34. Building Teams and Protein Machines w/ Danielle Tullman-Ercek

In this episode of EBRC In Translation, we are joined with Danielle Tullman-Ercek, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern University and co-director of its Center for Synthetic Biology. Danielle discusses her journey from aspiring architect to leading bioengineer, the foundation and goals of her lab, the interdisciplinary approach at Northwestern's Center for Synthetic Biology, and the inception of her company, Opera Bioscience. She also shares insights on navigating academia and entrepreneurship, the impact of federal research funding challenges, and the importance of community and collaboration in scientific research. Keep updated with GRC Physics of Viruses and Protein Cages and ECI Biochemical and Molecular Engineering XXIV.

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Transcription:
Episode transcripts are the unedited output from Whisper and likely contain errors.

Transcript

(0:07) Hello and welcome back to EBRC in Translation. We're a group of graduate students and postdocs (0:13) working to bring you conversations with members of the engineering biology community. (0:16) I'm Andrew Hunt, a postdoc in the Baker Lab at the University of Washington.

(0:20) And I'm Talia Jacobson, a graduate student in the Voiniciuc Lab at the University of Florida. (0:26) Today, we are talking to Danielle Tullman Ercek, a professor of chemical and biological engineering (0:32) at Northwestern and co-director of its Center for Synthetic Biology. Her lab engineers large (0:38) protein machines, and she's translating that work to industry as co-founder of Opera Bioscience.

(0:44) So thank you so much, Danielle, for joining us today. (0:47) Oh, of course. Thank you for having me.

(0:50) Wonderful. So to get us started off, we always like to talk about how you got to where you are (0:54) now. So maybe could you tell us a bit about how you got interested in biological engineering, (0:59) and then maybe walk us through your career path from grad school to where you are now? (1:05) Sure.

I actually wanted to be an architect growing up. That was my dream job. And I learned (1:11) that my own skill set may not be perfect for architecture, especially passing those classes (1:16) when I went to college.

And so I found myself pushed into engineering and then chemical (1:21) engineering because it did not have physics as heavily in the schedule. And at that time, (1:27) I was really interested in polymers as building blocks. And so I came through into biological (1:32) engineering very definitely through the protein space.

I was really interested in the polymer (1:36) building blocks and proteins are the quintessential biological polymer. Although I know (1:42) my co-director, Julius Lux, would argue that it's RNA and everyone has their favorites now, (1:47) at that time, protein. And so when I was looking at graduate schools, I was looking for those that (1:54) had really excellent protein researchers in a chemical engineering department, because that (1:58) was my degree background and what I knew.

And I joined the George Georgiou Lab at University (2:05) of Texas at Austin and stuck with protein engineering ever since. And I would argue (2:10) that I am an architect just in a very different way than I had foreseen when I was about 10 years (2:16) old. So I can talk a little bit more about the switch from pure protein engineering to synthetic (2:23) biology.

And that happened when I did my postdoc in Chris Voigt's lab. At the time, he was at UCSF (2:30) and it introduced me to this whole world of not just engineering proteins for some new function, (2:35) but to think really holistically about systematically engineering the system to (2:39) be the most efficient and commercializable and translatable. And yeah, it was really eye-opening (2:45) for me to see all the people from engineering moving into this biological realm in those years, (2:53) in the mid-2000s.

So it was a really exciting time. And that is kind of where I stuck with it, (3:00) was really from that experience. So I've always loved proteins, but that showed me (3:04) the real power of what we could do by engineering them systematically.

(3:09) So, yeah. And, and so what about since postdoc? So you, when, when did you start your lab? (3:17) Yes. So the career path to academia, I enjoyed teaching, but especially enjoyed mentoring (3:24) and more than anything, really liked choosing myself what to work on.

So all of those things (3:33) combined led me to apply for faculty positions during my postdoc. And I was lucky enough to get (3:40) an offer from the University of California, Berkeley chemical engineering department. (3:46) And, and kind of the rest was history from there.

I really loved the job that I don't think I knew (3:51) fully what all it entailed at the time that I had applied, but it does have the elements of (3:56) choosing what you do your research on, mentoring and teaching. So not incorrect in that, but there's (4:01) so much more to it, including communication and grant writing and a lot of manuscript editing. (4:09) So, so when I started my lab there, I delved into this new world of engineering protein (4:16) complexes.

And that was really where I went into the, the protein architecture sort of space. (4:23) And it was really exciting. I started working on systems that I had not even heard of a year or (4:29) two prior to when I started my lab, but now have been working on for 15 years because there's such (4:33) a rich space of protein assemblies to study in nature.

