Transcript
Science summer: The MBL course 'Physio'
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Daria Ivanova
It was really, the experience I would count in like three top of the best summers of my life.

Vivien
That's Dr Daria Ivanova, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Geneva, talking about her summer. One of the three best summers of her life. Okay, that sounds pretty great, right? Hi and welcome to Conversations with scientists. I am science journalist Vivien Marx. I have not produced a podcast in a long while. I had health reasons, mainly and unfortunately, but I'm back and happy to be back.

This episode is about summer and how some scientists spend their summer. Here's another sneak peek. This is University of California San Francisco staff scientist Dr. Sam Lord, who is a course manager.
I think people come back with a more collaborative and collegial outlook on science.

These are courses that can change you just briefly, though, before we get to those courses about these podcasts and thank you for tuning in when I do stories, a lot falls on the proverbial cutting room floor, and these podcasts are a way to share more of what I find out and hear this podcast is about summer courses. Yes, I know summer is for chilling and snoozing in the shade, taking a swim, maybe having a chat on the beach at sunset and into the night.

For many scientists, this kind of Summer Chill Out is not easy to come by, but there is a way to combine chilling and sciencing. Well, true, what people will be talking about in this podcast is probably more sciencing than chilling, but they still manage to combine the two a little.

And just in case, you are not yet a scientist and maybe have never touched a microscope because you are more of a theory person, these courses can be for you too, and if you are not at all a scientist, that's totally fine. Please come along and hear how some researchers spend their summer. I did a story for Nature Methods and a blog post about summer courses.
Story: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-025-02739-7
Blog post : https://communities.springernature.com/posts/when-summertime-courses-transform-a-science-journey

One of them is the course physiology at the Marine Biological Laboratory MBL in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, which is part of the University of Chicago, and the other is a course at Cold Spring Harbor Asia, and it's called advanced technologies for 3d Genome Research, and it's in Suzhou, China.

There's a link in the show notes to the story and the blog post about these courses. People told me so much about what they experienced in these courses as participants, as teaching, associates, instructors and organizers. In this podcast, I want to share more of what I heard about the MBL summer course, Physiology is the shorthand. The full name is physiology, modern cell biology using microscopic, biochemical and computational approaches. There are lectures, there's time in the lab, but in many ways, it's not exactly a typical course.

This podcast talks about the course some practical things, what it's like when you are there, and what it feels like afterwards, what it teaches you about yourself and about working in a community. Please come along for some summer sciencing, you will meet a few people you've heard from already. Dr Daria Ivanova, who just completed her PhD at the University of Geneva, and she is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Geneva. Dr Sam Lord is also in this podcast. He's a staff scientist at the University of California San Francisco. He's in the lab of Dr Dyche Mullins, and you will meet Dr Will Ratcliff, a principal investigator at Georgia Institute of Technology in 2023 Daria Ivanova took the physiology course, and the course organizers were Dr Nicole King from the University of California Berkeley, and Dr Daniel Fletcher, also from UC Berkeley. And when I spoke with Daria, she was just about to defend her PhD, it's too early.

Vivien [4:00]
Congratulations, though, anyway, for what's about to happen.

Daria Ivanova
Thank you.

Vivien
Take me back to 2023. What was that, course like, I mean, and why did you decide to do it. Like, I mean, that's a seven, seven weeks, six weeks.
Yeah, it was like, what was it? Two months?

Daria Ivanova
I think, yeah, almost two months. Wow, okay, and you were in Geneva also, or were you also...?
Yeah, yeah, I was in Geneva at this point. And actually, my boss has encouraged me to apply, yeah, because we have, well, you know, the physiology course is really meant to for you to become independent in the way you think about science. And we already had one lab member who went few years back.

Vivien
Oh, I see that. How cool. I've been hearing that a lot, that it really depends on your PI, but also people being supportive, because two months, that's a lot of time, well, they're like, shouldn't you be at the bench?

