STEM Pathways - NYAS

A shot from the Academy's 2019 Blavatnik Award ceremony.

Our showcase of the inspiring honorees breaking new ground in life sciences, chemistry and physical sciences.

Published May 1, 2019

By Carina Storrs, PhD

Life Sciences Laureate

Heather J. Lynch, PhD, Stony Brook University

A pursuit of penguins leads to new territories in technology

It may be hard for penguin enthusiasts to believe, yet Heather Lynch PhD says the “most fun part of the entire year” is not the four months a year she and her team spend in Antarctica, but rather the time spent pouring over the reams of data when she returns. Lynch was originally drawn to penguins as a post-doc at the University of Maryland because of the challenge of studying them.

Lynch, now an Associate Professor at Stony Brook University, is tackling the fundamental questions of how many penguins are there and where exactly are they? Those may seem like simple questions, but they are stymied by data shortcomings, such as not having precise location data from on-the-ground surveys of the flightless, tuxedo-donning birds.

To subvert the treacherous Antarctic environment, Lynch turned to the wealth of NASA satellite imagery of the Antarctic that dates back decades. She and a colleague developed algorithms that scan the thousands of coastal images for signs of penguins revealed by their pink-hued guano (bird feces). Then, when they get tipped off to the presence of a large colony of penguins, they bring glacial-ready drones to the areas to take high-resolution pictures for exact headcounts.

The Adélie penguins

One of the biggest finds was a supercolony of about 1.5 million Adélie penguins on the Danger Islands right off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, which stretches toward South America. No one knew this colony existed — Lynch didn’t believe the algorithm at first, until she could confirm it with other satellite imagery.

She and her lab have also discovered much smaller colonies of chinstrap and gentoo penguins on the nearby Aitcho Islands. Without Lynch’s mathematical techniques and use of satellite technologies to detect guano, these colonies of penguins may have never been discovered.

Thanks to this multi-pronged approach, Lynch can now pride herself on the ability to locate nearly all of the penguin colonies in the Antarctic and is excited about the possibility of discovering even more colonies. Lynch’s game-changing ability to apply mathematical modeling to ecological data collected from satellites, aerial drones and field work is what earned her the title of 2019 Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Life Sciences.

Lynch has always had one foot in the technological side. She was close to getting her PhD in physics when she “came up for air,” decided she wanted to apply her problem-solving zest toward environmental issues, and switched to a PhD program in biology.

Developing Skills in Statistics and Programming

However, she thinks the expertise that she acquired in mathematical modeling while working on her physics PhD has been the secret to her success. She advises students interested in pursuing any STEM field to develop some statistical and programming abilities.

“[They] are that all-access pass,” Lynch says. “There is not a lab on the planet that does not need people with those skills.”

Although Lynch’s discoveries have been welcome news for ecologists and penguin lovers alike, they can appear to belie the peril facing these birds due to climate change.

“All of these other populations, even other Adélie penguins, are crashing,” Lynch says.

A big part of her research focuses on developing models to understand why the Danger Island colony is flourishing, while the Adélie penguins on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula are declining.

Implications for Conservation and the Impact of the Award

It almost goes without saying that Lynch’s research has implications for conservation.

“When we found the Danger Island populations, the first email I sent was to the people who were designing the Marine Protected Area in the region,” Lynch recalls. The Danger Islands had not been considered an important area to protect, but in what Lynch calls a “dream scenario,” policy makers expanded the area to include the islands after she told them about the Adélie supercolony.

Lynch is excited that the Blavatnik Award will bring attention to the recent technological advances in the field of ecology. The synergistic effects of Lynch’s methods will have a wide-ranging and critical impact in the fields of ecology and conservation biology in the face of impending, human-induced mass extinctions. Lynch and her lab have already expanded her methods to evaluate Antarctic seal and whale populations, and scientists can use her methods in the hope of saving other species all over the world.

Chemistry Laureate

Emily Balskus, PhD, Harvard University

Cracking the mysteries of the human microbiome

The first time that Emily Balskus, PhD worked with a microbiome, the term for communities of bacteria that live in our bodies and all around us, she was knee-deep in the salt marshes off the southern coast of Cape Cod, collecting bacteria.

Things got pretty messy, but the experience helped convince Balskus — who was then conducting postdoctoral research in chemical biology at Harvard Medical School — that she wanted to bring her chemistry expertise to bear on the biggest questions about the human microbiome.

Up until those marshy waters, Balskus was doing, as she puts it, “pretty conventional” chemistry. But early on during her postdoctoral training she attended a seminar about the Human Microbiome Project, which would set out to catalogue the microbes living on and within us. It opened her eyes to the shocking fact that scientists knew almost nothing about what these bacteria were actually doing, and how they affected our health.

“I couldn’t believe that we could be living so closely with so many microbes, that we had shared evolutionary history with them, and there was so much we didn’t know about them,” Balskus recalls.

Understanding the Microbiome in our Gut

Much of what we now know about the goings-on of the microbiome in our gut — for example, how certain bacterial residents can increase the risk of heart disease or thwart the activity of the medications we take — is thanks to the research group that Balskus has been leading at Harvard University since 2011.

For her work getting to the bottom of microbial mysteries, Balskus was named the 2019 Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Chemistry, which Balskus says is “wonderful” and “very humbling.”

One of the most exciting discoveries of the Balskus lab is connecting how bacteria in the gut microbiome may increase the risk of colorectal cancer. It had been known for more than a decade that certain strains of Escherichia coli (E. coli) make a toxic molecule, called colibactin, and that these bacterial strains are more likely to be found in the gut of people with colorectal cancer.