And about seven years into that position, (4:41) I had the offer to join Northwestern university chemical engineering department right at the time (4:48) that they were launching their center for synthetic biology. And so I jumped on that chance to become (4:53) a part of the new beginnings, kind of the re-imagining of the synthetic biology space (4:59) that we're celebrating our 10th anniversary this year. And it's been a lot of fun.

And one of the (5:05) keys to the move to Northwestern for me was that they were building teams that had experts in each (5:11) of the important biopolymers. So DNA, RNA, and protein, as well as the lipids and sugars and (5:19) other aspects of biology that are very important if you're going to engineer the whole system. (5:24) And that holistic approach really spoke to me.

And so it was really exciting to come, (5:29) come here and eventually moved into this co-directorship role in the center. It was (5:35) also here that I started my company and many other things. There's just a lot of, (5:40) a lot of opportunities kind of opened up once I was in position here.

(5:45) Very cool. Awesome. And yeah, could you tell us, (5:48) I guess, a little bit more about your role as co-director of the center and then also (5:54) a little bit about what your research is kind of looking like at Northwestern currently? (5:59) Yeah, absolutely.

The co-director role is, it's really fun to have a co-director because I think (6:04) we just bring different strengths to the role and probably different weaknesses that we can (6:10) for each other. It's also just nice to have a partner in a leadership role because there's a (6:15) lot of management tedium that can come with these that I will not share. Nobody wants to hear, (6:21) but what's really exciting is we get to kind of set the vision for what all of those that (6:26) are practicing synthetic biology or engineering biology here at Northwestern can work towards.

(6:33) And so for us, that meant coming up with which theme application areas really collectively (6:38) describe those things that we're interested in right now and where we can go with the skills (6:41) that we've built up and developing an educational program to try to best serve all of our students. (6:48) And that's led to entire new curriculum and a textbook effort that we're launching and (6:53) lots of exciting things in that. And then the third thing we wanted to prioritize was (6:57) translation and commercialization, or at least getting our innovations out into the public sphere (7:06) was an important aspect that we wanted to push on more, having had some success, maybe.

I think (7:14) it's early when you're still in a startup phase, but at least being able to get to that phase and (7:19) trying to help others navigate that and institute programs that can do that. So right now we're (7:26) running lots of programs, really building cohort models for our students and workshops to expose (7:32) everyone to all these different avenues that you can explore across the research, innovation, (7:37) education, and translational spaces. And so it's a lot of activity and a lot of fun and a lot of (7:42) management and time.

So research, probably my favorite thing to talk about. And so don't let (7:52) me go on for too long. We've been really interested, especially since I came here, (7:59) we kind of relaunched the systematic approach to engineering proteins.

And historically, I came (8:05) from a directed evolution lab and directed evolution is extremely powerful, but since (8:11) the rise of machine learning and then AlphaFold coming out and all of the computational approaches, (8:17) including molecular modeling and even modeling of things like enzymatic systems, so metabolic (8:24) pathways and things like that, just the power across all those spheres that we have now in (8:29) silica has really changed, I think, the way that we can approach engineering proteins and the systems (8:36) that proteins form. And so we've been trying to leverage that with compartmentalization approaches (8:42) and especially for delivery approaches. We've had a huge effort lately in engineering virus-like (8:48) particles for scaffolds in cancer drug delivery applications and engineering bacterial (8:55) microcompartment proteins to make things like materials as well or scaffolds that you can (9:00) really tether enzymes to or metals, bind metals to or any kind of approach you want to take with it.

(9:08) It lends itself really well to pretty much every field where biology can make a difference from (9:13) agriculture, materials, health, of course, and so on. So it's really nice to be working (9:22) systematically to engineer proteins by generating a lot of high throughput, (9:26) high quality data, and then feeding that into these machine learning algorithms to help us (9:31) design bespoke proteins down the line. So we're not to the point where we can just do that, (9:36) but I think we're so much closer this year than the year before in an exponential way.

(9:41) That makes it a lot of fun. (9:43) Yeah, that's super cool. Definitely aligns with my own research motivations.

I'm wondering, (9:49) can you dive into compartmentalization a bit more? Why compartmentalization? What drew you to it? (9:57) And you mentioned a couple applications, but what do you think is going to be most impactful? (10:03) So the one thing I will say first is in nature, everything is compartmentalized. (10:07) The organisms make tissues and those are made up of tissue, sorry, and those are made up of (10:14) cellular communities. And all of those individual cells have their roles.

And then within cells, (10:20) especially eukaryotic cells, we know they have organelles helping to break that workload down (10:25) into compartmentalized functions. And then on top of that, everything that we will ever want to do (10:31) will involve using either cells or systems that have some compartmentalization to them. (10:36) So I think understanding and being able to engineer the compartmentalization aspect along with (10:42) the core functions.