Daria Ivanova
Yeah, for sure, yeah. But I mean, I was lucky. My PI is very understanding. Also, like, he would like us to be, you know, to continue science.

Vivien
And so who is this again? Just, is your PI on your page? Yes?

Daria Ivanova
Patrick Meraldi, yeah.

Vivien
Okay. Ah, nice. I see. So there was support. Still. You decided you wanted to kind of take your project and put it on ice or in the freezer or wherever, for a moment. And do this that takes a lot of courage so…

Daria Ivanova
Well, you know, my project was, actually still is going very well, and I was in a very good track. I'm actually was collaborating very closely with another PhD student, so I didn't really have to put completely everything apart, but she was able to take a bit care of the project. And then when I came back, she went for an exchange program, so we, like a bit coordinated, and it was okay.

Vivien
That's nice, I see. And so were there others from outside the US in the course, or was it International? Or were you the only person from outside the US?

Daria Ivanova
So, yes, it was International. It was we had few. So I think maybe two people that was, there was for sure, one person from Japan, maybe two people from UK. Well, yeah, someone from China, one person. But actually, when I came back and I was telling about the course, then my PI said that actually it used to be much more international. So when this other PhD person went in 2018 maybe he said that there was like 10 other people from Europe.

Vivien
Wow that's a real change. I mean, it's expensive, but it's also time. Did you have a you had a fellowship later, but did you have a fellowship for this too? Or how were you paid? I mean, and somebody had to pay the course fee, of course, and the flight and all that.

Daria Ivanova
So first, the first, of course, I was able. So there was, like, partial scholarship from MBL, actually, even two, I believe. So my course fee was reduced, like, to 3000 euros, maybe. And then my, well, I applied for two other scholarships, but so one, my boss actually got it because he applied for something else, and I so I didn't get it the same lab, and the other one I didn't got, so he paid for it.

Vivien
Oh, that's so great. Yeah, okay, so, so what was it like? I mean, obviously, it's very intense. I mean, it's like, morning to night, it's lectures, but it's also time in the lab, what, you know, and there's freedom, but it's also, like, very intense. So what was it like for you?

Daria Ivanova
It was the last year of Nicole King and Dan Fletcher. It was really , the experience, I would count it in like three top of the best summers of my life.

Vivien
Wow. Summer is supposed to be beach and sunshine. No, I'm kidding, no,

Daria Ivanova
But really it was great. It's I spent, you know, so much time really thinking about fundamental things in life, and, you know, being able to tackle them in a very simple way, or also having other people thinking about it too, is really very inspiring. And it's like, also like, having this community, which actually is really supportive, is not something I mean, despite the my lab being a very good lab, I've never really experienced it in this way, right?

Vivien
And I mean, it's a lot of people, you know, talking science in the in the hallways and next door, there's another course going on, right? So it's like,

Daria Ivanova
Yeah, yeah. And also, like, just this feeling of being able to do what you are interested in and what you want, just you know, for a few weeks, because you know not, not to be working on your own project, but just to think outside of all those things you're doing, and then, you know, do something completely different, it's really nice.

Vivien
And did you feel like you learned something that you didn't like you could try something that you didn't normally try? I know they have a lot of fancy microscopes there, and there's probably also other things.

Daria Ivanova
Yeah, yeah. I think the biggest thing I learned is really like to be very it gave me a lot of courage. So, like before, I used to, you know, before I do something, I would search the protocols, and then I would talk to people. And maybe I would prefer that people actually. Actually teach me how to do things. But like when I came there is, you know, you also don't really have so much people around who can teach you, you know, so you have to really learn by yourself. And it's, yeah, it's really this, you know, feeling that, you know, there's also this microscope, you know, a bunch of, like, different microscopes, which you can try, but also which are all really, really expensive. And I used to be really frightened by it here the university, like, you know. I mean, when something costs $1 million for example, it's not something you want to break.

