It is always a rare occurrence when you get to interact with a pioneer whose words stir your decade long thought process on a science career. After reading my interaction with Hemai Parthasarathy, you would agree about the importance of re-inventing yourself as you grow in your career. Hemai began her science career as a biophysicist and smoothly transitioned as an editor in Nature after her postdoc. Her career story after that has been exemplary. From setting up the pathbreaking flagship journal from Public Library of Science (PLOS) to being the driving force behind helping scientists turn their “Discussion” in published manuscripts to real- world ventures through Break-out Labs, Hemai has raised the bar on every career transition. No matter which stage of STEM career you are in, I am sure everyone reading this interview will have a take home message.- Abhi Dey (AD)
AD: Please tell us about your journey in scientific research as student of Biophysics to a PhD in Neuroscience.
HP: As an undergrad at Johns Hopkins, I knew I wanted to major in the sciences, but I couldn’t decide where to focus my attention. I was interested in physics, but I felt that that there was much more to be discovered in biology and so I ended up in the middle with biophysics. In my final year, I took a cellular neurophysiology class and read Bertil Hille’s Ion Channels of Excitable Membranes. I thought ion channels were the most fascinating molecular machines (although I might not have known the term “molecular machine”, which I believe has become more popular since then) and that drew me into neuroscience. Once within neuroscience, I was drawn to systems level questions of how the brain functions and ended up doing my thesis on connectivity between somewhat mysterious regions of the basal ganglia and specific regions of the cerebral cortex.
AD: As a child, who inspired you to be a scientist?
HP: My parents. Both my parents were scientists/engineers, but my mother took time off to raise me while my dad was a professor at the University of Alaska. I still remember jumping off a lime green velvet arm chair in the living room and watching it roll backwards, hearing my dad say “Action and reaction are equal and opposite. Newton’s 3rd law.”
AD: At what point of your academic learning did you determine that you would pursue a career beyond the bench? Your first job after a postdoc in neuroscience was in scientific editing in 1998, a not-so-popular career option for bench scientists back then. Please tell us about the interactions you had with your mentors/advisors/colleagues when it was time to step-forward. What was your motivation in choosing to become a scientific editor?
HP: After my PhD, I wanted to study abroad, so I did a postdoc in London. At the time, people were doing multiple postdocs and I was actually discouraged from going abroad because I wouldn’t gain local connections that would be important in finding a job. So, as I was considering doing a 2nd postdoc back in the states, a job opportunity came up at the journal Nature. I decided to apply on something of a whim; I really didn’t know what a Nature editor looked like, but I certainly didn’t think he would look at all like me. But, I’d always enjoyed reading very broadly in scientific journals and I used to edit a lot of my lab mates’ papers (at one time, I was the only native English speaker in our lab at MIT). Anyway, it was a great surprise when I was offered the job and I thought that even if I decided to go back to do a postdoc in another year, any lab would consider it an asset to have someone who had been on the inside of such a prestigious journal. Before I knew it, years had passed and I was really enjoying what I was doing. My colleagues at Nature were (are) extraordinary people and I learned a lot from them about their areas of scientific expertise. It was also a great vantage point from which to survey science and to try and make a difference. Certainly, at the time, most people in high ranking scientific institutions did not talk about any other career than in academia and many a rejected author was outraged that a “failed postdoc” would be arbiter of their paper’s fate.
AD: You have been a founding editor of PLOS Biology. In the first article “PLOS Biology—We’re Open”, the opening lines say “We would like to introduce you to your journal…”. The rest, as they say is history, because as of today PLOS is a global network of more than 74,000 reviewers and 7,200 editors, guest editors and editorial board members. How was the experience in leading an unconventional publishing methodology? Can you please elaborate about the major challenges that you faced in getting this venture to take-off?
HP: Fundamentally, the biggest challenge was the Impact Factor. So many people supported open access in principle, but couldn’t “bet their careers” on submitting to a journal without an impact factor. Certainly, they were unwilling to submit their best papers, ones that might go to Cell, Nature or Science. It was very instructive to me about the power and painfully slow mutability of incentive structures. Funding agencies were reluctant to mandate open access because there were too few options and, frankly, because many of them touted how many high profile papers had come from their funding as a sign of their importance. University leadership would make decrees that hiring, tenure and promotion decisions shouldn’t be tied to where a paper was published, but “everyone” knew how things actually worked…. In a way, that’s why PLOS Biology started out so conventionally (apart from being open access). I think open access is now the default for anyone starting a new journal, but we still have a long way to go to truly optimize our publishing system in the digital age.