So for example, engineering an enzyme, but also remembering to engineer (10:47) the way it interacts with all the other enzymes in the pathway. Those are all really important (10:52) to getting the efficiencies that we're going to need for the applications. And so I'm mostly right (10:57) now focused on compartmentalizing to protect or to display.

But for a long time, I was interested (11:04) in this problem because I thought it was important also to co-localize particular functions to (11:12) maximize efficiency. And that certainly is still true. It's just not the focus of most of my current (11:17) work, just a small part now.

And you also mentioned something about your bacterial secretion system. (11:23) So can you just highlight, I guess, what makes this system unique compared to maybe using yeast (11:29) or something like this? And yeah, what are the benefits of using it? (11:33) It's a great question. Some days I do wonder if I should have gone back and told my former self to (11:39) just engineer yeast secretion systems instead because they're already so great at secreting.

(11:45) But they secrete many things. All the higher order, more complex organisms do secrete many (11:50) things. And they also add a lot of post-translational modifications depending on the organism.

They're (11:54) different. Glycosylation is a huge one. And bacteria are so much simpler.

So when they're (12:00) more tractable, maybe not than Saccharomyces or Pickia, but very tractable. And they're also (12:07) simpler in that they don't have all those post-translational modifications. They don't (12:10) have all these complicated pathways for getting things out and they don't use them very much.

(12:15) And so we don't have a lot being secreted through them. So there's advantages to that. (12:20) One is that you're not competing with the natural system or the natural substrates that have to go (12:26) out of the cell.

And that is important. If you're trying to make a ton of something to make a billion (12:30) doses of some new drug, you really want that to be the priority of the cell. And if it's got to (12:36) secrete something to stay alive, it's going to have to balance those two things.

And you won't (12:41) really be getting maximum efficiency. So I think there's a lot of power in the fact that the (12:50) And the other part is that if it doesn't already have all those post-translational modifications, (12:55) it means it's not going to do them incorrectly. Maybe we can engineer in the ability to do just (13:00) those that we want.

And that's something down the road for us because that is, it turns out, (13:05) a very difficult thing to do. But it gives us this nice clean slate. So our products don't (13:11) have the modifications, but that's also to say they don't have the wrong modifications that you (13:17) then have to get rid of and then add the right one.

So I think there are advantages to that, (13:20) but there are a lot of applications where you don't need them at all. And so this is (13:23) sufficient. So in the end, my decision to work on the bacterial strain at the time, (13:28) I did it because I thought it was an easier system to manipulate.

I think yeast are just as easy now, (13:34) but that came back to actually be a benefit after all, as we started to commercialize, (13:38) I learned just how much more useful it can be to have that clean slate. (13:43) Awesome. Yeah.

Are there any like academic targets that you're trying to (13:49) get to be secreted or like proteins that you want to secrete in your laboratory? (13:54) Yes, we are really excited right now to engineer materials forming proteins. So I talked a little (14:00) bit about our bacterial micro compartment proteins, which can form material scaffolds, (14:04) but we're also really interested in those that are naturally proteins in nature that make materials, (14:09) silk and resaline and elastin and muscle adhesive protein. And those proteins are (14:16) actually all fairly difficult to express in the cytosol of bacteria.

And we've seen that (14:23) they benefit from being secreted. It's actually less toxic. And I would say toxic is a loose term, (14:30) but cells grow better when they're able to secrete them.

It's actually helpful to them. (14:35) And so we'd like to be able to secrete those all sufficient quantities to generate materials from (14:42) them, but also be able to use engineering approaches to change the properties of those. (14:48) So imagine if you could design silk to be machine washable without shrinking, I don't know, (14:53) something like this, like what amino acids do you need to imbue to make it more robust in this way? (14:58) And if we need to test a thousand designs, can we actually make a thousand designs and test them? (15:05) I think the secretion system is key to that.

So we're working on ensuring our yields are high (15:09) enough for that, for this whole slate of materials forming proteins that we want to engineer. (15:15) So that's my academic target at the moment. Very fun.

Awesome. Well, I think maybe that's a good (15:20) jumping off point for talking about your work with opera biosciences. Could you tell us a bit (15:26) about this? This is based on your secretion work, right? So could you walk us through your decision (15:31) to try and co-found this company and tell us a bit about what they're doing? (15:36) Absolutely.

We have long been interested in my lab, everyone that's worked on the (15:41) secretion system. We were working to make proteins more efficiently and more cost-effectively by (15:46) getting rid of the separation step. And so this is true, no matter which organism you are (15:51) secreting your protein from, if you can get the protein out of the cell, then you can separate (15:55) the cells from the growth media and you have drastically simplified your purification process.