Vivien
No. And then, of course, you have a limited time there, right? And the core facility is a big place, and they're looking at their watch a little bit, and it's not the same kind of environment as where they say, oh, go sit over there.

Daria Ivanova
Right, right, for sure. Yeah. And, but, you know, I found that, you know, I could try any, I could try things. And it was, you know, I didn't really feel like I could break anything. I mean, I could break, probably things, but it was not really, I mean, I could always ask for help, and, yeah, I just really learned a lot of things very fast, just like trying things.

This was something which I learned. Then, in terms of science, of course, I learned a lot of things in lectures. This was also it helped me a lot here, because I noticed it when I came back, I started to ask myself much more fundamental questions. Because, you know, like before I would ask, maybe, if I would go to seminar, I would ask things like, oh, you know, how did you do this technique, or something like this. But now my question really goes, usually beyond the techniques, but really goes to maybe more evolutionary points.

Vivien
It sounds like the course really changed her approach to science, and I had heard this from other course participants too. It certainly seems like a powerful summer. I asked a bit about how the course unfolded, which was organized by Nicole King and Dan Fletcher, and had many different lecturers.

Daria Ivanova [12:05]
Yeah, there was like every day. So we had six days a week, a lecture in the morning, from 9am yeah. And so every day there was a new lecture. They usually would invite really, really interesting people, and it was really all over places, evolutionary biologists, it would be biophysics. I mean, everything whom they I don't know how they invite people, but I guess people they knew would do good science or, I mean, they would invite them. And this was well, you know, and also the fact that we were there alone, just us and the lecture, you know, gave me the possibility just to ask all the time. We would ask all the time, every time there was like, 10 questions after the lecture.

Vivien
It was encouraged right? It's not just like your lecture, where you're like, supposed to sit and take notes or just listen.

Daria Ivanova
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, you you ask questions. You even ask questions during the talk. And like, then we had the, really a chat only with a like us and the lecture, because so the lectures itself are usually were open to other people. Not so many people would come. But still and but after that, we had, like, really, a coffee session with, with a speaker, and there you could ask, like, anything you want, like, also about career or, you know, personal things.

Vivien
Nice so you, I mean, you're learning about what it could be like to be an academic, have a lab, but maybe also, as you mentioned, you know, do the post-course research, wow, I see. I mean, it sounds like a really creative time, intense time. Did you also have time to do things like, have a glass of wine, go for a swim or no?

Daria Ivanova
Totally. Yeah, we went. It was really, as I told you, it was a really great community. So in the evening, at 10, we had the beer session. And it we had really, like, a beer. And sometimes you had the car, okay, you know, it's was a lot of fun. Sometimes people will still go to the lab after the beer session. Like, I know that some people stayed, like, in the lab, sometimes until morning. I'm not this kind of person. I have to sleep.

Vivien
Yeah, sleeping is good. But I guess, because it's open, you could, you know, go and do something, or maybe, you know, passage cells or whatever you need to do. So are you still in touch with your I guess you could say, is there like an alumni group, or is it like a, maybe something loose-knit, that you may be people you see or talk to?

Daria Ivanova
So, I mean, most of people were in US, so I was not, I mean, I didn't see them after I have met the person in Japan, because I went to Japan last year. Actually, I met him, yeah, and I met also Amy. Just out weeks ago. She came to Switzerland to give a lecture. So we had a little chat also.

Vivein
The Amy she mentions is Dr Amy Gladfelter from Duke University, who is the current physiology course co-organizer at the MBL after the course participants can sometimes get the option to spend time in a lab of one of the course instructors. And Daria Ivanova wanted to do that specifically she wanted to go to the lab of Dr Wallace Marshall from UCSF, but the visa didn't work out for that. She also wanted to do her postdoctoral fellowship in the US, but that didn't work out either. In Woods Hole she got to know a different side of science that really appeals to her.