AD: Your next career destination focused on consultancy in healthcare and science as Vice President at FKH as well as an independent consultant. After an editor’s hat, was this a different hat to wear? How did you train yourself for this role?
HP: In one way or another, after I left PLOS, I worked in science communications consulting for several years. I felt it was a pretty natural stretch to take the skills I had acquired as an editor and writer (of editorials, perspectives, etc, for various journals) into consulting for research institutes and biotech companies. The work itself was straightforward and I enjoyed the variety. I wrote “thought leadership” pieces for various biotech leaders, website content for the NIH and MIT, and even had fun making videos of scientists talking about their work. The hardest thing to me about being a consultant was that it was a day-job… I billed my hours and went home. And the next day, I was on to something else. I imagined that at some point, I would find something I really wanted to delve deeply into (and not count the hours) and that happened when I started working as a consultant with the Thiel Foundation to start Breakout Labs.
AD: Please tell us the story behind the inception of Break-out Labs.
HP: At the Thiel Foundation, we believe in the power of science and technology to improve society. Like other foundations, we have supported researchers at nonprofits and institutes, but as we looked at the increasing opportunities for startups to make rapid, cutting edge, advances without needing to build giant brick-and-mortar infrastructures, we felt that philanthropy could be transformative for them, too. We looked around and saw scientists wanting to make the leap to entrepreneurship, we saw shared lab spaces and CROs and the decreasing costs of tools/services like DNA sequencing. We also saw that investors were waiting for further technical derisking and team maturation before jumping in. This seemed just the kind need that philanthropy should help to address. My colleague, Lindy Fishburne, hatched the concept of Breakout Labs with our benefactor, Peter Thiel, and then brought me in, in 2011, to help design and communicate the initiative. We put up a website and invited companies to apply. We didn’t really know what response we’d get, but by early 2012, we had funded half a dozen companies. Our initial focus was in the life sciences, but we said early on that we were open to all deep technologies and have seen a similar opportunity and need for companies working in energy and materials science.
AD: How has been the journey in identifying the spark and nurturing the scientist entrepreneurs at Breakout Labs? Can you share 5 important traits/skills that current postdocs must possess to take on the mantle of entrepreneurship?
HP: When I was an editor, so many of the papers I published would describe some very exciting research finding and then, almost tacked on to the very end, would be the obligatory few sentences about the potential “impact”, usually on disease. For me, working with Breakout Labs’ scientist-entrepreneurs is an education in exactly what is entailed in making those last few sentences a reality. And it’s a lot more than most scientists think. Many of our portfolio companies’ CEOs are postdocs or even newly minted PhDs who worked with a technology for several years and were inspired by its potential to solve an important problem (or problems). I’d say that they share the following phenotype: 1) technical excellence and integrity, 2) confidence in their vision, 3) flexibility in their approach, 4) humility in their areas of ignorance (most often on the business side) and what we call “coachability”, 5) people skills to attract and inspire both investors and team (this does not necessarily mean extroversion, by the way). On a more practical note, being an entrepreneur is probably a lot like being a PI except entrepreneurs are usually making decisions based on much less data than a scientist is necessarily comfortable with. And entrepreneurs are not focusing on building the most awesome scientific case possible for high profile publication; they are focused on developing the science as efficiently as possible to serve a particular market.
AD: Apart from your role in Breakout Labs, you also serve on various boards and panels, such as for Cyclotron Road, AiCHE, UCSF, Hello Tomorrow, The Discovery Engine. Please tell us about your average day at work. How do you achieve work-life balance?
HP: Most of the advisory roles you see listed on my Linkedin profile are very natural extensions of my normal activities: I may judge a competition or review applicants or think about programming for aspiring entrepreneurs, all of which is helpful for my thinking about Breakout Labs. My average day at work is either focused on the proposals we receive (reading them, finding expert advice, evaluating that advice… much like a journal editor); or in meetings/phone calls with potential applicants, investors and other network partners. I also travel at least once a month to visit entrepreneurial centers, talk about Breakout Labs at conferences, and so on. There’s always more work than can be done in a given day; but I try to limit my hours at my computer. If my family does not insist on it, then my dog will definitely let me know when it’s time to play or go for a walk.
