Dr. Ebony Gary & Tyler Yang - Navigating a Career in Biomedical Research

In this episode of Wistar Science Up Close, Dr. Maureen Murphy gets insights from Wistar postdoctoral student, Dr. Ebony Gary and first year Ph.D. cancer biology student Tyler Yang about life in and outside of the lab. Hear firsthand how they balance a career in biomedical research and their life outside the lab.

Transcript

Dr. Maureen Murphy (00:01):

This is Wistar Science Up Close, where we tell the stories of researchers who are global leaders pushing the boundaries of what's possible in biomedical research. I'm your host, Dr. Maureen Murphy. I'm the Deputy Director of Wistar Ellen and Ronald Caplan Cancer Center. I'm also a teacher and I love to learn. In each episode of Wistar Science Up Close, we'll take you into the labs and lives of our scientists to learn about their special expertise in fields like vaccine development, immunology, infectious diseases, and the fight against cancer. We'll also get to know a bit about our scientists outside of the lab, hear the stories of their professional journeys, and find out why they do what they do. Our guests today are Ebony Gary, a postdoctoral fellow in the Weiner lab here at Wistar and Tyler Yang, a research assistant in Wistar's Claiborne Laboratory, and a student in the inaugural class of the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine's Cancer Biology Ph.D. program, which is run in partnership with The Wistar Institute.

(01:08):

So my first question is to Tyler Yang. Tyler, when did you know you wanted a career in biomedical research? And can you tell us, is there someone special in your life who helped get you where you are now?

Tyler Yang (01:19):

Well, I've been working in adjacent fields for a really long time, just on a whim in high school. I joined this extracurricular science research program and I just really liked the concept of thinking on my feet and working towards my own curiosities and things like that. And like I said, I was working in a lot of different fields from biophysics to printing tissues and all sorts of odd jobs like that. And I guess right now the most relevant person that really helped me get to where I am right now is Dan at the Claiborne Lab. He's been really helping me organize my visions and integrate all of these loves for engineering and computer science into just one clear image that is a little bit easier to tackle.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (02:05):

You'll be happy to know that whenever I speak to trainees and they say, I'm not sure I want to be an academic researcher, it's a lot of grant writing and it seems a lot of stress. I say, look at Dan Claiborne. He loves what he does. No gray hair, just comes in, gets his work done, gets grants, and seems to do it seamlessly. So he's a hero of mine as well. Where was growing up for you, Tyler?

Tyler Yang (02:32):

I was raised in New York. I was first in the state, I was in the suburbs of Long Island, and then I moved to the city and then I went to university in Philadelphia and I never came back.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (02:44):

Wonderful, wonderful. What city in Long Island, if you don't mind?

Tyler Yang (02:48):

That's Manhasset, New York.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (02:50):

I know Manhassett.

(02:51):

Ebony, I'm going to turn to you. Can you tell me a little bit about your journey? When did you know I really wanted a biomedical career? Was there someone in particular in your past that really helped you succeed?

Dr. Ebony Gary (03:03):

I probably always wanted to be a scientist. Maybe I was 12 or 13 and I watched the movie Outbreak with my mom and I was like, oh, I want to do that when I grow up. And she said, you mean be a doctor like the lady? And I said, no, whatever that other dude does where you are vaccinating monkeys and catching them in the wild. And she was like, that sounds crazy, but she was that person for me. She never said you couldn't do that, which was pretty great. And so I thought that that was maybe biochemistry. So I started out as a biochem major in undergrad and I hated chemistry, but every semester of biology I liked it better. And then when I started my Ph.D. at Drexel, I thought I wanted to do hardcore virology, so I did a rotation in a really great virology lab and it was just a hundred percent western blots and I was like, oh, I hate this. Maybe this is not the job for me. And then I had a one-off chance to do a rotational, the lab that did vaccines in mice. And on the very first day I was like, absolutely this. So pretty easy.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (04:03):

Wonderful. And you would say then your mom is the one who has strongly encouraged you. And let me ask you, where was growing up?

Dr. Ebony Gary (04:10):

I'm from Brooklyn, New York originally - the city. I went to undergrad in Philly and graduate school in Philly. So I kind of am a Philly person now.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (04:21):

So two New York transplants have now called Philly home - scientifically and otherwise. So back to you, Tyler, in any career journey, there are obstacles. Can you tell me some that you faced and how did you overcome them?