Daria Ivanova [15:40]
Yeah, I would have done the post doc in the US. I really like the way science and us is made. It's really, I mean, yes, okay, maybe MBL is also very like completely different place and the very like special place. But also feel like people at the MBL, they come from different institutions, and really the way they do science, but also the way they have the open mindedness about science is really special. And, yeah, I wanted to do postdoc in US. Yeah.

Vivien
The post-course research thing is basically not a postdoc, but it's like a phase, maybe three months or six months somewhere, which a lot of people do, and you tried to do that, right?

Daria Ivanova
So actually we it's because we started the project. So in one of the rotations with Wallace, and we discovered something really cool. So his PhD student wanted to continue working on it, and I really wanted to be part of the story. So, yeah, I first presented it actually they, I was Nicole as they select me to present my work for this symposiums I make every year at Woods in Woods Hole. It's called Shinya Inu imaging symposium conference. So yeah, and then I went, when I finished the course, I wrote to Wallace saying I would really like to come. I would like to apply for the for the money from the MBL to come. And he was really glad, because the project, they continued the project and will happen and well, it went really nowhere. I tried everything

Vivien
She truly wanted to experience working in the US as a post doctoral fellow. And I should say, Daria Ivanova is Russian, and living with her family in Switzerland.

Daria Ivanova
So I'm from Volgograd, you know, on the south border with Kazakhstan, really south.

Vivien
In an academic trajectory, it's viewed positively to go elsewhere for a post doctoral fellowship after your PhD.

Daria Ivanova [18:00]
If you want to become professor, you really have to have postdoc mobility, additional point points. And basically, if I would stay in Switzerland, there will be no mobility. So there's not even point of trying in academia, honestly, because, because then it's really easier to go in the company.

Vivien
That's hard. I mean, you know what company R&D is like, right? And you know probably where to look. But you know that, of course, it would be nice if you had an opportunity to to go elsewhere,

Daria Ivanova
Yeah, of course, yeah. But yeah. I mean, I guess sometimes I think that, like, you know, really, academia sometimes is something for for people who have a stronger passport.

Vivien
Ooh, a stronger passport. Hearing that made me pretty sad. I do hope that the world of science can be a global place of exchange and growth, which is not easy to say right now, Daria Ivanova had a dream that she could not fulfill.

Daria Ivanova
I really wanted to do the postdoc in us, and it was really my dream when I also came and also when I went to the physiology course, it was really like, I saw how the science is made. And I really wanted to do this, and I can't find it like really anywhere else I've been also to Germany and to France before, and it's not really the same thing.

Vivien
It would be great if an opportunity comes through for her. National borders shouldn't really present barriers in science, but they do. The combination of her dream and her experience with the summer course are perhaps both why she cherishes the course experience so much.

Daria Ivanova [19:40]
It's a very special place, yeah, and it's, you know, I so, I think it was something which is, really was one of in a lifetime opportunity, and I'm so happy I took it. It's, it's really beyond my words, really to say how much I'm thankful. For them to accept me, because, honestly, I didn't even think they would.

Vivien
Did you also work with Will Ratcliff by any chance?

Daria Ivanova
Yeah, yeah.

Vivien
Ah, okay, because I interviewed him too.

Daria Ivanova
He's so nice. He's really cool, and I love really this evolutionary aspect of his work. It really made me very interested in evolutionary studies. I've never thought before that I would be interested in evolution so much.

Vivien
You will hear about Will Radcliff in a bit. Next is Dr Sam Lord during the year. He is a staff scientist and microscope specialist in the lab of Dyche Mullins at UCSF. He was a teaching associate in the physio course in 2018 and 2021 when Dr Mullins taught the course and then Sam Lord became the course manager.

Sam Lord
This is Sam.

Vivien
Hi, Sam, this is Vivien. Strike the iron while it's hot. Is that ok?

