In seventh grade I looked through a microscope for the first time and I saw
a Paramecium swimming around and I was just fascinated I never wanted to move
from a microscope again that was where I wanted to spend my life I'm Jo
Handelsman I'm a microbiologist it was just like that look huh how does that
fit together and it was clearly girl science girls can't do that when you ask
kids to draw scientists most will draw the same image white bald guy with a
pointy beard little glasses and a white lab coat and then when I was in 10th
grade I had a biology teacher mr. post Leone and he convinced me that I could
do science as a girl and finally when I got to graduate school I started seeing
role models in science women who had done what I wanted to do they'd become
biologists professors they did research and realized those two things can go
together you can be female and you can be a science professor you don't have to
look like those guys
microbiome is a community of microorganisms associated with some
environment from the ocean to the soil to the human gut and it's rapidly
evolving science we are beginning to understand the roles that they play in
regulating our own health and our immune systems much of chronic disease is now
being associated with changes in our microbiomes obesity heart disease asthma
the list is very extensive if we can control those microbial communities we
can take enormous advantage of them I
was one of the science advisors for President Obama during the last three
years of his administration welcome to the White House Science Fair he is a
wonderful fan of science this stuff's really cool it was the high point of his
day having a discussion about initiatives to change American science
precision medicine is a science trying to figure out what's different between
individual people that makes one person respond to a treatment and another
person not
President Obama was personally committed to it tonight I'm launching a new
precision medicine initiative he was very excited about making this front and
center of the future of American medicine the right treatment at the
right time a bill was passed that had about four point eight billion dollars
would you do this I think it's one of our most successful initiatives from my
time at the White House
I was in the habit of giving President Obama stuff microbes and these were
little miniature microorganisms that represented in real microbes the very
first one I gave him was of a streptococcus flesh-eating bacteria one
of the scientists was just totally baffled what are you gonna do with it
little coy it was quite an experience to work with him at one of the world's
problems was that antibiotics that we have no longer worked with many of our
diseases but industry has kind of lost interest we're trying to rebuild that
interest soil bacteria are these prolific producers of antibiotic
activity about 75% of the antibiotics in current use are from soil bacteria
and there's some pretty good evidence that bacteria are producing antibiotics
for sending messages to each other and so we are just co-opting something that
the bacteria are making to use as drugs for our own purposes
small world is something that I started in 2012 to teach science through solving
the worlds of problems with young bright scientists in the classroom they would
learn about science through culturing bacteria from soil for production of
antibiotics it's been a really extraordinary process to see all of the
students and their instructors passionate about antibiotic discovery
from soil
above all failure is okay there are messages that are sent in science about
failure that just shouldn't be sent failure is a part of science it doesn't
mean you're not good at it it doesn't mean to stop it just means to go back
and do it again I so often hear students say oh I'm not a science person I always
thought I was just sort of unfit for science and I never knew why and I'm
sure part of it was just not seeing people who looked like me in science
we all bring these stereotypes and prejudices to our decisions about people
and it also means that we can all undo that
the future of science is so much brighter and stronger because there are
more women and minorities and people with lots of different backgrounds but
it could be even stronger