Transcriber: Take A Mile Reviewer: Sofia Zaleeva
Well, I'm hoping that everybody is still awake and excited and engaged
with all these amazing speakers.
My name is obviously Crystal, as you can see from the slide,
I'm a PhD candidate in Chemistry here at Caltech,
and I study molecular neuroscience.
Tonight, I just want to tell you a story about who does science.
We know what scientists do. Right?
They ask questions and use the scientific method.
And in answering these questions, they create new knowledge.
But who does science?
We know what they look like, right? They look like this, as Alex told you.
They also look like this... (Cheers)
...and like this. Right? Scientists! For sure.
But what about her?
Is she a scientist? Could she be a scientist?
This is Mayim Bialik.
She is an actress and an author, among other things,
and plays a neuroscientist on TV.
When she does, her character, Amy Farrah Fowler, looks like this.
She's also portrayed as dumpy, unsophisticated, and narrowly focused.
The funny thing about all of this is
the actress, Mayim, herself has a PhD in Neuroscience from UCLA.
So why wouldn't we believe her as a neuroscientist
if she played herself on TV?
I wanted to be a ballet dancer, and I'm a neuroscientist.
I don't act nor look like Amy Farrah Fowler,
nor is my path — my PhD —
the same as Mayim Bialik's or Adriana's,
or any other of the scientists that you saw here.
Like I said, I wanted to be a ballet dancer.
We think we know how people become scientists, right?
They're obviously born smart.
They went through gifted programs in school.
They took AP classes. They got incredible grades.
And they go to institutions like Harvard and MIT and Caltech.
Maybe they chose an advanced degree, like a Master's or a PhD,
so they can be certified Smart.
I was homeschooled.
I didn't set a foot in a classroom until I went to junior college,
and even then I didn't want to be an academic.
I had a vague idea that I like studying the brain,
but I told you: I thought I was going to be a dancer.
But I took my parents' advice and I went to UCSD for undergrad
so I would have "something to fall back on".
And I studied Biochemistry, which, I guess, was kind of interesting.
But it wasn't until my senior year,
and my internship with the Scripps Research Institute,
that I actually started to understand what it meant to be a scientist.
The Schultz lab that I worked in was creative and collaborative,
and I finally had the experience of doing experiments to answer a question
that nobody in the world knew the answer to.
And in that moment, when your experiments work,
maybe accidentally,
and you know something that nobody else in the entire world knows —
a tiny bit of knowledge —
before you tell everyone you know, you think, "Science is pretty cool."
But I am really stubborn,
so I did what everyone with a new Bachelor's degree in Biochemistry does:
I moved to New York City to be a dancer.
(Laughter)
And while I was there, something really funny happened.
I started skipping my ballet class to take the subway
uptown to Columbia University
to go to the chemistry department seminars.
I was skipping ballet
to listen to people talk about science.
I remember the moment on the train when I thought,
"Maybe I should pay attention to this change in priorities."
So I applied for graduate school,
and now I work here, at Caltech.
And I work for this guy. I take pictures that look like this.
And I study the molecular basis of nicotine addiction.
And I am a scientist.
But I am more than that.
I've continued to dance professionally,
I am active in Community Theater,
and I took a chance and auditioned for this crazy movie
that we made about graduate school, and I'm in it.
So what I want you to take away, not just from my talk,
but all the talks that you've heard from all of the scientists today,
is that scientists are as diverse and as multifaceted
as the subjects that they study and the questions that they ask.
We all took many different paths to getting here,
and there's more to us than the geeks and the nerds
that you see us portrayed as in the media.
With that, I'll say, "Thank you very much for your attention,
and may the force be with you."
(Applause)