Understanding the Chemical Components

Balskus and her team focused on determining the chemical makeup of the mysterious colibactin molecule, which had been challenging for other chemists to isolate and characterize. The difficulty of studying this molecule using more conventional approaches made her consider whether her unique perspective might provide another path.

Balskus’ team explored how colibactin was produced in the gut without knowing its complete structure. They eventually discovered that the colibactin molecule contains a structure called a cyclopropane ring, which is known to cause DNA damage that can lead to cancer-causing mutations. Importantly, her team showed that exposing human cells in the lab to the toxic E. coli strain led to a specific type of cyclopropane-dependent DNA damage, whereas cells exposed to harmless strains of E. coli showed no signs of similar DNA damage.

In future studies, she hopes to determine whether this type of DNA damage can be seen in cells obtained from biopsies of colorectal cancer patients, to confirm whether this toxic E. coli is indeed responsible for increasing cancer risk.

Balskus credits her postdoctoral advisor, Christopher Walsh, MD, PhD for suggesting she take the fateful trip to the salt marshes, which was part of a summer microbiology course held at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. This course equipped her with the tools of microbiology and expertise that she continues to use to probe the human microbiome.

Combining Chemistry and Microbiome Research

Today, Balskus is a Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, and a leader in bringing the worlds of chemistry and microbiome research together. This spring she helped organize the first scientific conference on the chemistry of the human and other microbiomes.

“Both [fields] are very excited about this intersection,” Balskus says. She is also venturing into other scientific fields, such as genetics, and exploring how chemistry’s tools can advance other areas of biological research.

Balskus hopes to use the Blavatnik Award funds to promote women and other underrepresented groups in science. She recognizes how much her female science teachers at the all-women’s high school and the small liberal arts college she attended encouraged her and were role models for her. Many young women are not so fortunate.

“It is not one thing that makes it hard, it is a bunch of things that make it difficult for women to feel like they belong in science,” Balskus says.

Physical Sciences & Engineering Laureate

Ana Maria Rey, PhD, University of Colorado Boulder

Building the world’s most precise atomic clock

Ana Maria Rey, PhD fell for physics in high school, the moment she realized she could use mathematical equations to predict how a ball will move. It was an easy love affair, as Rey flew through physics problems for fun.

But at the university she attended in her native Colombia, a professor challenged the students with such long physics exams that students had no time to perform detailed calculations. This professor, who Rey considers her first role model, taught them to rely on intuition instead, which could only be acquired through intensive study of the subject.

It is a lesson that Rey has carried with her throughout her career. Over the course of her PhD studies at the University of Maryland, through two periods of postdoctoral training, and now as a Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder, Rey has delved deep into the world of quantum mechanics.

Diving into Quantum Mechanics

Quantum mechanics describes the behavior of the smallest particles of matter: the atoms and sub-atomic particles that make up balls and every other material on Earth. Just like her early days with physics, Rey is explaining the behavior of the quantum world using mathematical models. But now she is the one developing the models, in groundbreaking work that earned her the honor of being named the Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Physical Sciences & Engineering this year.

“Understanding [atomic and sub-atomic] behavior is really, really important because it can lead to technological development,” Rey says.

Although her research is theoretical, its applications are tangible and far-ranging, from creating GPS (global positioning system) that can provide more accurate location data and quantum computers that would be thousands of times faster than today’s machines, to ultimately enabling the direct measurement of gravitational waves, which are ripples in the so-called fabric of the universe.

Building a More Precise Atomic Clock

At the heart of all these possibilities, and the crux of Rey’s models, is the ability to build a more precise atomic clock, which can measure much smaller units of time than modern clocks — as short as one billionth of a billionth of a second. As Rey explains, the pendulum of an atomic clock is laser light, and the thing that measures each swing of the pendulum is atoms.

The problem that scientists have to understand, and ideally control, is how the atomic timekeepers move when they are zipping around and colliding with each other. Because of Rey’s equations, they are getting closer to that goal. She credits the physicists she collaborates closely with at JILA, where she is a Fellow, for conducting the breakthrough experiments with ultra-cold atoms trapped by lasers, making them slower and easier to track, for informing her calculations.

Rey says the funding and recognition that come with the Blavatnik Award will allow her to push farther into what she calls “the most exciting part of the work.” Although her team has already given the world its most precise atomic clock, that is nothing compared to what they could achieve if they could entangle, or link together, atoms in such a way that they behave as one unit.

Entanglement, which has been shown by allowing atoms to interact and then separating them, would eliminate the noise that throws off atomic clocks.

“This is the holy grail,” Rey says, adding that, “we should be able to see what the universe is made of,” such as mysterious dark matter.

Driven By Passion

Rey believes the key to her success in theoretical physics is loving what she does and working hard at it.

“Things are not going to come to you. You might be very smart, but I don’t think it’s enough,” Rey says.

Her other great role model, renowned JILA fellow, Deborah Jin, PhD, who passed away in 2016, showed Rey that it is possible to have a successful scientific career and a happy family life, and generally to be there for people. Rey, who was also selected as a MacArthur Fellow in 2013 and the MOSI Early Career National Hispanic Scientist of the Year in 2014, says “I hope in some way, I can share the same type of help with young women scientists.”

The 2019 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists Ceremony

2019 Blavatnik Award winners in Israel and the UK

A group of Blavatnik Award winners pose together for a photo.

Meet the rising stars who are receiving recognition for their ground-breaking research.

