Author: @Bea

#PHDstory | Florence Yunh

Florence Yunh
PhD of Chemistry

 

Which field is your research topic in?

I am working in the chemistry research field. My PhD project involves organic chemistry and biochemistry.

Tell me more about it.

I am a PhD student at Cardiff University, and I am working on a project that involves a plant protein that produces a class of natural products, called terpenes. These products are the skeleton structure of lots of the drugs we know right now. For example, Taxol™ is a widely used terpene in chemotherapy. I am trying to understand how these proteins work, and exploit what nature gave us to create molecules that would be useful for our society. For example, I use these enzymes to easily produce new molecules which can then be potent drugs. In the lab, I work with living cells to produce the proteins I have mentioned; they will in turn produce compounds of interest, like new medicines.

More specifically, the protein I work with produces amorphadiene, a precursor of artemisinin, the main drug we use right now to fight malaria. We have nowadays several challenges to tackle about this disease. One of these is the resistance towards the drug, which is currently building up, so we are in need of a new treatment. Also, we are trying to make these drugs (artemisinin and derivatives) economically accessible to third world countries, which are the more touched by malaria.

So, are you also developing a new cost-effective approach to make these drugs?

Yes, exactly.

How is yours different from the old approach?

Currently, artemisinin is simply extracted from plants. This is a very destructive process for nature, and definitively expensive. Because every harvest is different, artemisinin yield varies from year to year. Therefore, the price varies a lot in time, which does not make it easy nor simple for third world countries to buy this drug.

What I am trying to do in the lab is to find a faster and reliable way to make artemisinin. How? Using these living cells, from E. coli bacteria, to produce the drug itself. So, instead of manually extracting the drug from the plant, we could, in the future, produce it in the lab, using these cells, in a faster, safer and cheaper way.

Do you also collaborate with other researchers?

Yes, I do. I collaborate with other research groups around the world. Together, we aim to make this whole process scalable, so to produce artemisinin in very big amounts, seeing as right now we are able to produce the drug but in very small quantities.

What motivated you to enter this field of study?

I wanted to bring something positive to society. There are many ways to do that and I think all fields of study are trying to reach that goal. But I believe that working in this field is exploiting my capacities to reach that goal. Also, chemistry is everywhere and I love it!

To you, what would it mean to be successful?

This is a very subjective question. Being successful for me is being happy with my life.

What is happiness, anyway? This is also a very personal question to which I am still looking for an answer. I may have some clues…. Working for something that is going to help society move forward makes me happy. So, I guess working in a place that is looking to improve the world we live in is for me one of the keys to be successful.

What kind of society do you dream of?

I dream of a society where everyone could afford food, basic healthcare, entertainment and education. Also, a society which is not driven only by money and banks, but where our aim is making each other happy, rather than compete with each other and make money. Oh, and something really important, I dream of a society where we all have respect for each other and where we live. We have only one earth, our home, and I think we should try to protect it for future generations.

If you could, what would you tell your younger self?

Try, even if I think I am going to fail because there is no wrong pathway.

Conversation by:
Marianna Loizzi

“I have really enjoyed interviewing Florence. Especially when I have asked her what makes her happy. It is really heart-warming hearing that her happiness is working in a place that tries to make the world a better place. I was expecting a more materialistic answer and I am happy I was wrong. We need more people like Florence in this world.”

Learn more about Florence's work:
linkedin.com/florencehuynh

 

Conversation by:
Marianna Loizzi

“I have really enjoyed interviewing Florence. Especially when I have asked her what makes her happy. It is really heart-warming hearing that her happiness is working in a place that tries to make the world a better place. I was expecting a more materialistic answer and I am happy I was wrong. We need more people like Florence in this world.”

Hsiung Ping-chen

Hsiung Ping-Chen
Professor of History
Biography:

Hsiung Ping-chen is a Professor of History at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who also carries the capacities of the Senior Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor and the Director of the Research Institute for the Humanities at the university. She served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts at The Chinese University of Hong Kong from 2009 to 2011, and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Taiwan Central University from 2004 to 2007. Also, Prof Hsiung has been serving as the Research Fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taipei since 1990, and K.T. Li Chair at Central University in Taiwan since 2006. An internationally renowned scholar in her field, she has also made remarkable achievements in academic administration.

Having received her B.A. in History from Taiwan University, she furthered her studies in the US and received her M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Brown University and her S.M. in Population Studies and International Health from the School of Public Health at Harvard University. Her research interest lies in the areas of women’s and children’s health, gender and family relations, and intellectual and social history of early modern/modern China and Europe. She served as Director of the Humanities Centre at the Central University in Taiwan, and played an instrumental role in founding the interdisciplinary group ‘Ming-Ch’ing Studies’ at the Academia Sinica. Over the years, Professor Hsiung has held visiting professorships at many leading academic institutions in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, including UCLA, Cornell University, University of Michigan, Freie Universitat Berlin, and Keio University, Japan.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong
President, Asian New Humanities Net (ANHN)
(852) 3943 7134

Learn more about Hsiung's work:
history.cuhk.edu.hk/mhpch.html
The past and the present. What does the history of infants tell us?

Childhood becomes a social, spiritual and historical journey for Ping-chen Hsiung, History professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who has dedicated most of her 40-year-spanning academic career to the study of infants and children in ancient China.

As the West has continually seen childhood as just the first steps taken into the richer and wider phases of life, Hsiung’s studies focus on the spiritual and social roles of the child we all were once, and how the maintenance of this role represents a key to understanding the role we take on as adults.

As well as her position as a History Professor, Hsiung’s takes the seat as the Director of the Center for Taiwan studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and her broad academic experience and research on childhood and infancy in China can be found surmised in her book A Tender Voyage, where she exposes through an interdisciplinary approach the comparisons standing between how we view children in the West, and how they were seen in China hundreds of years ago, in order to extract, from a view of the past in contrast to the present, the path to a more tender future.

Watch the trailer:
Watch the video:
Listen to the Audiofile here:
Read the transcript of Hsiung Ping-Chen's Video here ◂

Nerina: Today, I am sharing with you a conversation that I had a year ago with Ping-chen Hsiung. She’s a professor of History at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and she has done pioneering work on childhood in China. One of her favorite quotes id “To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man”, by Aristotle.

Hsiung: I am Hsiung Ping-chen, professor of History at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. I am a trained historian, but I also have a secondary field in Public Health.

My main research topic is History of infants and young children in late imperial China, studied from interdisciplinary and comparative perspective. This is trying to answer historically how human life becomes possible, namely what happens every day now in the modern society whenever you give birth to a child. You expect this child to make it in life, but that’s not the given in pre-modern societies, so I wanted to answer that question, and given that Chinese documentation tends to be rich and available in many, many different angles from different areas, I started this study from Chinese sources, and then compared to information as we know it from England, Sweden, Japan, India, and colonial America. Then, I try to study it from historical texts left by pediatricians, by art historians, by objects and things, so it required an interdisciplinary angle.

Nerina: How did you get interested in this topic?

Hsiung: I was very curious, when I was maybe 7 or 8, about how we as very young children – preschool children – have a sense of identity, therefore when I was I teenager and saw the cover of The Second Sex – only the cover at the bookstore -, I thought maybe the second sex was about children and childhood, as a second identity. I opened it up and discovered it was about women and was a bit disappointed, although I am a woman, and thought therefore children should be called the third sex, that is: children as an independent domain in terms of their sense of self, their interests, the games they play, their everyday sentiments. If you see their behavior or other things that you now know, people acknowledge that age as a factor, and the phases of life – human life, however it is understood in different societies, at different times -, actually form a kind of a different existential sentiment.

How I got interested? I was just very curious. I went to college and picked History as a major at the National Taiwan University in 1971. I assumed that this was an often studied subject, and therefore you could just take a course called Childhood in World History, but I looked it up as a freshman and never found it. I graduated with a History major, then I went out to History graduate school at Brown University in the United States and got a degree in History and started teaching. By the end of the early 80’s, I discovered that, really, I had nothing studied. I was very surprised and couldn’t sleep with the idea of not knowing.

I knew by then that there was material to answer that question, so I decided I should just answer my own question so that whenever *4:30, unintelligible*

Nerina: What can we learn from this topic?

Hsiung: We discovered the details of how infants where brought from their first 24 hours, first week, first month, first year, and why they celebrated when they got to live, and that’s in the technical aspect. But also in that we see how people treasure life, because death, or not living, is a constant reality, and so I wrote my book that’s published in English – I published three monographs in Chinese and one in English on the subject. Published in 2005 by Stanford Press, it’s called A Tender Voyage, which is a rendition of a Chinese Buddhist term called Tz’u-hung, meaning that Indian Buddhism assumed that life is an endless suffering and so people would have to get out of this vicious cycle, but Chinese Buddhists, when they saw Indian Buddhism, they thought that the way to get out of this challenging situation is through compassion and mutual help, so that is called Tz’u-hung, a tender voyage where people could help each other to get through this very difficult journey called life.

Nerina: I wanted to know more about this book and there are different reviews about it. This is by Pei-yi Wu and you can read:

“Since Phillip Ariees groundbreaking and provocative book L’Enfant et la vie famillialle sou l’ancien régime was published in 1960, the West has been inundated with books on the history of children and childhood.”

Hsiung: The French book was actually translated into English and other languages starting in the 70’s and 80’s; I started my study at roughly that same period. That book made a very bold and startling, but also challenging, assumption, in Western Europe, or France, primarily, that childhood may be a modern invention. It has since been studied and responded by European historians, and turned out not to be the case, but still, that was a good start in terms of the discovery of childhood studies.

Nerina: The book consists of three parts; Part One is about the physical conditions, and this contains the most original and important findings: In contrast to Europe, specialized medicine for children appeared considerably earlier in China. The beginning of practicing pediatrics started at least since the second half of the ninth century.