(16:02) In the bacterial system, since we're not really secreting anything else, there are a few other (16:07) proteins related to the secretion system itself that go out, but you have 80% pure product right (16:13) off the bat. And we thought this is useful and that could save so much money if you don't have (16:17) to run giant chromatography columns and lots of separation steps. And so we can make drugs (16:24) cheaper, right? Let's let the world have this technology.

And so we published a lot on the (16:30) system thinking that somebody out there in industry will pick it up and use it. (16:35) And I actually actively avoided patenting anything, which I didn't realize was a mistake (16:41) because if I didn't show that I owned it, then nobody was going to use it because nobody owned (16:46) it to say it was okay to use it. And I didn't understand that really until I got to Northwestern (16:51) and we had a little workshop with our tech transfer office where they explained the importance (16:56) of patenting.

And I think now that's maybe more common knowledge, but to me at the time, I (17:02) was blown away that nobody was going to use it because I didn't patent it. And so that led to (17:09) us thinking about how to patent and how we would want to move forward. And we really want the (17:13) technology in folks' hands.

We want people to be able to use this to simplify their purifications (17:19) and make proteins cheaper. So many protein products out there could benefit. (17:24) So we did apply for a patent.

And as we were going through that process, working with our (17:30) tech transfer office, they raised that the business school here, Kellogg was holding a class (17:36) in which they were going to be working on technologies coming out of the science and (17:40) engineering side of the university. And they asked if I'd be interested in pitching my technology to (17:47) them to do some market research. And I thought, oh, that's a great idea.

We can find out how (17:53) others would want to use this. And yeah, long story short, the team that picked my project was (17:59) led by the person who is now the CEO of Opera Bioscience because doing all that market research (18:05) was really inspiring for him. And he thought it had a lot of legs to be used in industry.

(18:10) The one thing I'll say from that experience is that I now realize we should have been doing (18:15) that market research before we started engineering the system. Because what if nobody wants that (18:21) innovation? I just assumed that this would be better and more cost effective and helpful. (18:28) And it may be.

I don't know that it's going to be more helpful by eliminating chromatography steps. (18:33) Maybe it will reduce the number of them. But talking with the customers is how you find out (18:37) whether it'll be used in the way you envision or if you should be engineering the system for (18:42) some other goal.

And so I would highly recommend to anyone that wants to follow such a path to (18:46) start asking around and make sure somebody will want to use it in the way you think (18:51) before you do all of the work for 10 to 15 years to engineer your system. (18:56) We got lucky that it was aligned in large part. And now the company is working with a lot of their (19:04) potential customers to do some of the other things that arose in that market research.

And it was (19:09) doable. And it is something that you can write grant proposals for to get small business money, (19:12) which we did. So we did go through the SBIR application process and so on.

And we did many, (19:18) many more customer discovery interviews than just that one class. So we've done several I-Corps. (19:22) And that's been a lot of fun.

But I've learned so much about what the real problems are (19:25) in industry that we should be working on that some might seem like they were already solved (19:31) or they're obvious. So just in any realm of engineering biology that you are in, I encourage (19:37) you to talk to those that would use what you're developing to see if there's some guidance to the (19:44) path that you might want to take. And maybe not always, you can use your best judgment, but at (19:48) least get the information and make the choice.

Yeah, I've been finding that in my own research (19:53) over the past two years that I really, I wish it was easier to access that information, that (19:58) knowledge, I think, and have those conversations, especially as an academic, because it's key. (20:04) You're about to invest large amounts of your time into trying to do something useful. It'd be nice (20:09) if it's a problem that actually translates.

Exactly. And I think this is something that a (20:15) lot of people are realizing, and they are trying to come up with ways to do it with federal money, (20:20) because we don't want to waste taxpayer dollars doing something that actually won't pan out. (20:25) We want there to be economic boosts to those investments.

Recognizing not all of them will (20:32) work out, but we want to at least do our best to get there. I don't have an idea on how to do this (20:38) best. And I'm not sure if the things being pitched right now will be the ones that we end up going (20:44) with in another 10 years.

Maybe we'll find other ways. But I think just having more conversations (20:49) with the public and with the potential users of these systems has got to be at the core of (20:55) whatever we develop. So whether we can develop programs to introduce us all or enforce more (21:01) conferences with the practitioners coming to meet with the academics.

I think there's a lot of (21:08) industry conferences and then academic conferences and not as many that are both. There are some, (21:13) and I really love them, but having more of those, that kind of thing. We have a long way to go (21:18) to bridge that gap, but it's so important.

