Episode 61: Beyond a Summer of Science

Episode 61: Beyond a Summer of Science with Heather Mead, Ph.D.

Karie Dozer [00:00:04] I'm Karie Dozer and this is TGen talks. The summer months mean new faces at TGen not new researchers, at least not yet, but interns … Helios Scholars to be exact. And these highly-qualified, carefully selected future scientists take part in an eight-week biomedical research internship. Side by side with TGen researchers. It's a full-time job for the students and at the end of their eight weeks they present their research and contribute their findings made up mostly of college and grad school students. These internships can be a defining moment, helping these future scientists find their passion and their path toward a career in biomedical research. On this podcast, we'll meet with one such intern who proved it's never too late to find that passion and pursue a completely new career in the lab. And this episode of TGen Talks brings us once again to TGen North, and our guest for today's podcast is Heather Mead. Heather, thanks for joining us on TGen Talks, your first time on the podcast.

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:01:05] Yes, it is. All right, thanks for having me.

Karie Dozer [00:01:06] Tell me what it is that you do here at TGen.

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:01:09] I'm a research assistant professor, which is a fancy way of saying that I research pathogens and I'm in the immunology course. So we're really interested in the intersection between humans and what we do to fight off any pathogen that might make us sick, and then what strategies those pathogens have to evade our immune system and make us sick. And so we're using DNA and RNA molecules to understand that interaction, nasty pathogens.

Karie Dozer [00:01:32] What made you want to study them?

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:01:34] They kind of happened by accident. I went to my undergraduate degree to become a teacher. I was a young mother and I thought a teacher schedule would work great. And I started taking science classes that I thought maybe a science teacher would be a really fun career path. And then I realized that I liked the science more than the teaching. And I decided to just get a four-year degree in microbiology.

Karie Dozer [00:01:56] At what point in your life did you decide to do this?

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:01:58] I was 26 when I enrolled at Coconino Community College, so I had been a real estate agent before that. I took some time off to raise my kids, and then when the youngest one was in kindergarten was when I decided to kind of reevaluate career options and think about what I wanted to do, some kind of career path that allowed me to have a separation between work life and family life and something that also felt impactful and important. And so thus the teaching idea came first and then the science came subsequently.

Karie Dozer [00:02:27] Okay, so from community college to teach then, Professor, tell me what that was like. Well, it.

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:02:32] Took ten years. Okay. It probably would have been faster to rebuild my real estate license. Yeah. I started the community college. I did two years there, and I got an associate's degree in science. And actually, when I was a community college member is when I applied for the Helios scholars at T Gene, and I was quite possibly the oldest Helios scholar. So there is lots and lots of bright, shiny, really intelligent 18, 21-year-olds. And so I was sort of the unofficial Helios mother as well. And it really changed everything. Being able to do that hands on research, really. The initial idea was if I'm going to get a four-year degree in science, I'm going to need to have some hands-on experience so that I can be competitive in the job market. And so I applied for that in my junior year, thinking that I could get some hands-on experience and maybe potentially secure a position as a laboratory in at T Gen or other genomics lab in Flagstaff.

Karie Dozer [00:03:22] What does the Helios scholar, what does he or she do?

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:03:24] So the Helios Scholar program is really meant to expose students to what it's like to work in research, not just going into the lab work and completing lab tasks, but more developing an independent research project where you can see how you go to the literature, you find a knowledge gap, something that you're interested in, and then you design experiments and test hypotheses to really address that knowledge gap. And then it goes all the way through to a poster presentation or oral presentation. So you really baby that process all the way through for eight weeks.

Karie Dozer [00:03:54] Do you remember what your presentation was?

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:03:55] Oh, yeah, I do. Yeah. So my Helios project and actually my doctoral research was focused on cognitive AIDS, which is the causative agent of Valley Fever. Everybody in Arizona, in the southwestern United States understands valley fever. So that summer, as I started doing the independent research, I mean, it was phenomenal. I just was alone in the lab trying to figure out this really interesting culturing method of a way to how can we grow this organism in the lab in a way that really represents the immune system, because we want to be able to study it in a system that's very similar to the respiratory system. And it was just so gratifying to go through that process and go to the literature and go to people who had more experience than me, try their techniques and get it to work. And actually out of that project came my first primary author publication. And somewhere along the lines I just realized, Yeah, I can't just stay in a lab and do work for other people my whole life. I need to get a Ph.D. because I have questions that I want to ask and I want to ask them.

Karie Dozer [00:04:55] So you got your PhD. How long was that journey? You mentioned you were a mom.