Part number two is about social life, and here professor Hsiung gathered information from more than eight hundred chronological biographies. One fully developed topic is the bond between mother and son; we can read the depth and duration of this bond had few parallels in other societies and greatly mitigated the effects of patriarchy.

In part number three, that is about, for example, girlhood, I feel that there is also an interest in aspect, when she says; to further confront the superficial impression that gender prejudice could have worked only to the advantage of boys, it is useful to look at the privilege a young girl might have had in emotional warmth from family elders. Most families, if made to disclose, indicated their favorite child to be a daughter. Interesting perspective and, I feel, really interesting book.

What was childhood about?

Hsiung: You know, when people now speak of children or childhood or infants, because of the modern experience, since the nineteenth century originated in Europe but now it’s everywhere, people tend to think of human existence as defined by the biophysical existence, therefore they’re thinking about ‘infant’ and ‘child’ in a logical sense. That is, the earlier phase of a person’s life and of someone who is very small and needs tenderness; but if you look at the Chinese documents, it started off as understanding ‘infant’ and ‘child, the concept in three ways.

There’s the basic fundamental ways, which Chinese pediatricians share with everybody else, that have to look after the illness of a four month old or a two year old, which had a different physiological condition as opposed to sixteen year old adults. But then comes a second understanding, which is what we called a ‘social child’, that is a role, a status. Chinese people, because they would pay respect to their ancestors, so in Chinese New Year, including people who were in their sixties or seventies, would assume their role as the offspring of a genealogy; even the Emperor, the head of their empire, called himself Son of Heaven, which means that he is a junior, and that’s a basic humility and also it’s a generational concept that assumes that there’s people before you and there’s people after you. So, that’s the second definition.

The third definition, actually, is an existential and ethical understanding of infancy and childhood. That’s the understanding that, eventually, everybody would go back to become an infant; it’s something that’s cultivated, and if you look at, say, Charlie Brown or some painting, they’re people would always be a child, always a five year old, always a three year old. Because at that time people didn’t have a notion of time as a lineal progression, so people think ‘Ok, you could stay forever young’ or that you do your exercise and cultivate, and you would become a child again.

I think those three different ways of understanding the beginnings of life and the existential state and the social role, at least allow people to have multiple choices, and it’s a good cultural diversity, I would say. That is something that Chinese, or the habitants of continental East Asia, happen to start up with. I don’t like to say that Chinese civilization always held secrets to everything else, or that’s it’s older, because I think the relations between different cultures and civilizations is not a competition about who’s winning, who’s coming better, or who’s wiser, or smarter, or better; I just think that different people living in different circumstances in different places happen to have different notions, ideas, and practices, and this is one thing that I discovered in my studies and that I would like to share.

Nerina: What is the most important lesson that you have learned?

Hsiung: When I talk about my studies, people always say ‘Oh, how can you document stories of six month infants from hundreds of years ago?’, and I say ‘Of course you could, as long as you give it your hardest attention and time’, because I think, as historians, we could also document silence, and then to interpret the empty space. The people whose lives have vanished will be just like the open space in the painting; there’s always the void. What is not there helps us understand and interpret what’s there. We have to be able, as historians, to document the missing lives and the empty spaces and the silences better.

Nerina: How can we use our past, our different pasts, to create our common future?

Hsiung: I think that historical relations have stored a database of circumstances. How they worked and enjoyed and endured these circumstances, so it would be a loss if it’s like a forest; if you only decided to preserve the most useful plant for current cosederation, the you would lose a lot, because in the forest, in the water, you want all forms of life to be able to carry on. So I certainly would like, when I talk to people in social sciences, to work with more contemporary data, or to think about future problems, I would say that this is also useful information. They’re humans too, and then it would be a shame if we decided to drop that and assume that we could still have enough information and inspiration and all kinds of stories to carry on for the future.

I also hope that humanities and art would not have such a confrontational relation with science and people who have other interests, because I see, in all kinds of real circumstances, unique people with different expertise, different experience, different interests, with common work together. No singular subject or discipline could complete a service or a task without the help of other people.

Nerina: If you could travel through time, is there a time you’d like to view? Is there a person you would ask something in the past?

Hsiung: If I were to be able to travel back in time. I know there are times and places where people really mingled and boundaries did not matter as much. For instance, in the Asian border, between the sixth and ninth century; I would like to be there.

I have just been to *foreign city name, can’t hear it right, 16:45*, because I know that there are Indian eye doctors who would fix people’s eyes, there are Persian musicians who would perform their show, and all kinds of traders, and people who spoke all kinds of languages, so that would be the kind of place that would satisfy my curiosity.

Nerina: What kind of question would you have for them?

Hsiung: Oh, no. It would just me going to the market everyday: I love to look at things, I like to go to different markets and to see what life has to offer. I don’t have any particular informative questions to ask them, but I think it would be a to to see how life flourishes in places and times when boundaries mattered less and when people mingled more easily.

Nerina: Do you have a dream?

Hsiung: I have lots and lots of dreams. I actually have a lot of real dreams every day; I dream easily, and even when I doze off for a few minutes I can have a dream, and sometimes, I can’t tell the difference between the cream and real life. I tend to think that the difference between dreams and real life is that the dreams that you have are so real, that they could become real life in the next step.

Nerina: What is your next book?

Hsiung: My next book is going to be documenting the life of a provincial intellectual in seventeenth century China, who somehow, because of his of sort of failed life, dreamed of something big, and then people said three hundred years later that he’s very modern. This is the book I’m publishing.

In terms of projects, because I have studied infants and children for thirty years, now I’m looking at the other end, meaning aging understood and observed cross-culturally.

Nerina: You research on childhood, and you are going to research the end of life. What is life about?

Hsiung: What is life about? You know, as I said, it shouldn’t only be about physical existence. It includes life socially, culturally, but it should also define affinity. I also teach History of Family, and I say ‘Your closest ones may not be the blood kin. It could be the people who rub shoulders with you when you have a flat tire in the winter, when people stop and help you. That’s your closest kin’.

What is life? It depends, but I would say life is what you decide to make of it.

Nerina: Thank you so much, Hsiung.

Thank you so much for watching, thank you so much for listening. Keep wondering, and see you soon again. Bye and ciao.

Biography:

Hsiung Ping-chen is a Professor of History at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who also carries the capacities of the Senior Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor and the Director of the Research Institute for the Humanities at the university. She served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts at The Chinese University of Hong Kong from 2009 to 2011, and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Taiwan Central University from 2004 to 2007. Also, Prof Hsiung has been serving as the Research Fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taipei since 1990, and K.T. Li Chair at Central University in Taiwan since 2006. An internationally renowned scholar in her field, she has also made remarkable achievements in academic administration.

Having received her B.A. in History from Taiwan University, she furthered her studies in the US and received her M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Brown University and her S.M. in Population Studies and International Health from the School of Public Health at Harvard University. Her research interest lies in the areas of women’s and children’s health, gender and family relations, and intellectual and social history of early modern/modern China and Europe. She served as Director of the Humanities Centre at the Central University in Taiwan, and played an instrumental role in founding the interdisciplinary group ‘Ming-Ch’ing Studies’ at the Academia Sinica. Over the years, Professor Hsiung has held visiting professorships at many leading academic institutions in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, including UCLA, Cornell University, University of Michigan, Freie Universitat Berlin, and Keio University, Japan.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong
President, Asian New Humanities Net (ANHN)
(852) 3943 7134

Learn more about Hsiung's work:
history.cuhk.edu.hk/mhpch.html

Yongyuth Yuthavong

Yongyuth Yuthavong
Former Minister of Science and Technology
Biography:

Professor Dr. Yongyuth Yuthavong is a former Deputy Prime Minister and former Minister of Science and Technology, Thailand and an outstanding Thai scientist with a particular interest in the broad issues of public policies, especially those concerning the application of science and technology for development – as well as human development in general.

Dr. Yongyuth spent a long career at Mahidol University, conducting research and teaching. He was appointed Professor of Biochemistry in 1983 and was honored with the “Outstanding Scientist of Thailand” Award in 1984, from the Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Technology. During the same period, he was chosen as the Director of the National Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (BIOTEC) from 1985 until 1989.

Dr. Yongyuth became the first President of Thailand’s National Science & Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) from 1992 until 1998 and in 2004, he received the Nikkei Asia Prize for Science, Technology and Innovation from the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan, for his outstanding work on antimalarial drug targets, as well as the prestigious “Person of the Year” Award from Thailand’s National Identity Board. Dr. Yongyuth served as the Minister of Science and Technology from 2006 to 2008, when The Nation newspaper named him one of “the 35 most influential Thais over the past 35 years”. Dr. Yongyuth has since returned to his research career with BIOTEC, where he now heads a research group working on the development of new antimalarials.

Learn more about Yongyuth's work:
www.researchgate.net/Yongyuth_Yuthavong
From science to innovation, development, and sustainability in Thailand

What is the more human side of science like? How is it linked with the human spirit? And what is the role this connection plays in the growth of an entire country?

Professor Yongyuth Yuthavong draws a detailed and thoughtful map on how science inspired him to grow from an avid biochemistry student, to a determined researcher in the fight against Malaria in Thailand, to the country’s very own Deputy Prime Minister.

As a pioneer and an investigator at heart, Yuthavong played an important role in the creation of Thailand’s National Science and Technology Development Agency, focusing his research in the interactions of Malaria and the creation of antimalarial drugs. As a politician and as a professor, he puts sustainable, long-term development at the forefront of his discourse, and continues to dream of a brighter future in which the younger generation gets the chance to learn, experience and contribute to society, within and outside the scientific sphere.