Well, and I think you mentioned two very important (21:24) key steps in this path to commercialization, right? Market analysis and then getting a patent. (21:30) Were there any other important steps that maybe weren't, yeah, that you went through and then (21:36) any bottlenecks or challenges going from an academic space to a commercial space? (21:42) There's so many challenges. It's so much work to do.

I do think that's a big, I mean, there's like (21:46) an inertial barrier to this because it's not a thing that we know how to do. And anytime you (21:51) have to learn, there's a growth curve for learning it. And then that causes this.

A big one for us (21:56) was building the team. And our team came together relatively smoothly compared to others because we (22:02) did have that connection to this Kellogg class where somebody was excited to take the lead that (22:07) had the business background. But I think that was really fortuitous for my situation.

And you won't (22:13) always get to meet with business school graduates that want to commercialize your technology. (22:19) And so I think forming that team is really important. It cannot just be the scientists (22:23) for most companies.

You will need somebody with that business sense and to handle the (22:28) business conversations that may rely on generating spreadsheets. And it's just not (22:35) the things that we were taught on the science side. And so sure, you can train people to do both.

(22:41) I don't think that's widely done. We're all smart people. We can learn the other side, (22:46) but wouldn't it be great to have somebody with that knowledge already come into the team (22:50) so you can move faster? So yeah, I think building the team is a really important and (22:56) difficult step.

And then learning how to talk with investors, whether that's the federal agencies, (23:04) but on the translation side or private investors or VC firms, all of those are different audiences (23:12) than who we're used to communicating with. And it took me a long time to understand (23:17) what words they use for things compared to those that I would have used for it. And not just in (23:23) the science, in the whole process.

It's a learning curve. It's something you just have to do. And (23:30) it is a barrier because you'll spend quite a few meetings talking past the others in the room (23:37) until you figure out how to do it well.

And that doesn't feel great. You can tell when it's (23:41) happening, but to not be able to fix it, it doesn't feel good. And it's just like when you're (23:45) learning how to be an engineer, you fall down a lot on that bike.

And getting back on is hard to (23:53) do when you don't want to fall again, but that's the only way you're going to actually get anywhere. (23:58) So you've got to do it. Well, you've touched on this a little bit already, but I'm curious (24:03) if you could expand a bit on what makes the Center for Synthetic Biology at Northwestern special.

(24:09) What's the pitch? Everything is the people. I guess I just said that with the founding of a (24:14) company too, you need the team. But I think what makes our center successful right now is the people (24:20) that we have.

It's bringing in people that are like-minded about working in collaborative teams. (24:25) It's being at an institution that supports collaboration. And it was strategically (24:32) designing, and I don't take credit for this.

I was just one that joined them, but strategically (24:35) designing those hires to bring in folks that have complimentary expertise was really important for (24:42) us becoming strong for any application area we want to move into. If you have the experts and (24:49) literally all the types of molecules you can build with, and I didn't mention this before, (24:53) but all the types of systems that you could engineer from virus all the way to mammalian cells, (24:58) and we're trying to add in plants too. Yay.

Yes. That's a huge one on our list. Actually, (25:05) we have some plant experts, but building that out is something we want to do.

(25:08) But just recognizing that you need all of that, and then you need all the techniques to study (25:13) the different types, whether it's a circuit design or cell-cell communication or what have you. (25:20) Building that took time, but we started with a nice core. I think that even with all of the (25:26) right pieces in place, you do need some cohesion that just comes with working together and enjoying (25:31) being around each other and talking science.

That's a hard thing to define, but you know it (25:36) when you are in it, and we are in it, which makes this place really special. I feel like we can do (25:40) anything we set our mind to do. We're spending a lot of time making sure that we choose what we (25:46) spend our time on really carefully to have the most impact for all of our time.

I think that's (25:53) appreciated also by everyone on the team that we are all working towards this common goal and with (25:59) these priorities in place. That helps too. But yes, everything is about the people.

(26:06) Yeah. I can say as someone who did my PhD there, I loved it. (26:12) Yeah.

Moving is hard, right? I moved to this place, and you always wonder if when you're (26:18) making a move, are you going to somewhere where the grass looks greener? It's just been beyond (26:24) what I could have imagined. I wouldn't have had any issues making that decision at all if I had (26:29) known, but you can't know really what some place is like unless you're in it. (26:36) I hope that everyone that's in the center feels that it is a special place to work.

I hope (26:42) everyone leaves feeling that way and goes on to hopefully try to recreate that magic where they (26:48) are because it's a really effective way of getting things done that matter. (26:55) Okay. Now to transition a little bit.