Tyler Yang (04:33):

Yeah, well, I think the most pressing one that I'm very glad to have off my chest right now is I was applying to Ph.D. programs for the last two or three years and I had a lot of doubt about how things were turning out and I was getting very frustrated because I just kept applying and I was getting a lot of rejections and I was starting to wonder if maybe I just didn't specialize well enough or maybe my GPA wasn't good enough or anything. And actually I was kind of getting ready to go back to school or just kind of restructure everything. But every time I faced one of these rejections, I was just thinking how I can be more proactive when it comes to these things. And I started to reach out to my colleagues that are already in schools or I started reaching out to application committees and seeing what they had to say about that. And eventually they introduced me to the PCOM program that I just got admitted to. So I'm really excited about that.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (05:23):

So just to clarify for the audience, that's the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and their inaugural Cancer Biology Ph.D. program. Congratulations. You are exactly the kind of person we love to see in this program. Someone who starts at Wistar and we know them, they work hard, they own their research, meaning they intellectually contribute. And so it's a wonderful thing and congratulations on that. You're going to be a great inaugural student.

(05:51):

No pressure, Ebony. Can you tell me a little bit about what might've been some of the obstacles you getting to where you are today and how did you manage to overcome them?

Dr. Ebony Gary (06:01):

Yeah, I think maybe there were a couple, just for me, I think I'm the first person in my family to have their bachelor's degree, so that was its own thing. Definitely the first person in my family to go to graduate school. And I would echo Tyler that applications are pretty hard. My undergrad was very science focused, so my GPA wasn't great. I think a lot of us have that transition from high school being relatively easy to undergrad, being hard to graduate school. I find a lot of other trainees say graduate schools easier because you're transitioning to something you love doing. You're not taking physics classes that you don't care about. So undergrad was pretty hard for me and I wasn't ready for the level of competition for grades among students. And so when I applied to grad school, I think I did two rounds of Ph.D. school applications with lots of rejections, but I knew that I wanted to do it, so I kept applying. I had the opportunity to work as a technician for two years, oddly enough in a chemistry lab. And so I got a lot of the sort of basics of being a scientist and keeping a lab notebook from that. And when I finally made it to interview stage for grad schools, I think that is probably what sold it more than my GPA that I had had the science experience sort of like Tyler.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (07:15):

And maybe that's a good thing that it's hard to get into grad school because it's a selection pressure for people that really want it. I still remember how thrilling it was to pass my generals exam and know that from now on everything I learned was something I wanted to learn versus something that someone else felt that I needed to know to be a human being. So you're married to learning the rest of your lives and that's why we're all here, but you will get to a point Tyler, where everything you learn is what you want to learn.

Tyler Yang (07:50):

I can't imagine that. (laughs)

Dr. Maureen Murphy (07:51):

Wonderful feeling. Yes, it's just a wonderful feeling. Tyler, in your current role, can you tell me what part of your research appeals to you most? What aspect of your work brings you the most joy?

Tyler Yang (08:03):

I kind of stumbled into this lab, but maybe I make it sound more intentional now as this is a very small lab and I really get to play into this role of a jack of all trades, I really get my hands in a bunch of different projects that I was always interested in. And what really feels the best right now is being in lab meetings and things like that. And I feel like I can contribute a very specific point of view that not everyone else has. And then it's an exchange of ideas. And I feel like my current projects are just kind of the culmination of all of these things that we've discussed before. And I don't know, it feels really good because I feel like I can contribute to some of the people that feel very senior to me and they'll take it to heart and it really means a lot. I get to contribute to this kind of stuff.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (08:49):

I always tell everyone one of the beauties of Wistar is that everyone here contributes to every success we have and everyone here is valued for their opinion. Can you tell me a little bit a thumbnail sketch about what kind of research the Claiborne lab does?

Tyler Yang (09:05):

Sure. So we work with CAR-T cells and we basically investigate their interactions with HIV, and there's kind of two arms to that. It's how HIV reacts to CAR-T cell and how CAR-T cells react to HIV. And I am very much on that CAR-T end that I can talk a lot more about. And it's that as the T cell is exposed to antigen over a really long period of time because HIV just lingers on and whenever you clear it reemerges, these T cells become more and more dysfunctional. And there's a lot of mechanisms as to why that happens. And I think that I really thrive under that because you can look at that dysfunction from a lot of different angles and a lot of different time points and I can kind of use a more systematic computer mind to put that all together. So I have a lot of fun with those kinds of data sets.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (09:56):

So Tyler, you mentioned CAR-T cell. Can you tell the audience a little bit about what they are, how they're modified and what they're designed to do?