With a life devoted to science, which brightest aspects can be found in his book Sparks of the Spirit, professor Yuthavong remains a shining light in the world of research and politics, reminding us that true passion touches not only ourselves, but those around us.

Watch the trailer:
Watch the video:
Listen to the Audiofile here:
Read the transcript of Yongyuth Yuthavong's Video here ◂

Prof. Yongyuth Yuthavong: My name is Yongyuth Yuthawong and I am a scientist, and I’ve been working in science almost all my life. Sometimes, I’m induced to do other things, such as policy, administration and even politics.

Nerina Finetto: Thank you so much for joining me. Science, policy making and politics; how are they related to each other?

Yongyuth: It may due to my nature, but I think everyone is the same, in that I have both a narrow and a broad interest. The narrow interest took me to science – I studied chemistry -, but then the broad interest took me to all sorts of things. I like to talk with people on policy of countries, on international politics and so on. When I was applying for a place in the university, I applied for a place in chemistry, and after the interview I was furious because the interviewer said ‘You are more suited to study general science’. So I thought ‘General science?! I want to be a chemist!’.

So that is how it always is with me. I tried to do work and I stayed true to my profession as a biochemist on my working life, but now and then I’m induced to various things outside of it, but always concerning science.

Nerina: Tell me more about your work as a scientist.

Yongyuth: I would like to say I’m quite successful in my intended career. I did work first of all in just basic biochemistry; enzymes and various membranes, biomenbranes, but I found that there was very little support in Thailand for basic science, so I needed to do something which uses basic science to solve the problems of my country, and at that time, Malaria was a very big problem, so I thought that maybe we should start to study the biochemistry of Malaria, so I’ve been doing that for more than forty years. It’s a bit long, until now Malaria is no longer a big threat in Thailand, but it’s still a big threat in the world.

Many people, many hundreds of thousands still die from Malaria each year, so I think my job is not done, but that is the narrow path which took me to being recognized by being given the Outstanding Scientist of Thailand Award; I was given the Nikkei award from Japan for science, technology and innovation, and I was recognized for various things. Right now, I’m now involved in developing antimalarial drugs, which has now gone into clinical trial, so it’s something that I’m very proud of. I think if the first synthetic drug from Thailand that has gone on to human clinical trials. That’s the narrow path.

Nerina: And how did you find the broader path?

Yongyuth: That probably stemmed from my interest in the broad areas of science and how we could develop science in my country. I think more than forty years ago, there was some friend of mine, I physicist from Oregon, who was a n expert in science policy. He was coming to Thailand, and he asked if some people would like to listen to him, and I said ‘Why not?’. So I organized a conference on science policy where people from all spheres, both the political people and the policy people, the administrative and the scientists came together at the National Research Council of Thailand, and that was the first main introduction for me into the area of science policy. People asking why Thailand had so little in terms of structures to support science, so that really paved the way for a group to be formed; I was part of that group to try to from the Ministry of Science and Technology, and it’s like a miracle. People thought that it would never be possible, but then in the end the Ministry was passed as a law.

We got the Ministry of Science and Technology, and I was induced into working for the Ministry. I was asked to be the director of biotechnology, and then that was the decision. Narrow path or the broad path. At the time I said, ‘Let me do my science first’. So we invited someone else who was more senior to become the director, so I could concentrate on my scientific work. But then I never left the area of policy, it just sort of drew m into all sorts of things.

Indeed, I became the director of biotechnology later on, and the we started to think of big things, like having a national agency for science and technology. This was also in part due to the grant from the United States – USAID -, a loan to the Thai government for science research, and we sort of melted the USAID project together with the Thai attempts to broaden the structure for support. That was how the Science and Technology Development was born around 1992, and I was the first director- now it’s called president – of the National Science and Technology Development Agency.

I could go on from there to build science and not just only for my own narrow interest in chemistry and biochemistry, but across all areas. Not only biotechnology, but also material science, electronics and computers, and various areas.

Nerina: How was your experience and what kind of challenges did you encounter?

Yongyuth: So that gave me an idea to write a book called The Sparks from the Spirit.

Nerina: Sparks from the Spirit. What is it about?

Yongyuth: In Sparks from the Spirit, the spirit is the spirit of science that I’m talking about and I think everyone has, right from childhood, but maybe we lose that spirit as we grow old because there are other distractions. But for other people – for scientists and for inventors and so on -, that spirit is never gone, it’s always with them. They’re like the core of an onion, so they can help to bring about technologies and innovations, and then the people from that outside can work together to lead to what is called development in very broad areas.

For example, the Green Revolution of the 1960’s; that is an example of development that came from science of agriculture, form the science of biology, but also from various areas. From broad areas in agriculture, in farming, in politics and various things that help to bring about water resource management and so on. It helped to bring about the agriculture, the Green Revolution of the 1960’s, but that was not sustainable.

Even though the Green Revolution was big, it was not sustainable, because it was too resource-intensive, so it required a lot of water and well-educated farmers and so on; also, it ignores another green factor, and that is the environmental factor. Son now, there is a kind of Evergreen development, where you take all this things that you forgot to take into account in the 60’s, now bring them together and hopefully this will go toward sustainable development. This is a part of the sustainable development movement that we’re having right now that the UN is really calling for, and we hope to achieve by 2030.

There are seventeen goals of sustainable development. I looked at these seventeen goals and I found that they all really have science as a big component, so I put this in Sparks from the Spirit. The spirit produces sparks that will go on, hopefully, to sustainable development.

Nerina: What is the role of the scientist here? What does it mean to be a scientist?

Yongyuth: Well, I think a scientist is not only useful in the sense that he can work on his narrow area – drug development or cancer -, but a scientist is also useful to the society as someone who appreciates the power knowledge; not only knowledge in his or her own area, but knowledge in general, and have the curiosity to go on to something new. That is really the essence of science: the curiosity and the wonder and the exploration, that’s in the nature and the spirit of humans, so I think a scientist can tell the society in general to keep these characters in you and don’t lose them as you grow up.

Nerina: In your book you wrote also about the fire inside us, right?

Yongyuth: We all have fires within us. Sometimes that fire drives you to your carreer, like a pianist who has a fire of performance, and she can go on to that stage. That fire drives her to something really great in her career and to the world, but in order to grow that fire, you really need to try very hard. It’s not easy to learn your trade very well, and for an artist, you need to practice very well, and not only just practice mechanically, but practice in terms of how you generate something new, something that is different from others, and yet recognizable. It can be out of this world, but it’s recognizable, even though it comes in a new form and new interpretation.

I think science is like that, also. We have the fire of discovery inside us; we always want to know, want to ask questions about this and about that, why not this, why not that, so that’s the fire within us, and if we manage this fire well and don’t quench it before time, I think we can go on to something that is really good.

I’m so sad when, in Thai society, many people, many mothers or fathers will tell their kids ‘Don’t ask too much! ’; you know? I scold you if you ask too many questions. For me, let them ask the questions. Of course, they may bother you a little bit; some questions are nonsense and so on, but we have to be patient we our new generation, and let them really goad their fires. Each one should be able to grow his or her own fires, so that it can really burn brightly and it can give out the sparks that we’ll enjoy later on.

Nerina: What kind of society do you dream of?

Yongyuth: I think that it will not be radically different from what we’re having now, but I hope that this sustainable development movement will help make a better society, not only in terms of material’s well-being, but in terms of happiness, because in the last chapter of my book I think that society is not just aiming for sustainable development; in a way, sustainable is a little bit defensive, because it means that you get something and you want it to continue.

In the last chapter of my book, I ask what is beyond sustainability. Because what we need really is a happy society, and not only sustainable, but thriving and always going on to better things, so it is not stable, but going on, improving itself, so I hope that the society that we have in the future need not be materially rich, but it’s a society where people live together happily as a family, as an individual, as a group, as a city, as a country, and as the whole world.

I also look forward to the time when humans will go out of this world to other worlds. We are going to Mars already in 2030, and maybe some other worlds beyond Mars, but one thing that is important is that we must not leave this world in shambles, you know? As junk, and then we go on to find some other place. So we must take care of this world and have a sustainable society, or something that is beyond sustainability, here before we go elsewhere.

Nerina: What are the challenges for Thailand’s development, in your opinion?

Yongyuth: I could see that Thailand needs to change from just being an agrarian society to becoming more internationally involved and have a broader area of products and services, and not just agriculture and raw materials. I think the path is clear, that science and technology have to play a bigger role so that we can become more industrialized and also go into de digital society and become an “advanced” country.

There was no doubt science would play a big role, but then, how do you do it? Because there were so few scientists, technology and so few people who appreciate and understand science. I thought the way to do it was to talk to people; both the people who are running the country and the normal people, the students, the young people, the new generation, so we are all together in the sense that we can see that science is very important for the development of our country.

So, we cannot say we’ll go into trade or we’ll go into something that other people are doing well without science. We cannot do that. I think I have some success, but it’s still a hard job, because it’s not very easy to convince people that there is a difference between science and imported technology. Many people say ‘Oh, we don’t need to do basic science. We’ll just import the technology, import the materials, and then we can fabricate. ’; little do they know that in order to do that and be competitive, you have to have the underlying science, you have to have the knowledge in order to know what to import, what kind of things or knowledge or products to import and how would you integrate it into products, and finally, how to make the whole products yourselves.

This all concerns science as the basic infrastructure, and then from science would come the technology, would come innovation, and then, what I call “development”. Of course, development can’t come from just science alone, but it needs things like economic, business, design, and so on. It’s a bigger world, but science has a big role in it, and then if we do things correctly, we’ll have sustainable development, and not just fleeting development, nor just like a flash in the pan and then it’s gone.