Sam Lord
Yeah, sure. Hi.

Vivien
From my teeny experience in a course I audited for one summer at the MBL, and I hopped around in other courses and labs too. My observation was that being a teaching associate is a long day, and I just wanted to say, I apologize for the sound quality I caught Sam Lord on his cell phone, and I didn't want to miss the opportunity to chat with him.

Sam Lord
Yeah, no, it's ton of work. And, you know, I've had people say at the end, why do I do this? But I don't know why I did it the first time. But my professor was like, you know, he took the course, and

Vivien
I see, and this is so in 2018 were you also in? Who were you then? Just say,

Sam Lord [21:15]
At that time, well, I'm still now I'm the microscope specialist in the lab, right? So I did a postdoc, my post postdoc. But he, yeah, so he invited me to ta with a few other grads, another grad student and a postdoc from the lab.
okay?

Vivien
And just because you know simpleton here, can I call you a staff scientist? Is that okay?

Sam Lord
Sure, that's fine.

Vivien
Awesome

Sam Lord
So I work for Dyche Mullins. He took the course when he was between graduate school and postdoc, and it like changed his sort of career.

Vivien
Really, huh.

Sam Lord
Yeah, well, he was like an engineer, and took the course and ended up doing a postdoc for one of the professors that he had worked with in the course. That happens to a lot of people.

Vivien
Huh, I mean, that's a big switch, right? When you kind of think, yeah, Huh, interesting. I mean, I've heard that before, but it's always cool when that happens. I mean, it's unsettling, I guess, in that moment where you're like, Wait, I thought I was going to do B, I don't know, x.

Sam Lord
And then directors, usually, at least these current directors, the previous directors that I worked with, they were usually, they tried to find, like, a diversity of people that are coming. So not only people that have a lot of experience in cell biology or at the bench top with microscopy, but some people have never touched a pipette, or theorists, you know, people that are don't know anything about biology, to help them sort of bridge from grad school to postdoc.

Vivien
But that means that you have a wide as a TA, you have some people who are like, 'this isn't, I don't know, the microscope isn't set up, right, or some parameter that I usually use isn't set up.' And then there are other people who are like, Okay, where's the on button?

Sam Lord
Exactly.

Vivien
Good for you.

Sam Lord
Yeah. So it's pretty exciting to get people, and by the end of the two weeks, they're like, you know, doing the experiment, and super excited about a new skill that they never had.

Vivien

If you are thinking about acquiring a skill you didn't have, or if you are thinking about applying more generally, you should. It's definitely competitive. And it's true that it is seven weeks, which is a long time. And days, well, they can last from eight to midnight.

Vivien
Eight to midnight, okay, fine.

Sam Lord
Yeah, yeah. TAs work a lot. Yeah, eight to midnight, that's right, and the students work even harder. The TAs also have to prepare for weeks or months ahead of time, right? To bring a project that's going to work, have all the materials like express proteins that they need, so you have a tone of work. And so I think that is part of, you know, that's probably one reason why there's a lot of like, you know, I came from a lab whose professor had experience in the course, took the course and then as a director for the course for five years. That, you know, because then they encourage their people like, I know that.

Sounds crazy, like you're gonna work really hard, but you should do it, and so that's great, and also that the professor's willing to take time out of their summer to go and work and bring people with them. And you know, it's two weeks that it's only two weeks, but it sort of on either end, takes some time, a lot of prep work and oh, why

Vivien
The course is shorter, shorter than the other ones. I didn't realize that because

Sam Lord
There was two week rotation. The whole courses is seven weeks, right? But the professor's only there for two weeks with TAs.

Vivien
Oh, I see.

Sam Lord
And then they rotate out, and there's new ones that come in there. The students are there the whole time.
So you, you're basically there to set up. And then I guess you come back later to,

Sam Lord
Oh I'm there the whole time.

Vivien
Yeah, oh, you're the whole time. Wow. Okay, did you have time go swimming.

