at.
[00:40:31] RORI: Okay, Barbara, now we're gonna do our little segment called Revise and Resubmit, where we invite you to share with us something that, in retrospect, you would change about your career or about some aspect of science culture.
[00:40:44] BARBARA: Ooh. I think personally, I'll say to you, because I'm, I'm really excited about your career at your stage, is also this idea about choosing what you do for your service carefully and selfishly so it'll benefit you. I think I did way too much service to tell you the truth at the cost of my formative years where I could have really concentrated on my science more.
I actually think, and I listened to a couple of your other interviewees, this idea about where we sit today for DEI efforts and why we aren't further ahead is huge to me. And I keep thinking what in the world is going on. And I've mentioned this to Rori recently when I see in the news that universities are being pounded for investing in DEIJ efforts.
And I wonder what is going wrong with the communication. Why should anybody question the importance of access? I, I just, I don't know what we're doing wrong. So that's what I would change. I would change the system in some ways to educate. us all that there should be no question about access and equity and diversity.
As you guys know, if we don't get that right, we are like, we're sort of failing.
[00:42:05] RORI: No, we're just digging ourselves into a hole.
[00:42:08] BARBARA: Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I would say. I'd say I would have to think harder about that. what we're doing, where we invest our energies to educate the public about. There should be no question about giving access to public higher education to anybody out there that has the talent.
[00:42:23] RORI: Well I love that revise and resubmit because like you said it's not just revising academia or science it's actually a whole cultural shift and I couldn't agree more. Well, Barbara, thank you so much for joining us here today. I feel like I've learned a ton from your stories and your perspectives and even your straight-up advice for us.
We're taking notes here. Thank you so much for joining us.
[00:42:48] BARBARA: Well, thank you for your time and your generosity in doing this.
[00:42:52] EMILIA: I definitely took some notes and it's been super helpful and I will reflect on what you said more in the coming days. So thank you for being with us.
[00:43:02] BARBARA: Thank you again.
[00:43:04] EMILIA: Thanks for listening.
[00:43:05] RORI: Check out Dr. Wakimoto's University of Washington grad student equity and excellence program. We'll put a link in the show notes.
[00:43:12] EMILIA: This episode was produced and edited by Maribel Quesada. Smith Sound Engineering by Keegan Stromberg. Special thanks to Dr. Barbara Wakimoto. The hosts of Science Wise are Rori Rolfes and me, Emilia Huerta Sanchez.