I think Thailand is like a teenager growing up, so right now it’s a time of confusion. Sometimes you want to go back to the olds way, sometimes you want new things, and economically, we are right in the middle between developing country and developed country. Like with a teenager growing up, there will be a lot of turbulence, but in the end, but since we have survived and thrived for so long, I’m very confident that we will have a great society, but we are struggling to have one right now.

Nerina: What were you like as a teenager? Did you have a dream?

Yongyuth: I had many dreams. I still have dreams. I had a dream that I would become a very good musician. One day a friend said ‘Hey, let’s go and practice violin’, so I went with two of my friends for one year, but it was too late, I was at the last year of my school. I did learn something to play, when no one was home and no one was hearing, but that really is a dream unfulfilled.

I also have dream of literature and drama that I would like to follow very much. Here my dream is a bit fulfilled, because I found a wife that’s a dramatist, so she kind of fulfills one part of my life. She’s form the art side, I’m from the science side, so we can live together, with some conflicts now and then, of course, but everyone has that.

I still have dreams. Maybe if I could start life all over again, what profession would I choose, what dreams would I follow? In the end, I sort of fell on science again; probably another type of science and just chemistry and molecular biology, because I know a lot of it already. Maybe some other type of science, or maybe economics. Probably economics.

Nerina: And why economics?

Yongyuth: Because it tells you about the human conditions, it tells you about human wants and how do we go about to satisfy those wants, and how do we live with other people, because there is always limited resources; how do you share those resources, and how do you develop those resources? So, economics is an interesting subject. I refused to study it in my childhood because my uncle was such a big economist and I thought ‘Oh, I will never match him’, so I didn’t do this. There was even a scholarship for me; my uncle said I could sit at the scholarship exam, but I didn’t. I chose science.

Nerina: Is there somebody who inspired or inspires you in a special way?

Yongyuth: Well, I was just saying my uncle. My uncle was the longest serving governor of the Bank of Thailand, Dr. Puey Ungpakorn, and he really was responsible for the change of politics, as well, because he was the one who took up the call of democracy during a dictatorship and so on. I talked about him in the introduction to my book, and said he was a leading light for me.

Other heroes for me are Professor Paul Boyer, who was my mentor in University of California Los Angeles. He really started off my research career, and of course, my mother. My father died when I was very young, and my mother had very little education, and yet she brought up four kids – in fact five; she adopted one more. Five kids, with very little education, nut she was reading all the time. She was reading her books, and she managed to bring up five kids going to very good schools, just by being a tailor; she was so famous because she made such good dresses for very good prices.

So these are my heroes; my mother, my uncle, my teacher. Another teacher was Professor *23:14, foreign name, couldn’t find it*, who induced me into the world of science when I was just going on to University. I was a medical student, and he told me ‘You’re not suited for medicine, you’re more suited for science’, and I believed him.

Nerina: Sometimes we take the right path because of a teacher, but what is life about, in your opinion?

Yongyuth: I ask myself all the time. Sometimes it seems meaningless, you know? Although in Buddhism life is about going on from one to the next, to the next, to the next, until you reach Nirvana, the end of life as we now it. But for me, although I am a Buddhist nominally, I think my own life will just disappear, just like when I dream.

When I start to dream, it’s like a life starting. But when I wake up, the dream is gone, so that life is gone. So I think that when I die, my dream is over; it will disappear, I guess. Maybe it’s a pessimistic way of looking at things, but if there’s a good thing, it is that for the people who are still dreaming, part of what I did will be a legacy for them to go on later. But I will be finished.

Nerina: And where does your great passion come from?

Yongyuth: I often talk about passion. I think we need, it really enriches your life. It’s like a motor that drives you; you cannot go on without some kind of passion. I don’t know where the passion came from, but I think it’s something that is both inside you and also given to you from the outside.

I have been fortunate, perhaps by going to good schools and having a good family, so that really maintains my fire and my passion. I liked reading so much when I was young, so that gave me the fuel to go on with various things.

I’m passionate about science in general, not just chemistry. I’m passionate about it because it’s something that allows to go into all sorts of areas without fear; science gives you confidence to explore everything, and just science, but everything at all. That is the main source of my passion; it’s really the science that drives me. But as I said at the beginning, not just science, because this is just one area of human activity, and if you concentrate only in science, you can achieve something, but you will not be able to see the bigger world, and that’s a pity.

Nerina: Thank you so much for this conversation.

Yongyuth: Thank you.

Nerina: And thank you for listening, thank you for watching and thank you for sharing. Keep wondering, and see you next time again. Bye and ciao!

Biography:

Professor Dr. Yongyuth Yuthavong is a former Deputy Prime Minister and former Minister of Science and Technology, Thailand and an outstanding Thai scientist with a particular interest in the broad issues of public policies, especially those concerning the application of science and technology for development – as well as human development in general.

Dr. Yongyuth spent a long career at Mahidol University, conducting research and teaching. He was appointed Professor of Biochemistry in 1983 and was honored with the “Outstanding Scientist of Thailand” Award in 1984, from the Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Technology. During the same period, he was chosen as the Director of the National Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (BIOTEC) from 1985 until 1989.

Dr. Yongyuth became the first President of Thailand’s National Science & Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) from 1992 until 1998 and in 2004, he received the Nikkei Asia Prize for Science, Technology and Innovation from the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan, for his outstanding work on antimalarial drug targets, as well as the prestigious “Person of the Year” Award from Thailand’s National Identity Board. Dr. Yongyuth served as the Minister of Science and Technology from 2006 to 2008, when The Nation newspaper named him one of “the 35 most influential Thais over the past 35 years”. Dr. Yongyuth has since returned to his research career with BIOTEC, where he now heads a research group working on the development of new antimalarials.

Learn more about Yongyuth's work:
www.researchgate.net/Yongyuth_Yuthavong

#followup with Jason von Meding | Deviate – the movie about disasters

#followup with Jason von Meding | Deviate - the movie about disasters

Jason von Meding, senior lecturer in Disaster Risk reduction is making a movie: Deviate. Disasters are not natural.

We spoke with him about his motivation, the purpose of the movie, some myths about disasters, the challenges, and the experiences during the shooting in Vietnam.

Watch the trailer:
Watch the video:

#PHDstory | Francesco Decataldo

Francesco Decataldo
PhD in Physics

What do you do your PhD in and what is your main research topic?

My PhD project is based on the study of innovative ways to use the semiconducting polymer Poly(3,4‐ethylenedioxythiophene):polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) as soft and biocompatible interface between organic world (our bodies) and electronics. I currently work on three main projects: the first one is to study the use of thin film of this material in Organic Electrochemical Transistor (OECT), sensors to monitor tissue growth and the health of different kind of cells; the second one, also explores the use of OECTs but as a tool for detecting the percentage of oxygen diluted in solution (especially in cell medium) instead; finally, the third one is focused on the use of thin layer of PEDOT:PSS on gold electrodes patterned on Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) in order to improve their ability to directly contact and monitor the signal of a peripheral nerve in free moving animals (they are basically stretchable electrodes for monitoring neural activity). The first two projects will have many interesting application in real-time cell growth monitoring to facilitate biomedical and biological research. This is thanks to their ability to check the health status of cell and oxygen level in the cell culture media. The last project will have promising application in electriceutical treatment: instead of chemical treatment of the diseases (standard pharmacological therapy, with drugs), there could be direct monitoring and stimulation of nerve activity connected to the specific inflammatory response or illness to be treated. This could be a less toxic and a much more valid solution to treat our bodies.

How did you get interested in this particular topic? What inspires you?

I started to be interested in science when I was 15, during the science courses and classes at high school. The topic I am doing the PhD in, immediately caught my attention when Professor Beatrice Fraboni introduced me into this world. The ability to project, make and study new devices that can be used to improve human healthcare is something that really encourages me, as well as the multidisciplinary of this topics.

Tell me a bit more about your topic.

My topic is a multidisciplinary approach towards biology: chemistry, physic and electronic blended together to fill the gap between our common sensor, monitoring devices and the human body. The first topic in particular use thin film of PEDOT:PSS material, on which cells are directly grown thanks to the bio-compatibility of the conducting polymer; the transistor configuration enhances the signal response of our devices, allowing us to have a real-time monitoring able to detect cell membrane disruption in the order of tenth of seconds, so very fast! The second project is still a very fresh research topic but has already given some results about the possibility to detect small percentage of oxygen. Finally, the stretchable microelectrodes implanted on a free moving rat allowed us to monitor the signal of the peripheral nerve under study for different weeks, with low damage of the nerve.

Are yours going to be new approaches?

To the best of our knowledge, yes they are. Especially the third one (thin layer material patterned with gold) would be of great interest because many attempts have been done in the past to develop or fabricate devices able to monitor neural signal without being invasive, but none with the materials we are using. The previous attempts with conductive polymers usually were more invasive and directly penetrate in the nerve instead of being attached just from one side of the nerve itself.

What does science need the most right now?

My opinion is that science needs more followers right now: scientists of all over the world are not known at all, even if their work is amazing and they are close to win the Nobel Prize. Social media, TVs, radios and so on should talk more about scientific work and development, trying to spread the interest for science. This would bring more funding, and consequently more people working on scientific topics.

What kind of impact would you like to have in our world?

I would like to be able to develop devices (and make them available to people) that improve people’s healthcare or that could be useful for diagnosis or therapy treatment.

What makes you get out of bed in the morning? what inspires you?

The world itself is full of wonders and every day at work, school or with friends I am always increasing my knowledge and capability. The desire to improve myself and grow up is what makes me go on everyday. My colleagues. in particular. They are a source of inspiration for the struggle and passion they put in their work.

If you could change one thing in our society, what will it be?

I think it would be the selfishness/narrow-mind/scientific secret. Science is born from collaboration between scientists and from sharing ideas and interests: the possibility to talk about your own work and ask for suggestions is what brings science to high level.