Published May 1, 2019

By Robert Birchard

2019 Blavatnik Award Laureates, Israel

Life Sciences Laureate

Michal Rivlin, PhD, Senior Scientist and Sara Lee Schupf Family Chair, Weizmann Institute of Science

Dr. Michal Rivlin is a neuroscientist who has made the paradigm-shifting discovery that cells in the adult retina can exhibit plasticity in their selectivity and computations. One of the first demonstrations of neuronal plasticity outside the brain, this raises fundamental questions about how we see, and has implications for our understanding of the mechanisms underlying computations in neuronal circuits, the treatment of retinal diseases, blindness and development of computer vision technologies.

Chemistry Laureate

Moran Bercovici, PhD, Associate Professor, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

Dr. Moran Bercovici is an analytical chemist who studies microscale processes coupling fluid mechanics, electric fields, heat transfer and chemical reactions. His studies have potential implications in multiple fields, ranging from the detection of low concentrations of biomolecules for rapid and early disease diagnostics, to the creation of new microscale 3D printing technologies.

Physical Sciences & Engineering Laureate

Erez Berg, PhD, Associate Professor, Weizmann Institute of Science

Dr. Erez Berg is a theoretical condensed matter physicist who develops novel theoretical and computational tools to study long-standing and emerging questions in quantum materials. His research has provided important insights into the physics principles behind a wide variety of exotic phenomena in quantum materials, which will help to speed up the implementation of these materials in next generation electronics including quantum computing, magnetic resonance imaging and superconducting power lines.

2019 Blavatnik Award Honorees, United Kingdom

Physical Sciences & Engineering Laureate

Konstantinos Nikolopoulos, PhD, Professor of Physics, University of Birmingham

Experimental particle physicist, Prof. Konstantinos Nikolopoulos led a 100-physicist subgroup in ATLAS, a large scientific collaboration at CERN, which made key contributions to the discovery of the Higgs boson. This discovery, jointly announced by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN, is regarded as one of the biggest breakthroughs in fundamental physics this century. This discovery completed the experimental verification of the Standard Model of particle physics, the mathematical theory through which we understand nature at the fundamental level, and resulted in the Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded to the physicists who predicted the Higgs boson decades ago. Prof. Nikolopoulos’ work has significantly improved our understanding of the Higgs boson and explored potential new physics beyond the Standard Model.

Physical Sciences & Engineering Finalists

Gustav Holzegel, PhD, Professor of Pure Mathematics, Imperial College London

Prof. Gustav Holzegel is a mathematician, who develops rigorous mathematical proofs of physics questions related to Einstein’s general theory of relativity. He provided the first proof of a decades-old conjecture about the stability of black holes in the case of the simplest form of black holes in the universe, and has made significant progress towards completely proving this conjecture in the cases of more complicated types of black holes. The techniques he developed have also influenced the studies on other open fundamental questions in theoretical physics and astrophysics.

Máire O’Neill, PhD, Professor of Information Security; Principal Investigator, Centre for Secure Information Technologies; Director, UK Research Institute in Secure Hardware and Embedded Systems, Queen’s University Belfast

Prof. Máire O’Neill is an electrical engineer working in the area of cybersecurity. She has proposed novel attack-resilient computer hardware platforms and chip designs that have found immediate applications. Her solutions are orders of magnitude faster than prior security implementations while also being cost effective. Her achievements have already generated an enormous impact on society, which will continue to increase as cyberattacks costing the global economy hundreds of billions of dollars annually, continue to grow at an unprecedented scale.

Chemistry Laureate

Philipp Kukura, PhD, Professor of Chemistry, University of Oxford

Prof. Kukura is a physical chemist who is developing cutting-edge optical methodologies for the visualisation and analysis of molecules such as proteins that exist within the body. To accomplish this task, he takes advantage of the scattering of visible light, which is the universal process through which we see the world around us. On the macro-scale, this scattered light provides information on the size and shape of an object. What Prof. Kukura has shown is that when driven to the extreme by detecting this light scattering from tiny objects in a microscope, this approach not only works with single biomolecules, but can also be used to measure their molecular mass, introducing a new way of weighing objects. The macroscopic equivalent would be to know the mass of a loaf of bread to within a few grams just by looking at it. Prof. Kukura hopes that this approach will be used widely to discover how biomolecules assemble, interact and thus function, as well as understand what goes wrong in disease, and how it can be addressed at a molecular level.

Chemistry Finalists

Igor Larrosa, PhD, Professor of Organic Chemistry,
The University of Manchester

Organic chemist, Prof. Igor Larrosa is a world-leader in a sub-field of organic chemistry called carbon-hydrogen bond activation, which is focused on finding ways to make these normally stable bonds reactive. Specifically, he has established new mechanistic insights into how C–H bonds can react with transition metals, and developed novel catalysts for the facile construction of molecules that previously were only accessible through multistep organic transformations.

Rachel O’Reilly, PhD, Chair of Chemistry & Head,
School of Chemistry, University of Birmingham

Prof. Rachel O’Reilly is a polymer chemist that has pioneered the use of innovative chemical approaches in the fields of DNA nanotechnology, sequence-controlled synthesis of polymers and precision synthesis to foster the development of novel materials. The novel molecules and structures produced from these methodologies have potential applications in healthcare, energy-related fields and sustainable chemistry.

Life Sciences Laureate

Ewa Paluch, PhD, Chair of Anatomy, University of Cambridge; Professor of Cell Biophysics, MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, University College London

Prof. Ewa Paluch’s novel discoveries are at the forefront of cell biology: she has elucidated key biophysical mechanisms of cell division and migration, and has established physiological roles of cellular protrusions known as “blebs.” Previously thought to exist only in sick or dying cells, she established that these protrusions on the cell surface are common in healthy cells, and that blebs have important functions in cell movement and division. Her work will influence treatment for diseases such as cancer, where cell shape and migration are key to disease pathology, and she is leading the field towards a complete understanding of how the laws of physics affect the behavior of cells.