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:04:59] Yeah. Yeah. So I started my. Undergraduate degree when my son Joe was in kindergarten and I finished my undergrad degree when he was in fifth grade. And then I rolled right into the Ph.D. program and that took me four more years and I finished two years ago. He's a junior in high school, so we've been kind of getting our educations at the same time.

Karie Dozer [00:05:18] What did it feel like when you were finally finished? I mean, I'm sure you had doubts along the way about starting something like this so late in life, relatively speaking.

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:05:26] You know, it's funny. It was hard, but you have to be doing something during the day, so you might as well be doing something that makes you feel enriched. And there are some things about being a student that was really positive. As a mother, I could take a few hours to go run to the school and, you know, watch a presentation or whatever. I don't know. Somehow it just all worked out. My kids were really supportive, too. I think they did a really great job of giving me the time when I needed it. And then the tradeoff is when I had the time to be with them. I was very focused and I think they loved watching me do something that I love so much. You know, they came to my Helios presentation and seen those three little Blondie heads out in the audience, and they were just so excited the mom was on stage. I mean, that was some of the best parts of it.

Karie Dozer [00:06:05] Oh, that must have been so fun for your Helios counterparts. The kids who are still in high school or early college.

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:06:10] They might have been closer in age to my kids. They loved me. Probably so.

Karie Dozer [00:06:13] All right. Tell me what you do now. What's your area of research? What are you working the most on day to day here at TGen?

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:06:18] Well, okay, so my primary focus in my doctoral degree, as I told you, is Valley Fever. So I started there, which is a respiratory pathogen. And during the COVID 19 pandemic, of course, that was a really easy transition from studying one type of respiratory pathogen to another. So I took on some COVID work. I brought both of those skill sets with me to TGen … I mentioned, I'm working in the immunology core with a really phenomenal young gentleman named John Allen, and he really specializes in multiplex assays. So getting a lot of questions answered at one time. And then again, looking at the adaptive immune system, which is sort of the part of your immune system that recalls past exposures and sort of is that front line of defense for a repeat infection. So we have all of these complex projects and I don't go into the lab and do the work, but I work with the really talented research staff that we have here to make sure that when we're going into the lab and doing the work, that we're getting high quality data and that we're testing the hypotheses in the best way possible, then I get to get my hands a little bit on the data and do a little bit of data cleanup and data validation and pass it off to our really talented biopharma missions that will then take it in and turn it into statistical analyzes. So I kind of like to think of myself as the bridge between the wet bench and the data. It's a lot of complex pieces on both sides, and so I get to play kind of in the middle where I talk to laboratory ends and the bio implementations and I have skill sets that straddle both of those worlds. So it's kind of a fun place to be.

Karie Dozer [00:07:45] What about Healio Scholars? Now? This is a program that continues and seems to grow every year. What do you offer the Helios scholars who come to teach in this year and next year?

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:07:56] Oh man, I love working with undergraduate researchers. I really like working with nontraditional students. I had this really phenomenal student last year who had done a lot of things and then came and did some work with us. And I like being somebody that can understand what it's like to be an adult later in life trying to pursue a new career. And it's really fun to work with nontraditional students because their brain has been exposed to so many different life scenarios, so many different careers. This gentleman that I'm talking about, he was an elevator technician before he came to us at his doctorate in the National Guard. So he had these very different skill sets that ended up intersecting. He just published a paper on COVID and working dogs. It was fun to be able to push him in a different way because he was nontraditional.

Karie Dozer [00:08:44] What is it about the undergraduate students, the younger, you know, the Helios scholars that come in now that you find so interesting?

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:08:51] I love watching them grow and develop. We have this great intern that worked with us this year, Peyton, and she did a Helios internship last year, and it was so fun to watch her confidence in herself develop. You know, when you're a young student, you don't want to get that question wrong. And I love just pushing them like, you know, I'm not going to judge you for what you say. I just want you to answer my question. I want to see you push yourself because I think you have that answer within you. So I really like watching students just become. Confident in what they know and develop their project in a way that they're more of an expert than me, which is really the goal. Right. I had a phenomenal mentor earnings, Brigitte Barker, and she always had an open door for me. She did a great job of making me suffer just enough to be, you know.

Karie Dozer [00:09:36] Worried, challenged.

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:09:37] Challenged, but then making it really fun and being available. And I really try and incorporate that with my students. You know, How.

Karie Dozer [00:09:44] Many mentee students do you have at a time?