What makes life meaningful?

People: family, friends, mates and colleagues.

What is your personal and professional dream?

Well, as a scientist it will be to win the Nobel Prize of course. But I would be satisfied even if I could be able to continue my scientific work, get the funding, build a research team, get the materials and consumables necessary to do research, trying to reach a good level of knowledge in order to really develop something useful for people’s health.

Conversation by:
Marianna Loizzi

“I am a biochemist myself but listening to Francesco’s story I was really impressed by his multidisciplinary approach to biology. He studies chemistry, physics, and electronics all together to implement a biomedical device. Impressive. Also, I agree with his vision on what science needs more nowadays: make the people more aware, basically more marketing to non-scientific people.”

Learn more about Francesco's work:
linkedin.com/francesco-decataldo

 

Conversation by:
Marianna Loizzi

“I am a biochemist myself but listening to Francesco’s story I was really impressed by his multidisciplinary approach to biology. He studies chemistry, physics, and electronics all together to implement a biomedical device. Impressive. Also, I agree with his vision on what science needs more nowadays: make the people more aware, basically more marketing to non-scientific people.”

#PHDstory | Martina Riberto

Martina Riberto
PhD student
in Cognitive Neuroscience and Experimental Psychology

What is your main research topic?

I am a PhD student in Cognitive Neuroscience and Experimental Psychology. I am interested in how our brain elaborates emotional events and how we make judgments about them. In particular, my PhD project aims at investigating how our brain functions when we judge the similarity between emotional experiences in mentally healthy people.

What do you mean with emotional events?

Events that have an emotional impact in someone’s life. For example, passing an important exam is an emotional event, brushing your teeth is a non-emotional event.

Which approach do you use? Is this a new approach?

This is a new topic. No one in the past has investigated the judgement of similarity between emotional events, but only between neutral or non-emotional events. And yes, we use a new approach, as we want to combine different techniques, such as Functional Resonance Magnetic Imaging (FMRI), and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). FMRI allows us to see which areas of the brain activate during an action, while the TMS allows us to identify which of those areas are directly involved in that action. These are not-invasive research methods that allow to explore in vivo the functioning of brain. That means we will be studying the functioning of the brain in real time, when the brain is actually functioning.

You also collaborate with other researchers?

Yes. My PhD project was developed in collaboration with the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. I will move there this September and I will stay there for 2 years. So, yes, it is an international collaboration.

What motivated you to enter this field of study?

I’ve always been very interested in emotions, at first because I am a very emotional and passionate person, so I want to understand where these aspects come from. Then, I think that perceiving and elaborating emotions is something that makes human beings unique species. I mean, animals perceive emotion as well, but I think emotions are the core of human life story. And finally, it’s very interesting from a clinical perspective: I am a clinical psychologist, and most of psychiatry/psychological disorders I’ve worked with when I was in Italy, in San Raffaele Hospital, involved emotional disturbances, and I want to do my best to try to also solve their problem, or at least help those patients to cope better with their disorder.

What makes you get out of bed in the morning? What inspires you?

This is a very interesting question. At first it is, of course, the passion for my job. But mainly it is my curiosity and my sense of adventure. With this I mean that this PhD is not only a chance to grow in terms of professional experience, but it is an adventure that started when I moved to Manchester, will continue when I move to Israel this September, and will end when I am back here in Manchester again. So, all this travelling is a way to challenge myself, day after day, and I will have the opportunity to see how I will cope with living in different places, meeting people from different cultures. In summary, how will I react towards all these experiences that are awaiting me. This really gets me going.

To you, what would it mean to be successful?

From a professional point of view, being successful for me is having the opportunity or being lucky enough to have a job that you really love in a nice, friendly, non-stressful environment. From a personal point of view, it is really simple in my opinion; being loved by someone that you love as well.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Ahha, maybe living in Tenerife with my sister. I am only joking. I don’t know, actually. It depends on what the future will offer me. Right now, I really like this job, I like doing research and I feel that it also fits with me and my personality. So maybe, in 10 years I’ll be a lecturer trying to to enrich my students with my knowledge and experiences, and I will be enriched as well from their experiences, reasoning and thinking … a bidirectional enrichment, basically. But I am not sure, that’s all I can tell. Many things can change, right?

What makes life meaningful?

Oh, this is very easy for me. Human relationships. Any kind of relationship. Choose one, it is essential for a meaningful life.

What kind of society do you dream of?

I dream of a more spiritual society. I mean a society where money, power and material things play a less important role than now, where people don’t waste their time posting a fake life on social media, or struggling for the material aspects of life, but rather try to enrich their soul and mind. Utopia!

Do you have a personal dream?

Yes, it’s very simple actually, maybe banal but it’s my dream… I want to have a happy and healthy family. The rest will be a consequence of it.

If you could, what would you tell your younger self?

Don’t fight against yourself. Freely be what you are!

If you could, what would you tell your future self?

Remember that you’re capable of things you didn’t even know were possible.

Conversation by:
Marianna Loizzi

“I was really impressed by the passion that Martina had while describing her PhD topic, and how the fact that she is a very emotional person made her very interested in study human emotion at the point she is doing a Ph.D. on them. It really makes me think how our personalities can define our passions and our carries.”

 

Conversation by:
Marianna Loizzi

“I was really impressed by the passion that Martina had while describing her PhD topic, and how the fact that she is a very emotional person made her very interested in study human emotion at the point she is doing a Ph.D. on them. It really makes me think how our personalities can define our passions and our carries.”

#PHDstory | Michele Gabriele

Michele Gabriele
SEMM PhD Student
European Institute of Oncology, Milan

What do you do your PhD in and what is your main research topic?

I work in Giuseppe Testa’s laboratory, in Milan. My PhD project is about disease modelling and epigenetics, which means that I study how neurodevelopmental syndromes and cancer occur, when the mechanisms that regulate where and when genes are expressed are altered. More specifically, I currently study the molecular basis of Kabuki syndrome and Gabriele-deVries syndrome using patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), which are then differentiated in cell types affected in these diseases, such as neurons. In parallel, I study how the same mutations causative of Kabuki syndrome, when occurring in adults, are responsible for many tumors.

Can you explain to us what are Kabuki syndrome and Gabriele-deVries syndrome?

Kabuki and Gabriele-deVries syndromes are both genetic neurodevelopmental diseases caused by mutations in genes involved in the control of gene regulation. The individuals affected by these syndromes are affected by intellectual disabilities, facial abnormalities, neurological symptoms, and, often, several other systemic problems.

How did you get interested in this particular topic?

When I was in university I got fascinated by the “developmental biology” class, which was about answering the question: “how is it possible that cells of an organism “know” what to become if they all arise from the very same cell and have the same genome?” The topic of gene regulation is exactly the answer to this question and, when altered, gives rise to many pathologies. So, I became more interested in this topic to better understand these mechanisms and to create knowledge that could be used to help people and society.

Tell me more about it.

I was dreaming about becoming a scientist since I was a child when I first watched Jurassic Park. I was Mr. DNA and the scientists that were working there, and I basically decided I wanted to do something similar but more useful! ? I am a very curious person full of enthusiasm for life and I don’t really know how to get bored.

Is yours going to be a new approach?

What I currently do in the PhD project is the latest approach to study human diseases. What I hope is that, in the future, I will develop new effective and easily reproducible approaches that will be adopted widely to help scientific advancement.

Do you also collaborate with other research groups?

I believe that nowadays collaborations are the new and good way to do science. We must let go of the idea of the genius scientist who discovers a new thing by himself. We reached a level of knowledge in which problems need to be addressed in a multidisciplinary approach and often by combining the expertise of several research groups. For example, I collaborate with Nael Nadif Kasri’s team, who has a strong electrophysiology background, and with the geneticist Bert de Vries’s team, with whom we discovered a new neurodevelopmental disorder.

What motivated you to enter this field of study?

I have always been fascinated by neuroscience, since the brain is the most fascinating organ. By studying its diseases, I contribute to give a better understanding of it, to help and to solve problems. For gene regulation is the same; it influences everything, and we still need to understand a lot of fine regulation mechanisms.

What makes you get out of bed in the morning? What inspires you?

I guess everybody knows that the PhD salary is not that great, in every part of the world. I really think that science is a vocation, you need to be curious and love this kind of work. I think I am also lucky that I have a lot of great colleagues, with whom I enjoy my free time and with whom I can have productive conversations that lead to new ideas to be tested. I am mostly inspired by some scientists, who, with their passion and attitude of questioning, had a great impact on our current way of thinking and knowledge. Few examples are Francis Crick and Jared Diamond.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

In 5 years, I hope I will have finished my post-doc studies (the career step after the PhD), and be starting my own laboratory. I want to keep all the relationships with all the people I met so far, though. Moreover, among my long and immediate term, I hope to transmit my enthusiasm to the new generations, both in science and out of academia. Therefore, I hope I will manage to do some good science communication.

What makes life meaningful?

Eheh, one of the biggest questions that I think I don’t have a universal answer for. For sure, enjoying everything you do is the key to having a meaningful life. Moreover, I think that it is important to share! Everything becomes more rewarding if you share experiences, moments, everything! Trying not to waste time in the distractions that mislead us and make us waste our time.

What does the world need the most right now in your opinion? What is your dream society?

Again, I think we need to share more and reduce waste and human impact. The world really needs us to stop destroying it and this is linked with my dream society, in which everybody has a good education, that leads to independent thinking, to awareness, and to unity. In my dream society, everybody respects nature and the environment, and we focus on issues that unite people and not divide us.

What does science need the most right now in your opinion?