Life Science Finalists

Tim Behrens, DPhil, Deputy Director, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Oxford; Professor of Computational Neuroscience, University of Oxford; Honorary Lecturer, Wellcome Centre for Imaging Neuroscience, University College London

Prof. Timothy Behrens is a neuroscientist whose work has uncovered mechanisms used by the human brain to represent our world, make decisions and control our behavior. An understanding of how our neurons function in networks to control behavior is fundamental to our understanding of the brain, and has implications for neural network computing, artificial intelligence and the treatment of mental and cognitive disorders.

Kathy Niakan, PhD, Group Leader, The Francis Crick Institute

Dr. Kathy Niakan is a developmental biologist conducting pioneering research in human embryonic development, elucidating early cell-fate decisions in embryonic cells. To further these studies, she became the first person in the world to obtain regulatory approval to use genome-editing technologies for research in human embryos. Her research may provide new treatments for infertility and developmental disorders, and her work in scientific policy and advocacy is defining the ethical use of human embryos and stem cells in scientific research.

2019 Blavatnik Award Honorees, United Kingdom

How to Improve Your Presentation Skills

A professional communication coach provides guidance on how you can improve your communication skills.

Published May 1, 2019

By Jayne Latz

You have a major presentation and you work on the perfect PowerPoint and practice reading your notes. But on the big day it feels like your presentation falls flat. Sound familiar?

If public speaking gives you anxiety, you’re not alone. Comedian Jerry Seinfeld once said that “According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death … This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”

Unfortunately, such anxiety can interfere with your delivery. It doesn’t matter how strong your presentation is, if you’re unable to speak in a clear, confident manner, your message will suffer. In fact, research has shown that how you say something actually matters twice as much as what you say!

Learning to master the art of public speaking is crucial to professional success. Whether it’s giving a sales presentation, pitching an idea to a committee, or a concept to a potential funder, the ability to speak in an engaging and convincing manner is important. You may only get one chance to make your case, so a polished and dynamic presentation could be a game-changer.

You should develop a style that works best for you, but here are 10 tips that may help you improve your overall presentation skills:

1. Open strong.

Enter with a confident stride and take a moment to make eye contact with the audience. Smile, and take a deep breath. This will help center you and allow you to begin your presentation in a strong, confident way.

2. Own your space.

Be mindful of body language. Don’t fold your arms, stand with your hands on your hips or put your hands in your pockets. Incorporate natural gestures into your speech — but be careful of “talking” with your hands. You will appear more relaxed, confident and in control.

3. Connect with your audience.

Looking into a sea of faces can be intimidating. Focus on connecting with one audience member at a time by making eye contact with individuals rather than just scanning the crowd. If you have a friend or colleague in the audience, focus on that person to start.

4. Tone matters.

When giving a presentation, your vocal quality can make all the difference. Does your tone sound positive or negative? Confident or tentative? The energy in your voice tells your listener a lot about whether what you have to say has value.

5. Be engaging.

Keep your audience involved and invested in your presentation to drive your message home. Ask questions that require a show of hands, have people stand up, or include moments where audience members need to interact.

6. Use strategic pausing to deliver with impact.

Pauses not only make your speech slower and more understandable, it can also be a powerful tool for drawing your audience’s attention to the parts of your message you want to highlight the most.

7. Don’t let your voice “fall into the abyss.”

Be careful not to drop sounds, particularly at the end of words or trail off at the end of a sentence. I refer to this as “falling into the abyss” and your audience may miss your most important point.

8. Let your audience know why your message matters.

Understand your audience and how what you have to say will benefit them. Then, spell it out. Let everyone know what they have to gain up front, and you’ll have a more attentive audience throughout your presentation.

9. Tell stories.

Including a story or specific case study in your presentation that relates to your audience’s interests will help them feel more connected to you and your message.

10. Close strong!

Finish with a quote or a point that illustrates the one takeaway you want the audience to remember. Memorize your closing in advance so that you can concentrate on your delivery and nerves won’t get in the way of a strong ending.

Polishing your public speaking skills will help you to gain confidence and increase your professional credibility. Take the time to focus on your speaking style, and make sure your presentation is doing your message justice. Remember: It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it!

Jayne Latz is an executive communication coach and President and Founder of Corporate Speech Solutions, LLC.

Are you looking for an expert to present at an upcoming event? Check out our Speaker’s Bureau to find the Academy expert that fits your needs.

2019 Blavatnik UK Awardees Are Bettering the World

A shot from the awards ceremony for the Blavatnik Award.

Learn more about the ceremony that celebrated this year’s Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the United Kingdom.

Published May 1, 2019

By Kamala Murthy

The 2019 honorees of the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the UK

The Blavatnik Family Foundation hosted its annual ceremony celebrating the honorees of the 2019 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the United Kingdom at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London.

The Ceremony was attended by members of the UK’s scientific elite as well as key figures within the fields of government, academia, business and entertainment. Neuroscientist and 2014 Nobel Laureate Professor John O’Keefe of University College London, served as the Master of Ceremonies for the evening.

“The Blavatnik Awards are given not just for exceptional work already done, but in support of world-changing work that we believe is yet to be done by these young scientists,” says O’Keefe.

Academy President and CEO Ellis Rubinstein also gave remarks thanking the support of the scientific community within the United Kingdom and complimenting the outstanding group of scientists that make up the Blavatnik Awards’ UK Jury and Scientific Advisory Council.

Among the Most Dedicated and Original Thinkers in their Spheres

In commenting on the caliber of the nine honorees, Prof. O’Keefe mentioned “the young scientists and engineers are among the most dedicated and original thinkers in their spheres in the United Kingdom…They are making headlines across medical and tech communities for discoveries and innovations in human development and cognition; from novel ways to synthesize drugs and sustainable polymers, to advances in cybersecurity and radical breakthroughs in fundamental physics.”