You direct CINBREU, which is a summer research (27:02) program for undergraduates in synthetic biology. Can you tell us what motivated you to start this (27:08) and then what impacts it's had? We wanted to start an undergraduate (27:13) research program to, what's the word, complement the iGEM program. One where we (27:19) give a bootcamp up front and teach everyone all the techniques and guide them towards how to (27:24) design and execute a research project.

Then we have our iGEM team who's going in all the way (27:32) on day one and trying to figure it all out from scratch. I feel like those attract different (27:36) personality and skill sets. We wanted that complementary side to get funding for that (27:43) to happen over a summer where we could really support students.

There's the REU programs (27:48) offered by NSF. We decided to write a proposal for that. Because I was the first one (27:55) visiting NSF to talk to them about what this proposal looks like and figure out how it (27:59) works because we hadn't done it before.

It became my baby. Once you start working on something, (28:05) you fall in love with it. I tell people that about their PhD projects too.

Sometimes people (28:09) come in, I don't know if I really want to work on that project. Whatever it is, you're going to (28:12) love it. Then you're going to hate it, but then you're going to love it again.

That's just a (28:16) thing that happens. Anyway, I was the one that was first to visit NSF. I started working on it.

(28:22) I loved it. I never hated it, but it did become too much work. I passed it on to Gabe Rocklin, (28:29) who's now directing it.

We're launching a similar program now, which I am helping lead for our own (28:36) Northwestern undergrads. Our REU program is to bring in folks to Northwestern who don't get (28:41) to experience it otherwise. Now we have an undergraduate program for our Northwestern (28:44) students to learn in the same way.

That's where it went after we created it. There was a lot of (28:51) success. Getting it off the ground, it took about two years of planning out what does it mean to be (28:59) trained in engineering biology? What are the basic skill sets you need to have? How do we get those (29:05) in place, but also still get exposure enough to the research process that you begin to have that (29:09) understanding in a summer? It's so short.

It's only 10 weeks, sometimes nine weeks, depending (29:14) on if the schedules don't align with their home institutions. It took a lot. It was really (29:21) fun to do while it lasted, but now I want to move on to starting some other things.

I'm really glad (29:27) other people are coming in because they have great new ideas. Gabe is directing it now. Ludmila (29:32) Erstil is our co-director for it now.

They've just instituted other new types of programming (29:38) into it that have made it even better. Also, I strongly support changing out leadership to get (29:44) new ideas in any of these places, but that's what happened there too. (29:50) Cool.

Awesome. (29:53) Changing gears maybe quite a bit, Northwestern has been at the forefront of federal research. 0:00) challenges. And you've received stop work orders from the government. And I know that you and your (0:07) co-director Julius have been pretty active in, in sort of advocating for scientists with some of (0:12) these things happening.

So could you talk a little bit about how this has impacted your research (0:17) and the community at Northwestern and, and what you all have been doing about it? (0:23) Yes, this is not a fun thing to even think about, much less talk about, but it's really important. (0:31) So Northwestern was identified as not being in full compliance with federal guidelines, (0:38) and the funding was frozen for our Department of Defense grants, primarily in April. And those (0:46) totaled somewhere between $100 and $750 million, depending on the press release, you see, which (0:51) is how I've learned about this.

So I know as much as anyone else when it comes to that. But I can (0:56) say that my own, my own grants were affected because I did have several funding sources from (1:03) DoD funding projects that we're working on for making things like a shape-shifting camouflage, (1:08) similar to what, you know, an octopus skin could do, or making electronic materials. I mentioned (1:13) my interest in materials, and we had a lot of projects on materials using biological parts (1:18) to imbue them with new kind of dynamic functions.

And all of that got cut because that's where the (1:23) funding was coming from. Others on campus also learned that they weren't getting reimbursed (1:29) anymore for their NIH expenditures, even though we didn't get any official notice of that. And so (1:34) that's also been a significant burden for the university.

And they've tried to make off cramps (1:40) for us by funding students to wind down the projects for a short while using I don't know (1:46) what money, maybe some of our endowment, maybe a loan, I'm really not privy to that. But I know (1:51) they are, they have been in some way footing the bill for my students to wrap up those projects. (1:56) But we've had to find other things for them to work on, right? We had to have a plan (1:59) for how to transition.

And for me, it was about a third of my lab was on was working towards (2:05) materials. So I've been writing a ton of grant proposals and working with some philanthropists (2:12) that approached us to see if they could help in some way bridge this gap until the situation's (2:17) resolved. And that's been wonderful.

But I also felt like even my parents didn't understand what (2:23) was happening. And so we in general felt that the public should know that there was some chaos (2:32) related to all these very sudden changes to how the contracts were being interpreted. (2:38) And so we did our best to explain to the public that such drastic decisions do have consequences (2:46) for the infrastructure for the training of students to change your PhD focus halfway (2:53) through is just, it's not something that should happen to anyone.