What we need now is a complete revolution of the publishing and the financial system. Currently, the publishing system is based on peer-revision, which means that anonymous peers, or experts, on the field read your paper and review and criticize your work, to check that everything is correct. This often times doesn’t work in the way it is supposed to work and unpleasant things happen. One signal of change is that several journals have recently started to publish all the review email exchange, to make everything clearer for everybody.

The current publishing system is strictly related to the funding system. Indeed, most funding agencies demand a publishing track record in prestigious journals, and this often creates a vicious circle that fuels the fact that who has money will win more money and who has no money will not probably win new grants because they’re not able to publish. Anonymizing grant applications is another way to evaluate ideas and to give the possibility to non-prestigious teams to win big grants as well. Now, in a scientific world that has become more accessible and crowded when compared to 30 years ago, the combination of these two things creates a lot of negative competition, and a “bad science” behavior caused by the “publish or perish” attitude.

Conversation by:
Marianna Loizzi

“Michele Gabriele impressed me with his passion about science which was always with him, since he was a child. His view of the publishing system is different but also realistic, a good push to critical thinking about the system itself.”

Learn more about Michele's work:
linkedin.com/michele-gabriele

 

Conversation by:
Marianna Loizzi

“Michele Gabriele impressed me with his passion about science which was always with him, since he was a child. His view of the publishing system is different but also realistic, a good push to critical thinking about the system itself.”

#PHDstory | Noemi Alfieri

Noemi Alfieri
PhD in Portuguese Studies

1. What do you do your PhD in and what is your main research topic?

I’m doing my PhD in Portuguese Studies, with a focus on Book History and African Literatures written in Portuguese. I’m trying to understand more about the relationship between identity and conflict, and its manifestations in the literary production. That’s why I’m researching about literature written in Portuguese (no matter if it’s poetry, novel or short story) between 1961 and 1974, the years of the War that took place between the Portuguese fascist regime and the Liberation Movements of Portugal’s former colonies: Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, and then Cape Verde and São Tomé e Príncipe, that were not directly involved in the war, but that still fought for their independence and right to self-determination.

2. How did you get interested in this particular topic? What motivated you to enter this field of study?

I have always been surrounded by books. My grandmother was a teacher with a huge passion for literature and history. I spent several days of my childhood looking at the shelves full of books that surrounded every single part of her house and I remember I was fascinated by them like if they were hiding secrets. They were some kind of extemporal entity living in the house that I could touch just if authorized. It’s a passion she and my grandfather forwarded to their son and nephews. I’ve always loved books that tell you something about the daily life of regular people, that give visibility to who’s invisible and voice to those who haven’t got it or who struggle. A few years ago, I red a book by one of the most famous Angolan contemporary writers: Mayombe, by Pepetela. It was just published in 1980, but written in the early 70’s, when the writer was involved in the guerrilla against the colonial regime. The book is politic and needs to be read with the consciousness that there are several elements of a propaganda book, but still, Pepetela describes the feelings, the fears, the struggle of people of different ethnic groups fighting for their right to decide about their future. I began to read more about this war: how did it start? Which were the movements there were leading it? What Angolan ethnic groups were involved? Which were the common elements these heterogeneous groups were using to rebuild a shared identity? These were the main questions that led me to read the work of other writers, not just from Angola, but also from the other countries I mentioned above.

3. Tell me more about it.

When the war in Angola started, on the 4th of February 1961, the social situation was quite complicated. It was the late 50’s and the number of Portuguese settlers in the country had increased exponentially, while most of the African countries were achieving their independence from the European powers. There was a renewed consciousness of the need of a real approximation to the rest of Africa, a strong will of independence or increased autonomy, at the same time as part of the population was fighting the Estado Novo regime of Salazar, the colonial condition, and the racial discrimination. Languages such as Umbundu, Kimbundu, Ronga, Creole, were used in daily life and they show up in the written production. In the former Portuguese colonies, literature was a way of consolidating a new national identity: due to censorship and to the self-censorship, poetry was used to say, in an encoded way, what could not be said otherwise. Novels and short stories started to deal with social problems and with a reality that was really far away from the one shown on the propagandas of the regime.

4. Is yours going to be a new approach?

I hope so. What I’m trying to do is to have and interdisciplinary approach, using Social History, Political History and, obviously, Literature, that is my field and the main focus of my research. I think it is important to read books and to enjoy them just as literature, but then, they’re a relevant resource that can give us several information about a historical period, the mindset of a certain group of people, the way languages interacted. Using literature as sources, we always must be conscient that it’s a representation of a certain view and conception of the reality and not the reality itself, that a narration is a social construction and, at the same time, an artistic invention. We cannot just take a literary excerpt, or a written text, an say the context it represents reflects perfectly what was happening at the time. So, my challenge is to try to go deep into the contradictions that emerge from literary texts and to try to deconstruct narratives.

5. Do you also collaborate with other research groups? If so, tell me about it.

I do. I’m part of the group Leitura e Formas de escrita (that is, Reading and the Forms of Writing) of CHAM – Centre for the Humanities of Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. The group studies the forms of writing, their meaning and their usage, from old manuscripts to digital, as well as the forms of reading and the agent involved in these processes.

6. What makes you get out of bed in the morning? What inspires you?

The sun, nature, books, and the people I love.

7. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

I try not to make long-term plans. Expectations kill creativity.

8. What makes life meaningful?

Again, a walk in the woods, the breeze of the wind by the sea, hiking a mountain, a sunset and a sunrise, contact with animals and time spent with the people you love. Visiting new places, seeing different traditions, speaking to people from different parts of the world. I tend to appreciate more and more simple things in the frenetic times we are living.

9. What does the world need the most right now, in your opinion? What is your dream society?

I would definitely say: communication between humans, contact with animals and nature, respect of the environment and real use of renewable resources. We live in a world of migrations, war for the resources and climate change. It’s urgent to fight the intolerance to other cultures as, whether people like it or not, we’ll live in increasingly multicultural societies. So, people need to read, to speak with people from different cultures and countries, to question their way of leaving. The West should question its position, and last but not least, even if we have the tendency to forget it, humans are animals and we need contact with other animals as much as we need an environment to live in. We – especially the so-called West, that uses most of the resources – have been knowing for decades our way of living is not sustainable and we are now paying the bill, but so is the environment that feeds us and the animals that get extinguished because of the disappearance of this very environment.

My dream society is one in which no people die of hunger, lack of medicines, cold. Where all the children can go to school and receive a basic education. It is a society in which everybody has the power to speak freely, were demanding the right to have a voice is a pride and not a shame. It’s a society in which people don’t work fourteen hours a day and have time to spend with their children, their family, to join friends, dance, cultivate traditions.

10. What does science need the most right now, in your opinion?

Science needs to be inclusive, to give space to women, to get rid of its old forms and to get to the society. Society needs science communication, has the right to know its results, and science needs the feedback of society to understand its needs and to find new research strategies. In one word, science needs to leave the golden cage of the academy and get to the people. The contact between specialists is important and stimulating, but it’s not enough.

Conversation by:
Marianna Loizzi

“It was very interesting interviewing Noemi, and learn a lot about the Angola’s History and how it influenced the literature. And I am impressed by the fact she does her research in 3 different languages! I hope you will enjoy it too.”

Learn more about Noemi's work:
linkedin.com/noemi-alfieri

 

Conversation by:
Marianna Loizzi

“It was very interesting interviewing Noemi, and learn a lot about the Angola’s History and how it influenced the literature. And I am impressed by the fact she does her research in 3 different languages! I hope you will enjoy it too.”

Clarissa Rios Rojas

Clarissa Rios Rojas
Molecular biologist, policymaking advisor
Biography:

Scientist who after finishing her bachelor in Biology in Peru (UNMSM) decided to look for new avenues of professional development. She did exchange studies in Finland at the University of Turku, got her master in Biomedicine at Karolinska Institutet University in Sweden, worked in a pharmaceutical company in Germany and later got a PhD in Molecular Biology in Australia at the University of Queensland.

While finishing the PhD, she started to feel the urge to contribute to the world with something else than only her scientific work at the laboratory. This feeling pushed her to create an organization called Ekpa’palek that empowers Latin-American young professionals through different free mentorship programs that align with the Sustainable Development Goals of reduction of inequalities, gender equality and education.

Encouraged by the impact these programs had on young professionals, she discovered the need for creating new local, regional, and international policies that could help to tackle global issues. Motivated by this, she applied and was selected to participate in numerous events (international conferences, forums, and workshops) in science policy, citizen engagement in policy relevant to science & innovation, science diplomacy, open science & education, science outreach and global governance in different countries (Argentina, Jordan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Canada, India, Chile, Germany, Thailand and Morocco).

In 2017, she worked at the Agency for Environmental Assessment and Enforcement (OEFA) from the Ministry of Environment in Peru and since May 2018, she works at the EU Science Hub, also known as the Joint Research Center from the European Commission’s science and knowledge service where she provides scientific advice and support to EU policy. Also, as a member of the Global Young Academy, she works on initiatives related to science outreach, women empowerment and science advise.

Learn more about Clarissa's work:
http://www.ekpapalek.com
Connect with Clarissa:
facebook.com/cla.risa.54 twitter.com/Clarissajaz linkedin.com/clarissariosrojas instagram/being_a_scientist_is_cool
Empowering Latinos and filling the gap between science and society

What is the social purpose of science today? How are ethics and research linked in the modern world? What are the policies that keep scientific and social paths going in the same direction? Clarissa Rios answers these questions from her position as a molecular Biologist and policy maker at the European Commission, deriving from her experience in both the social and scientific aspects of research the core values of the purpose of science in favor of the smaller communities.