Tyler Yang (10:04):

Sure. So CAR-T cell stands for chimeric antigen receptor and the T cell is basically a piece of the adaptive immune system, the part of the human immune system that reacts to viruses and cancers, for example. And what CAR-T cells really do is that we deliver a genetic change to the T cell so that it is able to directly recognize whatever we want. In our case, this is the HIV envelope, and then in the inside we kind of teach it to signal and increase their efficiency towards killing or sticking around longer in the person's body. And the real benefit of this compared to another drug is that theoretically these CAR-T cells can exist in the body for an indefinite period of time.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (10:51):

Wonderful. Ebony, in your current role, what part of your research appeals to you most? What aspect of your work brings you the most joy?

Dr. Ebony Gary (11:00):

I think my favorite thing about our research is that it has this really positive potential to impact patients. So it's translatable to human health. And so a lot of what we do in the Weiner lab is focused on diseases that really impact the human population like HIV or influenza or SARS-COV-2. And for me it's taking what we do and sort of applying it to special patient populations like the elderly or the very young and asking can I improve that impact that we're having globally in this specific population? And so it's important for me to be doing work that I think affects the world even if it's a very distant from where I am in the lab.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (11:41):

So you talk about targeting young people's immune systems and the elderly immune systems. What's different about their immune system that makes particular attention to them important?

Dr. Ebony Gary (11:52):

So what I think is really cool about the immune system generally is that it's sort of learning from its environment. It's learning from every infection that you get, every encounter with pathogen that you have. And in really young sort of babies. When we think about neonatal immunology, it's that they have a tendency to be a little bit overreactive, so they might react really strongly to an influenza infection and have this sort of cytokine storm that causes pneumonia and can be deadly. And on the elderly side of things, because I think our immune system see a lot of pathogens as we age, it's sort of taught itself to react a little bit less strongly and that less strong reaction means you might let that virus grow out of control. And so it's kind of figuring out how to fine tune that response that I think is interesting.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (12:39):

Wonderful. Since you're a postdoctoral fellow, I'm going to ask you a thumbnail sketch of what David Weiner's lab studies, but I'm more interested in knowing what's your dream after Wistar? What will you study in your own laboratory?

Dr. Ebony Gary (12:53):

Yeah, so the Weiner lab really studies DNA vaccines as both immunogen for vaccine design and for delivery of therapeutics. So we use DNA to deliver monoclonal antibodies or we might use DNA to deliver missing enzymes in special patient populations or mouse models. My current research is focused mostly on the development of DNA encoded adjuvants, so sort of molecules that can modulate immune responses. And I'm specifically interested in improving vaccine efficacy in special populations. So they're very young or they're very old and directing vaccine induced immunity to special compartments like the lung for protection against SARS-COV-2. I am actively thinking about what I think my future research program would be like, and I think I would like to keep that focus on special patient populations. Can we make vaccines that work better in the elderly? Can we make vaccines that give you life long protection in childhood? And perhaps can we sort of wrap that into delivering vaccines in a way that makes them work better at mucosal sites and prevent transmissions. I'm really interested in respiratory sort of virus pathogens and patients that have increased risk.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (14:05):

Wonderful, wonderful. So back to you Tyler. I'm sure that days can be long and frustrating in research. How do you manage some of the disappointments?

Tyler Yang (14:16):

Sure. For the most part, one of the biggest things that I do when I have a very long day is that I'm often exhausted and I get a gauge for how tired I am and sometimes I just power and nap through the day. But another philosophy that I really try to take to heart is that science will be there tomorrow. I really like to try to emphasize having a more balanced lifestyle and part of it is exercising the body. I've been really into martial arts recently and I've been trying to show up maybe four days a week. And some of it is practicing the more creative musical side of my, and that helps me remind myself that even if there is a disappointment in science, I can come back to something else and feel fulfilled on that angle.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (14:59):

And let me remind you that it's important to be in nature, that you cannot be sad if you are in nature's

Tyler Yang (15:05):

True.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (15:07):

Tell me a little bit about your fascination with martial arts. Where does that come from and what do you think it gives you that enhances your life?