In each scientific category (Chemistry, Physical Sciences & Engineering, Life Sciences), two Finalists were each awarded prizes of US$30,000, and one Laureate in each category was awarded US$100,000. The Awards’ founder, Sir Leonard Blavatnik, presented medals to the three Laureates and six Finalists at the ceremony.

Throughout the course of the evening, the audience watched three films featuring the honorees from the three Award categories. The ceremony concluded with a fireside chat and the Blavatnik Awards tradition of making a “Toast to Science.”

Learn more about the 2019 Blavatnik Awards ceremony in the UK here.

UK Blavatnik Awardees Are Bettering the World

From cybersecurity and genome-editing to unraveling the mysteries of the atom and deciphering the complexities of the human brain, these nine young scientists are making a positive impact on our world.

Published May 1, 2019

By Kamala Murthy

The Laureates and Finalists of the 2019 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the United Kingdom are shaping the future of science.

A distinguished jury of leading UK senior scientists and engineers selected the nine 2019 Blavatnik Awards honorees from 83 nominations submitted by 43 academic and research institutions across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, as well as the Awards’ own Scientific Advisory Council.

These young scientists and engineers are already making headlines across the UK’s scientific community for discoveries and innovations in research ranging from the mechanics of human cells to new ways to weigh biomolecules, advances in cyber security and radical breakthroughs in fundamental physics. Their discoveries are transforming our understanding of the world and improving human lives.

One Laureate from each of the three categories of Life Sciences, Physical Sciences & Engineering, and Chemistry will receive an unrestricted prize of $100,000 — one of the largest unrestricted prizes available to early-career scientists in the UK.

2019 Life Sciences Laureate

Prof. Ewa Paluch, University College London (UCL) and University of Cambridge

2019 Chemistry Laureate

Prof. Philipp Kukura, University of Oxford

2019 Physical Sciences & Engineering Laureate

Prof. Konstantinos Nikolopoulos, University of Birmingham

2019 Blavatnik Awards in the UK Finalists

Two Finalists in each of the following categories will receive unrestricted prizes of $30,000 each.

“Last year, our first year of administering the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the United Kingdom, we were touched by the reaction of leaders of the UK’s scientific community who agreed that there is no other prize in the UK that honors the achievements and, most especially, future promise of young scientists,” said Ellis Rubinstein, President and CEO of The New York Academy of Sciences and Chair of the Awards’ Scientific Advisory Council. “On behalf of our global Academy we have been thrilled to see so many institutions recognized through their fantastic honorees. And we are enormously proud to collaborate with the UK’s esteemed jury and Scientific Advisory Council members.”

The 2019 Blavatnik Awards Laureates and Finalists in the UK will be honored at a gala dinner and ceremony at the prestigious Victoria and Albert Museum in London on March 6, 2019. The following day, the honorees will present their research in a symposium open to the public entitled “Cure, Create, Innnovate: 9 Young Scientists Transforming Our World,” to be held at the Science Museum, London—a free event to all Academy Members.

To learn more about the Blavatnik Awards and its cohort of Awards programs in the US, UK and Israel please visit the Blavatnik website here .

Publishing Evolves in a Connected World

A shot of planet Earth taken from space.

In many ways, the process from paper submission to publication has not changed much in 40 years. However, some changes are underway.

Published May 1, 2019

By Anni Griswold

Douglas Braaten, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer, Scientific Publications Editor-in-Chief, *Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences*

In the days before artificial intelligence mined obscure gems from the scientific literature; before preprint servers posted study results without pausing for peer review; when social networking meant cocktail conversations at the industry conferences — science publishing looked very different than it does today.

“When I started, authors submitted paper manuscripts produced on a typewriter,” says Douglas Braaten, PhD, chief scientific officer responsible for the Academy’s science journals and books, and editor-in-chief of Annals of The New York Academy of Sciences. “Happily, not everything stays the same.” But as technology continues to reshape academic publishing he says, “it’s useful to think about the things that do.”

In many ways, the process from paper submission to publication has not changed much in 40 years. Researchers still submit papers to journals. Papers are peer reviewed. Journal editors share the reviews with authors. Revisions take place. And then submissions are transformed into carefully copy edited, typeset manuscripts. This system has survived because it works, Braaten says.

But critics have long called for change. Some note that the peer review process can stretch on for months or even years. Others point out that the $25 billion academic publishing industry is dominated by a handful of major players who make a profit from the public investment in research.

Braaten and others don’t deny that the system could be improved. But they say the situation is more nuanced than critics suggest.

“I’d love for the industry to be less concerned with profit-making,” he says. “But there are some fundamentally important and useful things about peer review and having vetted, polished papers published in journals with global footprints.”

Gradually Transforming the Business

Still, technologies aimed at tweaking the process have increasingly flooded the market — and are gradually transforming the business. “It’s hard to keep track of these innovations because there are so many of them out there,” says Steven Ottogalli, Publisher, Life & Physical Sciences at Wiley. “Start-ups are coming online and impacting every part of the publication process, affecting every aspect of the value chain that used to lie solely with the publishers or with the academic societies.”

Preprint servers, for example — long a standard in the math and physics communities — are gaining in popularity with biologists. Scholarly collaboration networks are connecting researchers from diverse fields and distant locations, allowing them to share their findings in real time. Artificial intelligence-based search tools are tipping off scientists to papers they might otherwise overlook — creating new synergies. Novel technologies such as blockchain aim to increase accountability and transparency in the review process by encoding each article with a record of its origins, revisions and peer reviews. And younger generations of investigators are replacing static figures with embedded multimedia and interactive data.