Founder of Ekpa’palek, an organization destined to offer academic help to Latin American students who want to broaden their horizons and stock up on the experience and advice from other professionals before entering their own fields, Clarissa expands on the need for science to hold a truly useful track of investment to help indigenous communities and developing countries through scientific research and the encouragement of young professionals to assist in these projects. The values of growth and development through inclusion and action make Ekpa’palek a unique vision for the young professionals who will contribute to wholesome communities, richer societies and a brighter future.

Watch the trailer:
Watch the video:
Listen to the Audiofile here:
Read the transcript of Clarissa Rios Rojas's Video here ◂

Nerina: Thank you, Clarissa, for joining me. Could you please introduce yourself?

Clarissa Rios: I am Clarissa Ríos Rojas, form Peru. I am a molecular biologist, and now I’m working in the interface of science and policy making, the European Commission in Italy and also, I’m the founder and director of Ekpa’palek, which is an organization that empowers Latin-American professionals.

Nerina: Could you tell us a little bit more about your position and your work right now?

Clarissa Rios: My project right now at the European Commission is to write recommendations for citizen engagement initiatives in the topic of social and ethical aspects of emerging technology, in this case, genomics and gene editing, and so on. So, for what I have found on my research so far, is that technology goes faster than policies, and sometimes it’s really hard to keep track of everything that is happening, and to implement the laws and the policies that need to be implemented in order to regulate science, as well.

So science, as we now, is research and innovation, but sometimes it goes to the next steps and becomes a start-up or a company that offers services that can be used for different reasons and by different types of people. I have seen right now that there are, for example, genetic testing companies offering a lot of ancestry testing and health testing, so it would be good to know who’s regulating these companies; are really experts the ones who are providing the information about your genes? What happens with your DNA once it is stored in their company? Is it in store forever or is it sold to another company? Can they trace it was your DNA?

These are things that are happening right now, and people don’t really know much about it. For example, genomics is also working at the interface with blockchain, so now we are having cryptocurrecy that is based on selling your DNA data, so what does that represent for business and society? Again, we have those ethical questions, but does it really help big companies to have more genetic data to have a better analysis of which diseases can come from different types of genes? There are many things that have to be evaluated, but it’s important to citizens to know what is happening, where it’s happening, and what is going to happen in their society if they accept it, or if they are consumers or become users of it.

Nerina: Why did you decide to take this new challenge?

Clarissa: I think that the in the European Commission, the Joined Research Center is the best place to learn about how scientists can contribute to society in terms of policy making, so I thought that this would be the best place to work and learn and contribute to, and I hope that this will be one of the first steps into a career and to a lot of work; I hope to use science-based evidence to create policies and help policy makers to better understand not only the citizens, but also the science behind every decision.

Nerina: Why is this relevant?

Clarissa: I think that the biggest problem that I see right now is that scientists are doing science just because; just because of curiosity and I now that’s a main drive that many of us had to become scientists, but I think we need to build places or spaces where we as scientists can speak with citizens. We can understand what are their needs, because I have seen during my time as a scientist that there are many projects that really don’t have any implications in solving anything at the moment; it’s just knowledge that is being generated with the hope that in the future is going to be used.

We can relocate not only the money, but the human capital, the PhD students that are being put into these projects, into something that society really needs. I think that we should have a priority table and see what the problems to see how we can fix the first hundred, instead of having fifty thousand projects and giving money to all of them and keep going.

I think that basic research is important, but I also think that basic research should be always tailored into fixing something, or producing some kind of technology. Without that, I think trust in science will never be achievable because citizens see this, citizens see their taxes are being used in projects that may never be published, that cannot be replicated, or that are not helping anything in their communities and local problems, and that just one side.

I also see that there is a problem with citizens not learning or trying to have some curiosity about science. I think they could interact more with scientists, see what they are doing, visit open days at universities, see where taxes are being used and have an opinion about it and learn from scientists, what they are producing, how they’re doing and use this scientific knowledge in order to make better decisions on the government they’re going to choose, about the political party they are going to vote for, what is this political party focusing on. Is it correct? Is it based on science, which is the most trustful thing that se have at the moment? Of course, it has its pitfalls, but it’s the best thing that we can work with.

The citizens should also think on how to improve science. If they don’t have faith in science, then tell us how we can improve it, how can science and society and citizens work together in order to make science better , achievable for everyone, and open in a way that everyone can understand it, and use it for the best of society and the environment, because sometimes we are just super anthropocentric and thinking about humans, but we are responsible, whether we want it or not, for all the species that are around us, and the ecosystems and the habitats we have, so I think that we should take our citizens’ role a little bit more responsibly.

Nerina: What would you suggest?

Clarissa: I think that’s why I was mentioning before that we should have these spaces where scientists can talk to other scientists, for example, about social science, as I talk about the ethics. I know that during university we have courses on ethics – animal ethics and human ethics -, but I think that we should have also courses with politics in science. Have courses where we bring politicians and scientist to understand how we’re both working together and making things better.

Other courses could be about scientists and citizens, and scientists and society, and create debate between them, answering questions form both sides, and trying to think how we can work together, because as you said, the theory of science in great, but who is doing the science? Us humans, with our imperfections, with our sometimes poor equipment, and with the limited knowledge that we have. I think it’s very important for scientists and citizens to acknowledge that scientists are not perfect; they are humans and make mistakes, and also the equipment and machines that they use make mistakes from time to time, but then having that as a premise to figure what we can do based on that, and then is when all these interactions with all the different groups take place, and then all three groups together can think about how science can be better, how can it have less errors and less mistakes, and how to bring all the traditional knowledge into it, as well as the ethics and the social aspects.

Sometimes we think that the problem has to be fixed by only one expert. That, for example, climate change has to be fixed by an environmentalist or a biologist, when in reality, problems are fixed by everyone. By economists, lawyers, citizens, biologists; it has to be fixed by everyone, because otherwise we are not creating a solution, we are just fixing a little patch, not the whole picture.

Nerina: You just mentioned traditional knowledge, and this is something that very often comes up when speaking with you. Why this interest in aboriginal culture?

Clarissa: Yes, well, my dad is from the jungle. Of course, he is part of an aboriginal community, but I guess that was my first encounter with aboriginal tribes and with people who are part that whole society. Also, when I was working with one of the agencies in the Ministry of Environment in Peru, one part of my job was to try to understand the narratives and how to bring the projects that the government had for these communities, how to make them learn, and how to learn from them what were their needs and priorities, and I think that all these encounters made me realize that they are not heard enough, their voices are not shared enough, their needs and their priorities are not communicated, and sometimes, with friends, I’ve heard them say things like “No, they should evolve like us, like the city people”, and I’ve been hurt by those comments, because I feel like our opinions are too superficial always, not just in these topic, but in many. It’s just something that has not has been thought through, you have not had an encounter with them, so how come you have a conscious and educated opinion about that?

For example, Ekpa’palek is a way to promote indigenous languages. Ekpa’palek comes from the Shiwilu language, form the Amazon in Peru, and it means to teach a little kid to take his first steps. Trying to translate everything in our programs on indigenous communities is a way to make it more accessible.

Nerina: You are the founder of Ekpa’palek. Can you tell us more about this organization?

Clarissa: We are an organization of around 45 to 50 people, and what we do is to offer programs for free to any Latinamerican students that want it. One of them is the professional mentorship, so we connect the students with professionals that are a little bit advanced in their careers so they can guide them, they can talk, they can tell them how to gain certain scholarships, but also about what’s out there. If I am a psychologist, if I am an economist, I want to know what’s happening in Australia, what’s happening in China, so that person can get inside information, so students in Latinamerica can shape their minds thinking about what’s next, and they should be studying now, or working on, or doing an internship with.

The second program is women empowerment. The first year, we were bringing new women from all over to schools; we had five professional women bringing their stories, bringing their pitfalls, the experiences they had been through and how they got where they are now. That worked for one year and then we had to stop it, so now we are focusing more on campaigns on line; we are doing the same, showing new women role models but in a visual way. We have engineers, economists, from different parts of the world that are Latinamerican women, and then they send a three minute video telling how they are there and why they decided on that career.

The third program will be the empowerment of indigenous languages, so basically we want our programs to reach everyone. We have started translating the articles on our blog into Quechua, which is a language that is spoken in Peru and Bolivia, and it’s a official language in Peru as well. Also, we have tree videos in Quechua, as well; we had one of our mentors make theses videos, telling how he went from a little town in the highlands of Peru to do his Master in France, and to study in Lima, Peru, as well. We are trying to promote translating everything that we are producing into different languages, not only Quechua.

Nerina: What motivated you to start this organization?

Clarissa: Well, because when I started my professional path, I was a bachelor student that really wanted to learn and to go more from theory to practice, and that was something that was not happening in Peru in terms of molecular biology. I think my motivation was to learn more, and I could do it with scholarships and people helping me take the next steps, as you mentioned, and then after ten years of doing my master and my PhD I realized that I was not the only one, and that the case that I had ten years ago where I didn’t have money to pursue studies, I didn’t have connections to create opportunities in professional development were still existing in Latin America, and we were at a disadvantage with the rest of the world.

So I thought about what I could do with this tools that I had gathered over the years, and one of them was my network. So I think it was really personal, because it was not that I was trying to fix something that happens somewhere else to some other people, but I was trying to help someone like me at this moment, someone who didn’t have opportunities, didn’t have the network, didn’t have ideas, or someone from outside to talk to and just get inspired.

Nerina: How did you become what you are now?

Clarissa: I studied Biology and Genetics in Peru; I was very interested and curious about science. Then I went to Finland for exchange studies, and I did a Master in Biomedicine and Neuroscience, which I was also completely in love with, specifying different types of neurons in the brain, and then I decided to move to Australia to do my PhD in sex development; how the sperm cells and the egg cells develop.