When we get a grant that's for (2:58) five or six years, we should be able to work on it for the five or six years, in my opinion, (3:03) unless we're in blatant violation, which our science, everything that we were doing was (3:07) not in violation, right? It was a university level investigation that led to this. So I feel like just (3:14) getting that message out there that it was happening was really important and explaining (3:17) the sorts of things that we were doing was really important. Because as we talked about it more, (3:22) there was a lot of confusion about what science was doing for the average person in this country (3:27) paying their taxes to the government to be used in part for these projects.

And yeah, I wanted (3:33) to say more about what we were working on and why it was important. And I think as co-directors of (3:41) a center, we got a little bit more visibility as being a first point of contact from some of (3:46) the news agencies, which did lead to a lot of great opportunities for us to share our stories. (3:51) But I hope that it was realized that those were the tip of the iceberg and that we just happened (3:55) to be a few people of many that were affected and everyone was working on really interesting (4:01) problems that really could have changed the world if not halted so suddenly.

(4:08) So we tried to convey that message, but it's, you know, new cycles have a short (4:14) span and it's hard to know who happens to be listening at any given time. I think in general, (4:22) we all still need to think about how to convey the importance of the scientific (4:26) method, not just the accomplishments, right? Nobel prizes are great. They are recognizing (4:33) significant science and I love that, but there's also a lot of really important failures that lead (4:39) to that and just recognizing the importance of this process and that we won't always have home (4:43) runs and making sure the public knows that we know that as scientists, but I don't know that (4:48) that's widely known and the importance of funding ideas that are sound, that work towards some (4:54) common goal.

I don't know every way that we can get that message out from undergraduates all the (5:00) way through to emeritus faculty. We should all be making sure we work on that with our friends and (5:07) family, if not on the news. So that is my soapbox.

Sorry, I will get off right now, but yeah, it's (5:13) near and dear to me because I just, just in posting things that I was on, I had so many family (5:19) members not know what I was working on and I thought, why don't they know? I guess we don't (5:23) talk about work, how many people talk about work at their family reunion, but maybe we should just a (5:28) little bit imbue some of the importance of what we do, because it's not a job that like a doctor (5:34) or a nurse or fireman that people really know, you know, what they're doing and why it's important. (5:42) So maybe we add that into those conversations. Okay, really done.

(5:47) Well, thank you for that. Yeah, it's been a rough time. So I, I agree doing everything we can to (5:52) to extol the, maybe not beat people over the head with the, over the head with the virtues of science, (6:00) but trying to get it out there that it is a worthwhile thing that improves people's lives.

(6:05) Yeah. And at least have a conversation with them or something. Yeah.

Yes. Just simple something. (6:10) Now, what have been your experiences navigating academia and entrepreneurship as a woman? (6:16) And is there any advice for early career researchers? (6:21) I love this question.

It doesn't have an easy answer for me. I didn't really think I was (6:30) experiencing differences compared to any of my peers for a long time. And it is only later you (6:37) have some glass shattering moments, right? Where you realize that, that there are implicit biases (6:43) that sometimes are not overcome and are not dismissed.

And they do affect how people perceive (6:50) you and your work and, and the value of it. And I don't want to throw anyone under the bus by (6:57) going into deep examples of those. I don't, I don't think that's needed, but I think it's (7:02) important to know that it will happen.

It will happen with probably anyone with any kind of (7:08) minority characteristic will experience these things and you're not alone and it's not okay. (7:14) I have tried to make intention part of it because a lot of these are implicit biases and, (7:20) and knowing that a person doesn't realize they're doing that and maybe hasn't had all this training (7:27) is important. So using it as a, a way to gently turn and point out that bias is something I can (7:35) do now, depending on someone's personality, they don't have to do it throughout, (7:40) but I'm finally in a position where I can start doing that and, and go on the defense for them.

(7:45) But it, I do see that women in general have to accomplish more than their male counterparts (7:56) to get recognition at the same level. And that's whether I'm the one judging or a male colleague (8:02) is the one judging, right? It's just kind of entrenched that we're expecting more. And I (8:07) think what I just said for women is true for all of, all of the possible minority characteristics (8:12) that you might hold identities that are obvious or not that it just comes out.

And combating that is, (8:19) is really hard. So the number one thing is to not take it personally, take it as a motivation, (8:27) try to have conversations, but try not to in the moment, take it so personally that the reaction (8:34) doesn't serve the greater cause of proving that yeah, we can do this work the same level. (8:42) I think that's the biggest thing that I have sometimes done incorrectly is to try to convince (8:46) people that they're wrong as opposed to helping them see my perspective.