A Sociology Surrounding Scientific Publishing

Collectively, these innovations can bring the world to a laboratory’s doorstep. They can also allow siloed projects to spread in new, unexpected directions. But how will these new technologies fundamentally change the traditional model of scientific publishing?

“There’s such a sociology surrounding scientific publishing,” Braaten says. “Think of what it means for grant funding, and tenure evaluations. And for what it means for the careers of young investigators when they publish in a top-tier journal. One would have a very hard time replacing all of these significant benefits with changes just in technology.”

Yet it’s hard to deny that the field is in transition. “I’ve been in this business for almost 20 years, and things have changed so drastically,” says Ottogalli. “Who knows what it will look like in another decade.”

Variations on a Theme

Steven Ottogalli, Publisher, Life & Physical Sciences, Wiley

Most of the innovations Ottogalli mentions are variations on the theme of open access. This business model shifts the financial outlay from academic institutions to authors and funders (such as the Wellcome Trust). This is done by replacing subscription fees and paywalls with open access license fees and free access to published papers.

Critics complain that subscription-based journals restrict access to publicly funded research by creating subscription paywalls. This, they say, forces the very academic institutions that produce the findings to pay for access to the published work. Open access could potentially fix that by providing immediate public access to papers upon publication.

“But this ‘fix’ doesn’t address the whole story,” Braaten says. “If by open access, you mean access to the information, there are a lot of ways now that one can access all published research, publicly funded or not.”

A Huge Amount of Free, Accessible Information

For example, most journals allow authors to post the submitted version of their manuscript on a lab website or, after peer review and acceptance, on the post-publication websites such as PubMed Central. And with the advent of preprint servers, Braaten says, there’s a huge amount of accessible information for free. “If someone wants access to a paper, it’s often available on one of several sites — just in a different format than one finds in a published journal.”

Subscription paywalls don’t keep science from the people, he says. Rather, they provide publishers and journal owners the funds required to produce published peer reviewed and polished papers on websites in HTML and PDF form, and in print journals. “The typeset published version — not the actual science in the article — is the thing that’s owned by a journal or publisher — it’s the product of their work. I think people may not be aware of this distinction,” he says.

Access to Published Science in a Connected World

One upside to all publishing models — including open access and pre- and post-publication servers — is that published papers are available for such things as AI text mining. In turn, this can improve discoverability within disparate disciplines, for example, ecology and economics. “AI will help humans make connections where they didn’t think of making connections before,” Ottogalli says.

The AI tool IBM Watson, for example, can search published content and find papers on climate change that a researcher might be interested in — and then make connections to other papers that might unexpectedly support work on climate change.

AI will help humans make connections where they didn’t think of making connections before,” Ottogalli says.

In the meantime, researchers are finding ways to share their findings outside of the traditional publishing process.

“Scholarly collaboration networks, which are like Facebook for researchers, are providing greater opportunities for working together,” Ottogalli says. ResearchGate and other scholarly collaboration networks (SCNs) build ties among researchers in similar and disparate fields, and can put relatively obscure labs in developing countries in touch with larger, well-funded ones abroad.

“The international collaboration piece is very important,” Ottogalli says. The publishing landscape is dominated by Western Europe, the U.S. and China, so “sites like this open up doors for researchers who may not be known to researchers in Europe or the U.S. At the end of the day, I think SCNs are a valuable tool in advancing science.”

But There’s a Downside, Too

ResearchGate and other SCNs can be aggressive in encouraging authors to upload versions of their published PDFs in violation of copyright. “This is clearly wrong,” Braaten says. Publishers have routinely issued take-down notices, informing the authors and ResearchGate that they must remove the content because it is in violation of publishers’ policies.

Echoing Braaten, there’s another way to provide access to research findings says Ottogalli: “preprint servers.” In a 2016 policy forum, Science lauded the advantages of preprint servers for authors, journals and funders. These sites expedite publication and offer a forum for sharing new tools or negative results, potentially accelerating the pace of research. It’s also possible that preprint servers could help weed out questionable scientific papers in the pre-peer review phase, when other researchers comment publicly on the study. “Some authors may value the feedback before the paper is submitted to a peer-reviewed journal,” Ottogalli says.

The concept is rising in popularity. Some journals have launched their own preprint servers for papers under review. And a few major federally funded programs require their investigators to post preliminary findings to the servers.

“We’ll see really interesting advancements in the next few years,” says Ottogalli. “It’s a time of big change.”

Simple Tips for Teaching the Complexity of Science

Whoever said, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach” never ventured into a lab at any American institute of higher education to speak to its graduate students.

Published April 25, 2019

By Marie Gentile, Robert Birchard, and Mandy Carr

They’re not only expected to be research superstars but also teach the next generation of STEM learners. Unfortunately, this second responsibility can be overlooked by their institutions and PIs, who often fail to provide them with teaching support. We recently spoke with Barbara Houtz, a former teacher and current K–20 STEM specialist who runs an online Scientists Teaching Science course, about the challenges facing first-time teachers.

Why should scientists strive to improve their teaching skills?

Our country is losing a large number of people that have the interest and ability to succeed in STEM fields, but they drop out of STEM majors because of poor teaching, and a feeling that they’re unwelcome. This is especially problematic for minority and first-generation students, who come to college excited about a STEM major. They have the energy and the interest, but they’re faced with professors who sometimes think it’s their job to fail half of the class.

They teach in very traditional manners with lectures and very little interactions. ‘Are there any questions?’ is about the only interaction they have with students. This preferentially harms underrepresented minorities and first-generation college students. They need a little bit more support, they need more interaction, they need to feel that they belong in the class instead of just, ‘Here’s the information, learn it or don’t.’