AD: A lot PhDs/postdocs who aspire to be entrepreneurs would like to know the advantages and shortcomings of becoming academic entrepreneurs. Do you think it is feasible in today’s competitive economy to manage academic requirements and investors’ expectations in a science-based entrepreneurial venture?
HP: We actually do not fund companies that aren’t led by full time scientist entrepreneurs. Many of them do have cofounders/advisors who still hold academic positions, but we believe that you can’t both lead a company and lead a lab at the same time (with some notable exceptions). You do see what one could call entrepreneurial labs – George Church and Frances Arnold come to mind, but there are many more – where many of the students and postdocs enter with an entrepreneurial bent and ultimately start a company. You also see people taking sabbaticals and other leaves of absence to start companies. But, I believe it’s very hard to do both at the same time effectively.
AD: In your experience, what are the most common misconceptions that scientists have about investors?
HP: I think most scientists don’t understand how investors are motivated and rewarded. They don’t understand the economics and dynamics of funds, so they don’t understand who is likely to invest in them. For example, a fund might still exist in principle, but have raised money some time ago and therefore not have the capital to invest in new companies. They will still often take meetings to educate themselves and prepare for their next fund, but they’re never going to invest on the entrepreneur’s timeline. They also don’t understand that investors, by and large, invest in people and not technology. Yes, investors will do their diligence on the technology and invest according to various theses, but it’s ultimately the team that they want to get behind.
AD: Most academic scientists like to talk more than enough when it comes to their research. The story changes when they have two minutes to impress, what would be your advice to an academic PhD/Postdocs on improving their elevator pitch?
HP: Don’t talk about your technology first. Also, don’t waste time on obvious problem statements, like, “Cancer kills X people each year.” Talk about the unique problem that you can solve and then how you can solve it. The trick is to say enough about the technology so that you sound credible, but not so much that you lose them or seem more in love with your science than what it can do.
AD: What would be your career advice to a graduate student reading this interview?
HP: When I started my career, I expected that at some point, I’d have a “permanent job”. You know, where you are at some institution, advance up the professional ladder, and ultimately retire on a pension. Well, that’s not the world most of us live in today and I think it is the norm to have more than one career, particularly if you are smart and curious. I have tried to build my career such that I am simultaneously contributing my knowledge, training, and/or expertise to a given endeavor while also learning new skills, creating new opportunities, and growing as a person. I think that balance is important for long-term success. If I find myself too heavily leaning on what I already know or, on the other side, feeling too unqualified or unsupported in what I’m trying to achieve, I don’t have that optimal combination of contribution and growth. Different people will be comfortable at different fulcra, but I think the principle of that balance probably holds for many. It applies already to graduate school: am I doing variations of the same experiment over and over, or am I answering a bigger question by learning new techniques, reading in different areas, and reaching out to new people to build on what I have already discovered?
These VCs are bringing ‘hard science’ to Fortune 500 companies https://t.co/U4N4cwuXES pic.twitter.com/hlsQeKuexG
— FORTUNE (@FortuneMagazine) September 17, 2017
Closing Remarks: We thank Dr. Hemai Parthasarathy for her time and for sharing her experience. We hope that her team’s endeavor of bringing science back to the future of entrepreneurship continues to grow and create further opportunities for charting unforeseen collaborations. If you wish to know more about Breakout Labs, please visit http://www.breakoutlabs.org and to apply for their grants please click http://www.breakoutlabs.org/apply/
Interviewed by:
Abhi graduated from the Molecular Biophysics Unit of IISc (Bangalore, India) in 2011. As a Biomedical Scientist, he has worked with all three life-forms in his 13-year research career, viz., particulate, unicellular and multicellular. He is currently an Assistant Scientist at Emory University (Atlanta, GA) studying mechanisms of tumor recurrence in kids with brain tumors. As a postdoctoral fellow, he was the recipient of two Young Investigator Awards from Alex Lemonade Stand Foundation (Philadelphia, PA) and Rockland Immunochemicals. His current research has been funded by Northwestern Mutual Foundation (Milwaukee, WI), CURE Childhood Cancer Foundation (Atlanta, GA) and American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). When he is not on the bench you will find him spending time with his family or exploring the world through traveling and blogging.
Image Sources: Twitter and Hemai Parthasarathy
Acknowledgements: Ananda Ghosh and Renee Shenton
The contents of Club SciWri are the copyright of PhD Career Support Group for STEM PhDs {A US Non-Profit 501(c)3}. (PhDCSG is an initiative of the alumni of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The primary aim of this group is to build a NETWORK among scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs).
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