When I was finishing my PhD was when I decided to create Ekpa’palek, this organization that empowers Latinamerican professionals. And then, looking at the results and the people that we were helping, I started to realize that a nes passion was growing inside myself, and then I decided to leave the lab where I was doing experiments and start to communicate with citizens and policy makers and start to find a way where I could use my scientific background and I could help society in a different way, and that way is creating better policies for everyone. Now it’s in the European Union, but later I hope it will be in Latinamerica and in Peru.

Nerina: What is the most important lesson that you have learned?

Clarissa: I started this project thinking that I would help many people, but I’m being helped as well. I’m learning so much, I’m meeting so many people, we are doing so many nice projects outside Ekpa’palek as well. This has also motivated me to change my career; as I said, I was working in the lab as a scientist, and the Ekpa’palek happened, and then I started to pursue new paths within myself that make me happy, so what I would recommend to anyone is that if you always think that there is a problem and you want to fix it, try to do it with one friend, and it may grow and it may not, but you have the satisfaction to learn from it.

Nerina: What is your vision for Ekpa’palek?

Clarissa: When I created Ekpa’palek, it was only for Latinamericans, but in my wild dreams we have Ekpa’palek Asia and Ekpa’palek Africa interacting with each other. But that is also based on the idea of the «brain drain» – I think that’s what they call it in English -, when professionals and all the talent goes from the south to the north and then never go back, or just a few of them. So I thought it would be very interesting to have a blog of developing countries in the south, exchanging professionals, exchanging knowledge, exchanging what we already know how to do best, and empower each other, because the south also need to keep growing, to keep learning, and it would be really good to create these alliances between universities, student associations, and governments, and think about what are the good things and benefits that can come from it.

Of course, going to the north and having the technology to learn is really good, but I think the next step on that path could be to start doing these collaborations.

Nerina: Is there something you believe we should think more about?

Clarissa: I would just like to point out that we are creating so much technology, and these technologies are mostly created in developed countries, and are mostly created to fix and find solutions for local problems, so that means that the problem that, for example, indigenous communities have will never be solved by the technology that we are creating now, and I think they would benefit so much from that.

Sometimes we are talking about gene editing and blockchain, and how does that benefit indigenous communities? They are people who also have struggles and many local problems that they would like to solve; how good would it be if used these technologies to find solutions for those problems as well? So that would be my contribution, to make people think about technology is being biased towards certain problems, certain “local” problems, and not really towards developing countries and indigenous communities.

Nerina: And what is the relation between science and traditional knowledge, in your opinion?

Clarissa: It has always been known about, this traditional knowledge. Sometimes it is treated with respect, and sometimes it’s treated like it’s not science. It’s very curious that you ask me this, because in my group, one of the projects is about mapping arctic communities, so they are mapping every community that is Finland, Norway, Iceland, U.S, Canada, and besides doing the mapping, they are gathering the information that they have in the terms of climate change. They’re voices about climate change and how that’s impacting them in the first place because they are close to the first places where the impact is being observed, and what they have to say about.

I think that nowadays it is taken more seriously, and I’m glad to see that the European Commission, for example, is also taking them seriously and writing reports about it, having their voices heard and their opinions shared with policy makers and with people in the European Union.

I’ve seen this happening in Europe, but I have not seen it in Latinamerica. However, when I was working at the agency of the Ministry of Environment, I could see that the interaction between the experts, the biologists, the chemists was really open when they were informing them about what was happening, I think the efforts are becoming more and more important, and in order to listen from them as well, not just coming and giving a lecture about what is going to happen and what they need to know, but also empowering them in teaching them how to use equipment to measure pollution, how to analyze data so they can have their own data analyzed. Also, I heard that in Bolivia, if you want to be part of the government, you have to speak one of the indigenous languages, and I think that’s important, because, for example, for these types of jobs you can speak in Spanish and then you have a translator, but how would it be if you could speak to them in Quechua, in Aymara, and hear them, so they also feel more comfortable in sharing their ideas in their own language.

I think languages are a very powerful thing. I am going to learn more about different types of languages because I think that is the way to really go into a deeper connection with someone, especially if you’re working in this field, and understand what they want to see in their environment, what they want to contribute to the government, for example, in terms of analyzing the data, letting them know when they see a case of contamination, on the river, on the cause, etc.

Nerina: Do you have a wish or a dream?

Clarissa: Yes. I really dream sometimes that there is a society that is respectful of everyone, but more than anything, they have empathy. Everyone in this society has empathy that makes them really feel how the other person would feel in every situation, not only in how we interact as friends, but in different geographical parts. How these people may feel in different social classes; how these people must feel, what can I do to help this person. I think empathy should be the key factor in this society that I envision.

I think the society that I dream of in one where there is the feeling of connection and belonging with every single part of this habitat; not only humans, but plants, insects, birds, the rivers – I mean, the water we drink comes from the river -, so I think that connection is missing sometimes. We don’t feel like we belong or that we are part of something bigger that needs us to take care of it and to contribute to keep it going in a healthy way, so I think if that could be spread into all citizens and make them feel responsible for each other, for other species, for the soil, for the river, for the climate, it would be my second wish. That feeling of belonging and connection.

Nerina: What was the most beautiful day, and what was the mist awful one?

Clarissa: I think the most beautiful day for me is just being with my family having lunch together. It is something that I haven’t had for many years as a daily thing. I did a little bit when I finished my PhD; I could go back and leave again for six months back in Peru with my family, so I think my most warm and beautiful feeling is to have just that: my mom, my dad, my brother, now my partner as well. Laughing, talking about what happened during the day, maybe complaining about something that happened at university or at our jobs, just sharing and being together in a peaceful, quiet place.

Maybe the most horrible moment has been when sometimes I feel that I’m in a place where there is just too much horror, too much darkness, that all the good things really don’t compensate for the bad things, and that it’s not a nice world. Sometimes I feel like this world is the hell of someone else, or is the imagination of how hell should be, because I see so many awful things, so much suffering, even though I’m not experiencing it myself. I’m not a someone that has been a sex slave, or someone that has been raped, or someone who wakes up with bombs ten meters from them, but I still feel like it could be me, I feel people don’t deserve to grow in an environment like that; they didn’t ask to be born in this world.

I think those have been the hardest moments in my life; just to be overwhelmed by sorrow, by sadness, and to think that there is really nothing that we can do to change it, I’ve had those times as well. I think activists are always in that twilight, where you think that everything can get better if you do something, but you’re also on the other side where you think that everything is horrible and terrible and too much to take in.

Nerina: And what brings you up?

Clarissa: What brings me up is to see people doing amazing things. Because I’m doing Ekpa’palek, for example, I’m in touch with different organizations and meet people that are always doing something, and I see them and I think that there is hope.

There are a lot of amazing people doing things for animals, for the environment, for other humans, and I thin, Yes, things can change. At some point.

Nerina: What is life about, Clarissa?

Clarissa: I think life is about learning, experiencing all the feelings; sadness is part of and part of what we are as humans. I think we should be grateful that we can experience it, although it’s not a nice thing, but sometimes good things come out of it. Sometimes, not always.

It’s about meeting other people; trying to be, as Maya Angelou said, a rainbow in someone else’s cloud, and just to try and make other people happy, because sometimes you’re sad and the other can make you happy. Sometime the other person is sad and you can make them happy.

It’s just about trying to enjoy what we have. Talking as a biologist, we have theses fabulous senses of touch, smelling, seeing. It’s enjoying theses things that we can give ourselves. About learning more about what’s happening in all parts of the world, to see documentaries about the life of animals and how they interact; it’s absolutely beautiful.

I think those are pleasures that even if you cannot travel, you can see it and sort of experience it from afar, and I those are the things that bring me happiness and joy, besides being with my family and friends, and also things like reading books and entering the mind of someone else that you never met but they wrote a book and let you go inside their minds for a little bit and have a taste of it. Like music; humans make music and it’s beautiful, so I think that if we focus on those things, that is what life is, or what life should be.

Nerina: Thank you so much, Clarissa, for this conversation.

Clarissa: Thank you, Nerina.

Nerina: And thank you for listening, thank you for watching and thank you for sharing. Keep wondering and see you next time again. Goodbye and ciao.

Biography:

Scientist who after finishing her bachelor in Biology in Peru (UNMSM) decided to look for new avenues of professional development. She did exchange studies in Finland at the University of Turku, got her master in Biomedicine at Karolinska Institutet University in Sweden, worked in a pharmaceutical company in Germany and later got a PhD in Molecular Biology in Australia at the University of Queensland.

While finishing the PhD, she started to feel the urge to contribute to the world with something else than only her scientific work at the laboratory. This feeling pushed her to create an organization called Ekpa’palek that empowers Latin-American young professionals through different free mentorship programs that align with the Sustainable Development Goals of reduction of inequalities, gender equality and education.

Encouraged by the impact these programs had on young professionals, she discovered the need for creating new local, regional, and international policies that could help to tackle global issues. Motivated by this, she applied and was selected to participate in numerous events (international conferences, forums, and workshops) in science policy, citizen engagement in policy relevant to science & innovation, science diplomacy, open science & education, science outreach and global governance in different countries (Argentina, Jordan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Canada, India, Chile, Germany, Thailand and Morocco).

In 2017, she worked at the Agency for Environmental Assessment and Enforcement (OEFA) from the Ministry of Environment in Peru and since May 2018, she works at the EU Science Hub, also known as the Joint Research Center from the European Commission’s science and knowledge service where she provides scientific advice and support to EU policy. Also, as a member of the Global Young Academy, she works on initiatives related to science outreach, women empowerment and science advise.

Learn more about Clarissa's work:
http://www.ekpapalek.com
Connect with Clarissa:
facebook.com/cla.risa.54 twitter.com/Clarissajaz linkedin.com/clarissariosrojas instagram/being_a_scientist_is_cool

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