What’s the most common mistake that first-time teachers make?

It’s my experience that when a graduate student get their first teaching position, they harken back to their graduate education and not their undergraduate education. This causes them to have unreasonably high, sometimes irrational, expectations of their students. They forget that they’ll be facing a class with hundreds of undergrads who don’t know anything.

They feel that as long as the lecture is interesting, they’re teaching students. They say, ‘If I have an interesting lecture, then that’s good enough.’ But it isn’t enough. I tell people that lecturing is not teaching. It can be an element of teaching, but just lecturing is not teaching.

Should the lecture be de-emphasized?

The lecture itself is not based on any kind of research on teaching and learning. Quite the opposite. All the research on teaching shows that lectures are a terrible way to teach. However, we persist at it because it’s traditional, even though it harms those students in the demographics that we’re trying to get into STEM fields. I always tell scientists, ’Your whole life is devoted to finding evidence for different ideas. Finding evidence to solve questions, to answer questions, solve problems. Why don’t you use evidence when you’re teaching?’

How do improved teaching skills make better scientists?

It helps them become better communicators. Whenever they’re giving a presentation, delivering a seminar, or going to a conference talk, it can help them organize and deliver the takeaways they want to give their audience. Instead of throwing out information hoping it will stick, they can think about every speaking opportunity as a teaching opportunity.

What’s your advice for scientists looking to improve teaching?

Don’t feel pressured to, ‘Make it fun’ or, ’Make it interesting’ because, that’s an unnecessary bonus. Learning doesn’t have to be fun, and it doesn’t have to be interesting as long as you’re engaging the mind and you’re showing the student the usefulness of this information. Learning is hard work. You can’t say you’re always having fun.

Science is very complex, STEM ideas can be extremely complex. It’s not a simple thing to learn how everything works. I don’t aim to try to teach people how to make learning fun or interesting. I aim to engage students.

Learn more about the Academy’s Educational programming.

Mentoring Reignites Chemist’s Love of Teaching

Spreading the love of science and promoting the importance of curiosity are just two of the reasons Dessy Natalia is passionate about teaching high school chemistry.

Published March 27, 2019

By Marie Gentile, Robert Birchard, and Mandy Carr

Dessy Natalia has lived in a lot of places. Originally from Paradise Island in Bali, Dessy received her undergraduate degree in Indonesia, her masters degree in Belgium, and her chemistry PhD in Germany. After moving to the U.S. following her PhD studies, Dr. Natalia was looking for a way to get out of the lab and volunteer. That’s when she learned about the Academy’s Afterschool STEM Mentoring Program. Though she didn’t have formal teaching experience at that point, she had served as a research assistant during her studies and had also served as a mentor, loving every minute of it.

Serving as an afterschool STEM mentor for the Academy helped reignite Dr. Natalia’s love for teaching, so much so that she now teaches chemistry to high school students at Urban Action Academy in Brooklyn.

Why did you choose to teach chemistry?

I’ve loved chemistry since high school. Chemistry is a fascinating subject with a good balance between theory and application, as well as conceptual and math skills. Once I started conducting experiments, I loved it even more.

What was it like being a mentor in the Afterschool STEM Mentoring Program?

I was mentoring a class of fourth and fifth graders in forensic science at Public School 19 in New York City and it was an amazing experience. I was paired with another mentor, a researcher from Mount Sinai, and we had the students identifying patterns left from shoes at a faux crime scene, as well as looking at hair structures using microscopes. The kids loved the activities and were very engaged.

How did the program inspire you to become a teacher?

The program reminded me that I love to teach. Seeing those curious eyes and how eager they were to investigate while we did science activities inspired me. They make me believe that I can be a good teacher and they make me want to be a better teacher every day.

What do you love about teaching?

I love spreading the love of science, the importance of curiosity, and the scientific method. I love to see the awe in the students’ eyes when they learn something new.

Learn more about mentoring opportunities available through the Academy.

Promoting International Collaboration and Mentorship

A man poses with a bronze bust of Charles Darwin.

Participants in The New York Academy of Sciences’ Interstellar Initiative discuss their work in the program, the power of effective mentors, and the need for cross-discipline collaboration.

Published February 28, 2019

By Marie Gentile, Mandy Carr, and Richard Birchard

Mentors take part in the Academy tradition of posing next to the bronze bust of Charles Darwin.

A radiation oncologist, an immunologist, and a mechanical engineer walk into a room to consult with a brain tumor specialist. This may sound like the inauspicious start to a bad joke, but at the Interstellar Initiative—a mentoring workshop series presented by the Academy and The Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development—the payoff is a potential treatment for pancreatic cancer.

We recently sat down with a team of Interstellar participants to discuss how the Initiative’s emphasis on international collaboration and mentorship is helping to pave the way for innovative research. We caught up with them just as they were finalizing a grant proposal, developed over the course of two workshops with the guidance of their team mentor Noriyuki Kasahara, PhD.

What is your grant proposal’s focus?

Michael Pacold, MD, PhD, New York University: We’re studying pancreatic cancer—a nasty cancer with a five-year survival rate less than five percent. We’re interested in defining metabolic features of the pancreatic cancer environment that render these tumors insensitive to multiple therapies, including immune therapy. During preliminary experiments, we found that our initial proposal wouldn’t have worked.

From left to right Edmond Young, Taisuke Kondo, and Michael Pacold work on their grant presentation.

Taisuke Kondo, PhD, Keio University: The therapy we were proposing was potentially very dangerous because of adverse effects for normal lung tissues.