Tyler Yang (15:14):

Yeah, for one, it's cool, it looks very cool, but I've always had kind of this eccentric, I want to combine a lot of fields of research and just general interests and I feel like the exploration of the body and the self is something that's very valuable to me. Just this feeling of my hand is here and my foot is here, and just this feeling of putting in work on a daily basis and just seeing the fruits of your labor kind of come to fruition is not unlike research itself. It's just research for my body. And yeah, I really, really like the community that I've built in this little martial art studio. These are just people in all sorts of different backgrounds and they're just kind of chasing a secondary dream after when they're off the clock. And I just think it's a really, really inspirational environment to be a part of also.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (16:09):

Can you tell us what branch of the martial arts you study?

Tyler Yang (16:12):

The martial arts gym that I'm going to is called Martial Posture, and they teach karate kempo, but also they dabble in judo and they dabble in kickboxing and even the instructors come from different backgrounds and I think that's super cool.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (16:26):

That is super cool. So Ebony, now to you, most people don't understand that the average experiment doesn't always work, that your hypothesis is wrong or you need to modify your thoughts. How do you deal with some of the disappointments and the wrong guesses and the wrong hypotheses?

Dr. Ebony Gary (16:46):

Yeah, I try to not let that get me down, but it's kind of impossible, especially if you've really decided you want this thing to work and it doesn't work. I think because our lab is a little bit big, we get the benefit of being able to lean on each other. So I can say, man, I've been trying this thing for three months and I can't get it to work. Can I give it to a lab mate and see if they can get it to work? And if three of us can't get it to work, maybe the answer is it isn't going to work. But I feel like if I've been banging my head against the wall at something, sometimes it's best to just sort of focus on something else, let someone else try that thing. And if we're lucky when we talk about it a couple months from now, it will have worked. And so that works really well in the lab. Outside of lab, I try to give myself time, which is hard to do, build in time in my day or in my week to do a thing that I love doing. And sometimes that thing is reading, sometimes it's writing, I write a lot of fiction. Sometimes it's just not doing anything. Sometimes it's sleeping like Tyler said. But I think you should probably try to build in some time in your day every day to do something that you want to do.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (17:48):

Writing fiction. Tell us a little bit about that passion.

Dr. Ebony Gary (17:52):

So I love reading. I read a lot of fiction and I'm a big science fiction horror nerd, and so I also write in the science fiction horror genre and my husband and I read this very nerdy book series called Warhammer, which is a sort of famous tabletop game that people play with little figures that you paint. The tabletop game is based on sort of a longstanding lore series that's in hundreds of novels. And so we read those novels together and talk a lot about Warhammer and I stumbled upon a sort of fan driven writing website called Open Stories where they accept submissions of flash fiction, which is my favorite. It has to be a thousand words. Can't be longer than that. You've got to tell a whole story in a thousand words. I love that. And I submitted a short story and they accepted it and I submitted another one and they accepted it and published it on their website.

(18:43):

And then the editor reached out to me and said, do you like to edit for us? I thought, sure, I guess I could try doing that. I've been doing that for a couple years now. I think writing fiction is a lot like writing a scientific manuscript. If you sort of squint, you want to take your reader somewhere and you want them to believe you when you get to the end, you can do that with characters and settings and fiction, but you do that with data in science. And so I kind of start the same way for writing a story that I do for writing a manuscript.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (19:13):

I'm so impressed with both of you how much of your brain you use given how much of your brain gets sucked into science, which is a lot of it good for you for always exercising other areas of your brain. Something that I teach people in my lab is the best experiment. Even if it doesn't work, you know something now you didn't know before. You know that that's not the avenue to go in. And so to me that's success in my lab. Yes, the experiment, you got the data, do you know something now you didn't know before, meaning don't go in this direction, do go in that. And that's a success. So if you look at things that way, you have success all the time. So since you began your journey, what changes have you seen that you think will improve the experience for those who come after you will? Tyler, you're the inaugural Ph.D. program in cancer biology with PCOM. What changes do you think will occur that might improve the experience for those who come after you?

Tyler Yang (20:15):

Yeah, I'm very passionate about this barrier to entry into academia. Sometimes I think it's very difficult to find work just in general to find that first internship, that first position. Maybe you need to restructure your work experience to get into a very specific field. It's all very intimidating and I felt like I didn't have a ton of guidance until I stumbled into the right communities, which is why I feel very enthusiastic about whenever we have a trainee or something and I just want to tell them like, hey, I know this is scary and ridiculous and sometimes just overwhelming. I think also in the same field of this Ph.D. inaugural PCOM program, all I want to do is see this succeed and expand because I get a little bit emotional thinking about it. Dan gave me a chance at the Wistar have me having not a lot of experience in explicitly immunology and flash forward three years and I'm in a Ph.D. program and I'm so focused on something and I'm very enthusiastic about it and I feel like I'm even talking differently now. And I am really excited for this program to potentially expand so that more people can talk about that and I feel like there's a certain responsibility that's like, talk good about this, make this look good. All the above.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (21:30):

Our success is all on you, young man. So no pressure. Ebony, tell me a little bit about your journey. What changes have you seen that you think will improve the experience for those who come after you?