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:09:46] Yeah, usually one. I really try to have one undergraduate student a year. I've done that for years. Even when I was at NYU and in my Ph.D. program. I had some great students then too. And yeah, we're getting ready to have an incoming Helios Scholar in June that I'm really looking forward to.

Karie Dozer [00:10:02] So do you or Helios Scholars study under you? Do they study the same topics or are you just more of a personal slash, professional mentor? Not lab work, but life work?

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:10:12] A little bit of both. We try to come up with a project that can be done in eight weeks that is more than just pushing samples through something that's going to be intellectually challenging and then provide lab skills. And this particular student actually already has some lab skill that's coming in this summer. And so we picked a project that, you know, the lab skills are high level and they already will have those. So really the challenge for this individual is going to be conceptualizing the project and probably really contributing towards a scientific publication. So I always try and pick a project that fits the person. What is it that they need to grow and develop in and what are their interests or what are their life goals? This person wants to be a physician, so, you know, we're giving them a very immunology relevant project.

Karie Dozer [00:10:55] So this isn't busywork. This is something that will contribute to the body of knowledge on a particular topic. Oh yes, it's new information and we're not solving old problems.

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:11:04] Yeah, yeah. We're not just using kits and banging out results. It's, you know, we want to develop an assay and you're going to help us develop it. And this is what we're measuring and how we're going to validate it. And this is what we're interested in. And it usually feeds into some bigger project. 

Karie Dozer [00:11:17] Does it always work out or do you ever have a Helios scholar discover at the end of eight weeks that maybe they don't want to do lab science, maybe they want to do something else?

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:11:27] I think that happens. I haven't had that experience my own self. Personally. I've actually had it be more the opposite, where a student thinks that they want to be a doctor or they think they want to be a nurse and they're just doing the internship as a way to expose themselves. And then they find that primary research is just so addicting and fun that they decide to stay in it, which is really fun.

Karie Dozer [00:11:48] So if you were to go to obviously your children are older now, but if you were to go to school and talk about what it is that you do to a group of kindergartners, what would you say?

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:11:59] I did that a couple weeks ago.

Karie Dozer [00:12:00] Okay, good. So you know the answer.

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:12:02] And it reminded me why I went into science not teaching, but they were a delight. Oh, five.

Karie Dozer [00:12:06] Year olds are great audiences.

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:12:07] I it's so hard to conceptualize what a pathogen geneticist is to a kindergartner. So we usually boil it down to the idea of germs and sort of like, you know, there's all these little things out there that we can't see, but we know they interact with our body. And so we have to use special tools to help us find those little tiny guys and study them in a way that helps us understand what they're doing every day. It was fun.

Karie Dozer [00:12:31] I bet if somebody out there is listening and they think maybe I want to do science, but it's too much, I can't. I can't get a PhD. I'm never going to work at TJ and or I'm never going to teach science at a university level, but it's super interesting. What would you tell them?

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:12:45] I don't know. I don't know if it's ever too late in life to do anything. I mean, I was 26 when I started, and I think I'm still young and I think that, you know, the time's going to pass anyways. So if you're intellectually curious about something, why not pursue it? It's never too late for that. And I think that this is just the most gratifying job. I love being able to do work that's impactful every day. And when we're collecting data and results, we know that we're impacting patients of tomorrow. That's awesome. You know, all these diseases valley fever, tuberculosis, COVID, it can really change someone's life. An infection can be life changing. It can impact your quality of life or forever or that of your family member. So there's something about going in at that molecular level like an investigator and trying to understand what these interactions are and then how can we manipulate them or understand them in a way to improve human health. I mean, that's just phenomenal.

Karie Dozer [00:13:35] Well, you're not only affecting these illnesses and these patients later, but also some students who maybe want to do exactly what you do.

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:13:42] Yeah. Or empower them to find the path that just fits them perfectly. That's the point, isn't it? Yeah, I think it's the right thing. And then just pursuing it with greatness.

Karie Dozer [00:13:49] Yeah. That's awesome. Heather, thank you so much for your time. 

Heather Mead, Ph.D. [00:13:52] Appreciate you. 

Karie Dozer [00:13:53] For more on TGen’s research, go to teach TGen dot org slash news. The Translational Genomics Research Institute, part of City of Hope, is an Arizona based nonprofit biomedical research institution dedicated to conducting groundbreaking research with life changing results. You can find more of these podcasts at TGen dot org slash TGen Talks, Apple and Spotify and most podcast platforms. For TGen Talks, I’m Karie Dozer.