Well, I loved science from a young age. So when I was in
fourth grade my mother took me to a summer camp where she was,
as a first grade teacher, teaching science to kids.
My first scientific experiment was to take an earthworm and
actually segment it, and to look at each of the different parts
of the earthworm. And so I think that's my first memory of really
loving science. And from then that was always in the back of
my mind, to really pursue this area of interest.
Really two people. Nina Schwartz and Kelly Mayo. These were my
mentors in graduate school. And I think for many of us in
science, in order to persist over a long career, you have to
have really that early spark. And for me that came from these
two mentors who are here at Northwestern. Nina Schwartz
is a reproductive scientist who is a giant in our field,
discovered many peptide hormones. And Kelly Mayo is a
great molecular scientist, a great molecular biologist. And
he was always taking the next step in technology development.
And that's one of the things that I've taken with me as I've
moved forward in my field as well.
The best piece of advice I got was from Nina Schwartz. And she
said just to always work hard. You know, to be really
resilient, to keep going after your dreams. And you know, not
to let anything get in your way. And so that's served me very
well over my career.
I love working with the people in the lab. I think one of the
great things that we have in common as scientists is that
we're very curious about the world around us. And we have
kind of an intellectual restlessness. And so working
with people in the lab who are always bringing new ideas is
really something that inspires me.
I think you have to be really interested in the problem you're
trying to solve. There are many things- as scientists we're
curious about the world around us. We can get interested in a
lot of things. But to be really successful, I think you have to
be dedicated to a particular problem, and become an expert in
that particular area.
The research I do is to look at fertility management for young
cancer patients. So societally, what we're trying to ensure is
that young people who have a cancer diagnosis, and they're
going to be sterilized by that treatment, or would have been
sterilized by that treatment, have options to protect their
fertility for a later family that they might want to build.
We think this is really important as more and more
cancer patients are surviving their disease. Yet for many
years no one was thinking about the fertility equation. So on a
very broad level, I think this is one of the most important
things we've contributed.
So in my office I have a first edition of a book written by
Rainier de Graaf. And de Graaf was the first one to identify
the follicle. And the large follicle in a human includes an
egg that's ready to be released, and could be fertilized. And the
remaining cells are those that produce the hormones for a
normal menstrual cycle. And for hundreds of years, we didn't
know what the basis was of reproduction until de Graaf
started cutting open the ovary. And he identified this
beautiful structure within the tissue. And he called it the
Graafian Follicle, after him. And so when I got my endowed
chair, one of my friends from Paris flew in for that event,
and she brought me this first edition book that has his
original drawings. So if I had to leave the office quickly, I
would take that with me. And secondly, I would take a
baseball signed by Don Kessinger, the third baseman for
the Chicago Cubs in the mid-seventies, which is my
favorite material possession.
Well, in my lab we actually have a lab anthem, and the lab anthem
is Thomas Dolby, She Blinded Me With Science. In the car I
listen a lot to Yo Yo Ma. So I was a cellist growing up, and
that was one of my earliest influences.
In order to transform science, I think we have to do a couple of
things. One is, you have to have a really important problem you
need to solve. In reproductive biology there is a central
mystery that underlies all of reproductive science, that we
really don't understand. And that is how individual
follicles are selected to begin the process
leading to ovulation. Women are born with about a million
follicles in our ovaries. And from that million-follicle pool
are selected individual follicles from the time of
puberty to the time of menopause. And what we don't
understand is how those pools are restrained over four or
five decades of time. And understanding that process
is really going to inform all of how science works. I'm convinced
those are novel mechanisms that we really need to understand.
And so in order to solve all of these problems, I think we need
the next generation of innovators to become scientists.
And over the last several years, a lot of students who really
could go into science, haven't. And so we need to increase the
pipeline of scientists who are being trained.