Dr. Ebony Gary (21:42):

I think probably not just in science but sort of broadly globally. I think we are at a place humans I guess where we are thinking about being more inclusive, having better representation, and science is like this little niche world like Tyler was mentioning, that you might feel excluded from. And I think some of that forward motion and inclusivity has made its way into science. And so it's really great to be in a place where it already feels super inclusive. We already feel like we have lots of women in science, but we have this sort of community that is really focused on our trainees and getting them into the scientific community. And so I like that a lot and I think that's going to be great for graduate students and postdocs in the future. And I can only imagine it gets better.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (22:28):

One of the things I've always loved about Wistar is how much of what I call the training circle is in each lab, the training circle, meaning high school students, undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, staff scientists, everyone becomes part of the family. And the little high school student is your younger brother and sister that you're guiding to become enthused. And I feel like we do that better than any place that I've ever been, have the entirety of the training circle and actually even value everyone in the training circle for what they bring to the table. So what, if anything, Tyler has surprised you about working at Wistar?

Tyler Yang (23:08):

So when I joined the Wistar Institute, I didn't know what institute implied. I thought I was going to just be working at the Claiborne lab. But in reality, I'm working at the Claiborne Lab at the Wistar Institute and it is really a conglomerate of a bunch of PIs and they're not just in their little bubbles. There's just constantly collaborations and scientists that I'm able to meet and personally know. And not even just that, but these become friends off the clock and people that I stumble into in West Philadelphia. And that is the most pleasant surprise that I've ever gotten out of a job. It's that I get to take some of these connections home with me and it me feel really good about balancing my life and my work together.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (23:48):

And just to clarify for the audience, PI is what we use for principal investigator, it's the leader of a lab, not private investigator, which is entirely different. So Ebony, how about you? What if anything, has pleasantly surprised you about Wistar?

Dr. Ebony Gary (24:03):

I think I would probably echo Tyler about how collaborative it is. When I was looking for postdocs, my Ph.D. advisor had done her postdoc in the Weiner lab and I thought of the Weiner lab as this place where they publish lots of high impact papers and you're going to do all this sort of very aggressive focusing on your science. And actually we spend a lot of time in group lab meetings with other labs and talking to other scientists about their work and trying to figure out ways where we can help them in the model systems that we have or we can apply something that we know about immunology to a model system that they have. And it was pleasantly surprising to me that I would spend just as much time thinking about monoclonal antibodies for cancer as I do thinking about vaccines for HIV.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (24:47):

Wonderful. Tyler, what does success look like for you five years from now?

Tyler Yang (24:53):

A flawless and stunning thesis. (laughs)

Dr. Maureen Murphy (24:56):

No question.

Tyler Yang (24:57):

But yeah, no, it's very exciting. I mean the whole span of this program will probably work into around five years and I don't know where it's going to go. I still have to even set up all my rotations and I think that's going to drastically shift the vision of the science that I currently want to do and I think that's really exciting. I am just excited to see what that takes me to.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (25:19):

Where do you see yourself in 10 years - dream career?

Tyler Yang (25:23):

I think that the path towards principal investigator is something that really, really appeals to me and I don't imagine that that would immediately happen within 10 years, but I'd really like to be working towards that. I think that I've kind of mentioned how I see the opportunities for training and just the ability to organize and set up your own experiments as something that's really important to me. And I think that the agency that you get as a principal investigator would be something really nice to have in a very long-term sense.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (25:53):

I agree. I tell everyone it's the best career in the world, not just because you get paid to do what you love, that's a wonderful thing, but you get to help other people all the time. You get to bring people in your lab who know nothing and train them and to get jobs elsewhere. So it's definitely a really amazing career choice. How about you, Ebony? What does success look like for you? What's the dream job two years from now?