And that is a nuance, (8:53) but it's a really important one to having a productive discussion. And yeah, if anyone ever (9:01) wants to talk about it, they could reach out to me and probably many women or others with their (9:06) identity that they see. I, you know, I have not experienced life as say a Latina or like someone (9:15) with a different skin color or religion that is obvious and not the norm in whatever city they're (9:22) in, but I, I am othered sometimes.

And I think that experience can help in providing an ear to (9:32) those that are experiencing that with whatever their identity is. So think about talking to others (9:37) with, you know, similar, if not the same identities, but having these issues because (9:44) it helps to have that venting so that you can have those productive conversations later (9:48) with the people that caused the issue. So I probably didn't say that the best I could, (9:54) but all of that was really to say the most important and helpful thing that I did when I (9:59) started in my faculty position was joined up with a group of other female untenured faculty (10:06) for lunch quarterly across the UC system in the Bay area at the time.

And those people are, (10:14) they were strangers to me the first time essentially that we met. And now they're (10:19) some of my best friends in the world. And it's because I had them as a sounding board for all (10:26) of these issues.

I think it allowed me to step back from it, take a moment and then go and handle it (10:33) in a much more productive way, but also just that camaraderie and knowing you're not alone is so (10:38) important to mental health. So that's my short answer to how I would approach it. If you are (10:47) just entering science and you have some part of your identity, that's not whatever is considered (10:53) normal now, which I think is nothing at this point, but find others, talk with them, (10:59) strategize solutions, and don't take anything personally in the moment to the effect that you (11:07) maybe accidentally make the situation worse.

(11:11) Yeah, totally leaning on your community and those around you is so important in any hard, (11:17) difficult situation, right? So people is always my answer, at least for me, (11:22) people are the most important thing. The team is the most important thing. And having that support (11:27) system is the most important thing, right? It's always the people and I, maybe not everyone needs (11:33) film, there might be introverts that are like, Oh, what is she talking about? (11:39) But it's how I've found both science to be fun and rewarding and also manageable while staying sane, (11:47) because there's a lot of failure in science.

And yeah, we need to protect our mental health. (11:53) Yeah, for sure. I love that theme.

It's very clear throughout the episode, people. Well, (11:58) thanks so much, Danielle, for coming on the show. It's been really wonderful chatting with you.

(12:01) As we wrap up, is there anything you'd like to promote to our audience or recommend to our (12:06) listeners? I have a couple of things that I do want to share. I am co-organizing a couple of (12:14) events that are coming up for those that happen to be in the virus particle or protein assemblies (12:19) field. There's a Gordon conference coming up in January.

It's called the GRC on physics, (12:25) viruses and protein cages. Please consider it. It's got a great program, I think, (12:32) because I helped put it together.

And where is it? That might also be a selling point. (12:38) It's a selling point and maybe a drawback depending on your attitude, but it's in (12:41) the Tuscany region of Italy. So beautiful.

It's January, so it's not green at that time. It's in (12:49) the mountains, but it is still gorgeous and fun. It's also a pretty isolated sites as Gordon (12:55) conferences tend to be.

So you really get to know that particular town it's in and experience that (13:00) along with getting to know everyone at the conference very well. We aim for between 125 (13:06) and 200 attendees. The other conference I'm co-organizing will be held next July in Puerto (13:14) Rico and is the ECI helps put it on.

It's the biochemical and molecular engineering conference. (13:25) And it's both of these are every other year conferences. So next year is the year, (13:30) but that one is for all of those that work at that interface of bio and engineering.

It's a really (13:38) nice environment with a lot of industry as well as academics. It's one of the reasons I agreed to (13:43) take that one on. It does something that I've been really passionate about doing, which is bringing (13:48) those groups together.

And so look for applications and call for abstract to come out really soon for (13:55) that. We're a little further from the full program. Well, we'll see if we can link those in (13:59) the episode description.

I'll send you the links. So this has been another episode of EBRC in (14:07) Translation, a production of the Engineering Biology Research Consortium Student and Postdoc (14:11) Association. For more information about EBRC, visit our website at EBRC.org. If you're a student (14:17) or postdoc interested in getting involved with the Student and Postdoc Association, you can find (14:21) our membership application linked in the episode description.

A big thanks to the entire EBRC SPA (14:27) podcast team, Talia Jacobson, Andrew Hunt, David Mai, Heidi Kumpo, Will Gruby, Ais Chanpasit (14:34) Kiatesui, and thanks to EBRC for their support. And of course, to you for (14:38) our listeners for tuning in. We look forward to sharing our next episode with you soon.