MP: With this knowledge, we’re now focused on what metabolites are in the microenvironment of pancreatic cancer.

Edmond Young, PhD, University of Toronto: This new approach makes for a more focused grant. We’re answering a basic question that could have major impact across the board in basic science. This Initiative has been very helpful. The first workshop was a meet and greet, shaking hands and getting to know one another. Six months later we have met again to parse out further details and receive mentored feedback.

Why should senior scientists mentor their younger colleagues?

Noriyuki Kasahara, MD, PhD, University of California, San Francisco: There’s an earnest desire to ensure young, promising junior faculty do not make the same mistakes that we made, and that they benefit from our experiences. Also an experienced scientist can explain how to think about grant proposals in the way that critical reviewers think about them.

Why is mentorship for early career investigators important?

EY: Because it’s easy to make mistakes (as an early career investigator). Mistakes happen often, and sometimes they take a long time to fix. Having a mentor helps to avoid traps. PhD students have been trained to do good bench science, and they know how to design an experiment, but writing a grant is a new game.

MP: In science and medicine, the successful generally function at a level above where they actually are. Good graduate students act like postdocs, good postdocs act like primary investigators. Good junior faculty act like senior faculty and so forth. Mentors help you get there, if only by imitation.

Why is international collaboration in the sciences important?

Noriyuki Kasahara consults with the team on their proposal.

EY: When you’re doing science at a university surrounded by familiar people, you get siloed. Scientists need to step outside of their local environment once in a while. Hearing other people’s thoughts, getting their input, and having a global eye towards problems is extremely helpful.

MP: The beauty of science is that it should be true and reproducible. You should be able to do the same experiment in New York as you can in Tokyo, as you can in Toronto.

NK: I think that’s one of the wonderful aspects of science. Also, it’s a universal kind of language. Physical laws are universal and it doesn’t matter what your nation of origin is, or your ethnicity. They apply equally to everybody.

TK: This program is a great opportunity for young investigators to participate in international collaborations.

What advice do you have for young researchers?

MP: In science you have to be comfortable with the realization that you will be wrong. Often. Don’t be afraid of being wrong, look at what the data is telling you and adjust accordingly.

EY: Question everything, because a skeptical scientist is always a good scientist.

TK: Enjoy both success and failure. Positive and negative data are both useful.

NY: Being in science can be very immersive, very consuming. You think about your hypotheses and your experiments all the time. But don’t always let it consume you. Live your life and see your family.

Overcoming Doubts with Help from Role Models

It was a life-changing physics teacher and her own ability to overcome doubt that played a significant role in the nanotechnology adventure of Alexandra Boltasseva.

Published February 1, 2019

By Alexandra Boltasseva, PhD

I was born in Kanash, a small town on the Southern route of the famous Trans-Siberian Railway in modern day Russia. Being from a small town in the middle of nowhere, one of the first questions I’m often asked is how I got into science. I have often repeated the same answer: “I have always been fascinated by technology and devices.” But the truth is that I have always been fascinated by a much simpler thing – the world around me.

All my life I was blessed to have the most devoted and inspirational people around me. As every child, I loved to come to my parents’ work. Both engineers, my parents worked for railway-related organizations. My mom has a degree in applied mathematics and was on the team who installed the very first computer at the local train repair plant. My dad was the head of a small radio communications laboratory that controlled train communication lines between two of the nearest cities – Nizhnyi Novgorod and Kazan. At his lab, I loved playing with colorful resistors and wondered what they actually did while flipping through Rudolf Svoren’ book Electronics: Step by Step.

A Life-changing Teacher

In middle school, my life changed because of my physics teacher Valery V. Gorbenko. His true love for physics and devotion to his students opened up a world beyond my small-town school. I joined his after-school physics classes, and soon after participated and won the physics Olympics in our republic. Being a girl meant you were outnumbered at physics competitions, but I never asked myself whether I should do it, I just joined in. I wanted to make my teacher proud.

It was never a question whether anyone in my family should get a college degree. Everyone knew that doors open when you get a degree. While I was interested in particle physics in high school, soon after I started at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, I became interested in applied physics. I wanted to do something that would make a difference now instead of decades into the future. I had amazing advisors during my bachelor and masters projects at the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences who introduced me to an emerging area of quantum-well lasers, and who taught me how to manage my time.

My nanotechnology adventures started at the Technical University of Denmark where I did my PhD studies working in one of the very first Scandinavian Cleanrooms learning about nanofabrication. Focusing on how to bring light down to nanoscale, I was very fortunate to have great role models such as Ursula Keller and my university advisor, Sergey Bozhevolnyi (with whom I still collaborate very actively today).

Motivated by Doubt

I don’t think I ever felt “out of place” in the male-dominated college or research communities. For me, it was not about being female, it was about being insecure (though I admit these two things are connected). During the earlier stages of my career, I had difficulty convincing myself that I was suited for academic work. Sometimes I wanted to quit science and open a flower shop.

Once during my postdoctoral work, I felt particularly blue and seriously doubted whether I should stay in academia. In that moment, I spoke with my former PhD advisor who is a very well-known, established professor. I told him I wasn’t good enough at what I do and that I was filled with doubts. His reply surprised me: “Same here – I still have doubts about whether I am doing what I am good at.” He added that only ignorant people would ever think that they are great at something. In that moment, I realized having doubts and accepting that you don’t know everything is what motivates people to learn and explore. I am still learning to believe in myself, but the biggest reward is to share what I do know and feel passionate about.

About the Author

2018 Blavatnik National Awards Finalist, Alexandra Boltasseva, PhD, is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University working in the areas of optics and nanotechnology. She is also a mom of three and lives with her family in West Lafayette, Indiana.

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