Dr. Ebony Gary (26:19):

Two years from now? Oh, no pressure. I think, so I'm right at the transition stage of my postdoc career and I am leaning towards academic science, so probably a PI like Tyler was mentioning, but I'm not married to academic science. I think I could be happy in industry. I think what I would be happy doing is heading a research program that I think even 10 years out has a dramatic impact on how we deliver vaccines, how we think about vaccinating people. And I don't think that it matters to me if I do that in academia or in industry. I will agree that there's a freedom in academic science that I really like. There's the one-on-one mentorship that I think you might lose a little bit of in industry. And so I think perhaps maybe my dream job is being a pi. And unlike most trainees at my station, I kind of really like writing grants. I really like seeing my science on paper and thinking about it. And that is apparently a skill, so I should lean into it.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (27:23):

Well, having read some of your writing, I can tell you you're a very good writer and you're going to succeed. Tyler, do you have a favorite motivational quote?

Tyler Yang (27:33):

I've been thinking about this thing that my friend told me. I didn't know that he said this, but Bruce Lee said, "Do not pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a difficult one." And if I could get a little mystical, it's like I've only been given one life, I'm only going to have one life to do what I want with it. And I think that taking on the paths that are more challenging and I'm able to work and I'm able to play and I'm able to be a little bit more greedy with my life, I can make the most out of everything. So I am very excited to take the more difficult path. If it means that I can check off all these boxes and be a little bit greedy with it.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (28:09):

The junior faculty, I tell them, whatever you do, throw your entire soul at it and you will not regret it. On that note, Dr. Gary, do you have a favorite motivational quote?

Dr. Ebony Gary (28:21):

I do. I've decided it's motivational. I don't know if it was intended to be motivational in the first Jurassic Park movie, Ian Malcolm says, "Life finds a way." It's like a famous quote and it works for biology because we're biologists. But I also feel like we were talking about that challenging problem sometimes the best way to figure out that solution is to stop thinking about that solution. It either will work itself out or it won't, and you'll know that that wasn't the thing to do. But I try and be a little bit more relaxed, which is hard for scientists, I think. But yeah, I think that's my favorite quote.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (28:56):

There's something to be said for knowing that the universe has got a plan and is going to get there, especially in today's trying times, it's really nice to know that Tyler, a person you admire, who inspires you.

Tyler Yang (29:11):

This might be a little bit of a cop-out. I've been thinking a lot about the graduate students and also every person in my lab. I spend a lot of hours in this lab and I've seen them at their worst and at their best, and I've seen them very exhausted and I'm always amazed by their ability to stay positive and have a sense of humor about things and have the extra time to spare just to give me the time of day or give me some advice. And sometimes I look at that and I think to myself, I still have a lot of growing to do if I have to be this superhuman capacity sort of person.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (29:45):

But maybe knowing that everybody's in your corner, both everyone in your lab and everyone at Wistar can give you the power to know that you can do it.

Dr. Ebony Gary (29:54):

Absolutely.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (29:55):

Ebony, a person you admire, who inspires you?

Dr. Ebony Gary (29:58):

I guess I'd have to start with my mom. She's a single mom and is a mom of adoptive parents. I have siblings much younger than me, and so it's inspiring to see her do all of the things that you want your children, give them the life you want them to have solo. So I think that that's very cool. She's great at juggling and multitasking, so I hope I've inherited those skills in science. It's just a lot of senior PIs that I'm always amazed at. Even when you think of famous PIs, right? Their trainees see them weekly. They spend all this time with them, they're in lab with them. And during my Ph.D., the student who trained me was leaving and I ended up being the only graduate student in our lab for a while and my Ph.D. advisor was in the animal facility immunizing mice with me, right? That's not a thing that you think, but PIs do do that. And so that's always really inspiring to think that one day we'll be able to do that. Tell me more about family structure. Are you the eldest? I am the oldest. My little brother is 18 as of last year, and my little sister is 16.

Dr. Maureen Murphy (31:03):

Alright, so you're their role model. In addition to being, you are the role model for every postdoc here. We all point to you as our success. Thank you. Wonderful.

(31:16):

That was my interview with postdoctoral fellow Ebony Gary and research assistant Tyler Yang at the Wistar Institute.

(31:23):

This show is produced by The Wistar Institute in partnership with Rowhome Productions. Our executive producer is Michele Schiavoni and Rowhome Production's executive producers are Alex Lewis and John Myers. This episode features music from Blue Dot Sessions. The show is produced by Justin Berger. For more information about the Wistar Institute, visit us at wistar.org and make sure to subscribe to Wistar Science Up Close on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Dr. Maureen Murphy and thanks so much for tuning in.