Sam Lord
Oh yeah, you go swimming every day, but yeah, everyone has time to do that. We're there a lot but there's breaks.

Vivien
Sam Lord encourages people to apply for the course.

Sam Lord [26.05]
The courses are very well known, and you know, they do get a lot of applications, but they're not like flooded with applications, I think partially because, unless you've had some experience with the course, I think a lot of professors are reluctant to send their grad student away for seven weeks.

Vivien
Oh, right, because that's really an absence that'll be felt in in the home lab, wherever it is, if it's in the US or wherever, it doesn't matter, it's

Sam Lord
Yeah and and often the home lab pays tuition and stuff, so sure, like, you have to be motivated to send your person, your people. So I know, you know, I remember when I was in grad school, I did chemistry, so it wasn't really like in the same realm. But my friend wanted to do the course asked her professor multiple times, and every year he said no.

Vivien
Yeah, so it's about the time, but it also, I guess this is maybe important for me to really highlight, is that it can, I mean, without wanting to sound like New Age or something, but it's like, it does change your outlook, and that you bring stuff back to others and for yourself, right?

Sam Lord
Sounds so motivating. You come back and you're like, I mean, maybe not the first week you come back, but you come back with, like, all these new ideas, all these new techniques, scientific ideas that you had never been exposed to, and you come back and apply them to your work. And a lot of professors come back with, like, Hey, you use that really cool microscope for that really cool cell sorter, or that really cool, you know, cell country, something. Maybe we should write a grant for that. A ton of a ton. It's such concentrated exposure to science and, yeah, so you come back, students always come back with, like, a new lease on life to take their project places where I hadn't gone before. And there's this post course research opportunity that you can apply to, and a handful of students get to, like, continue their project after the summer is over, no time. Throughout the next year, they come, they go to the home lab with one of the professors that I've worked with over the summer, and they finish up a project or continued along.

Vivien
Oh, that is super cool. I did not know that. So that is really, like, I can see how where that energy comes from. I mean, I felt it myself when I was there, but for different reasons, because I'm one of those what's a pipette people. I mean, but what I felt was great was just that people sounded like and I observed this, or at dinner table, they're like, do you want to come watch or doing this thing with sea urchins? And I was like, Sure, it was always interesting.

Sam Lord
Hmm. I think, I think people come back with a more collaborative and collegial outlook on science. So much collaboration during the course. And you see professors coming in at professors and TAs coming with so much. They're giving so much, you know, their time, their their reagents, their expertise.

And you walk away with this idea that, okay, that one, you know, that's what you do in science. You help other people, you get your stuff going, and then you stand other people, and they have new ideas that you had never thought of, because the TA has come come home also saying, like, oh, we had this student who was great.

They had all this experience in like, who knows, whatever you know, like sequencing, and we don't do that. But they decided to sequence our programs, and we hadn't done that before, and it can open up a new project that the TAs have never thought of either.

I think people come home with just a lot of collaborative ideas and and reach out to people that they worked with on the course, but also, just like anytime someone comes up to you and says, hey, I'm interested in your technique, it kind of like sparks a little memory of of that, like with whole experience and you're much, I think people are much more likely to say yes and help out new faculty and stuff.

Vivien
Yeah, that's, I mean, it's not probably, you know, impossible. I mean, I suppose at UCSF, it's maybe even daily, but it's, it is difficult, if you're a graduate student, to just go up to somebody and say, Can I hang out here for a few days? And they'll probably look at you like, right? Yeah, sit in the corner at a camp rise, or, I don't know, whatever I see, huh? Well, that's important. So then it's like, I mean, I'm getting, like, this transformative vibe that is different from, say, you know, just it's exciting to be in grad school and all that, and at an important Institute, but there is kind of a structure that is there, and then in Woods Hole, it's about, you know, I don't having dinner or breakfast or just hanging out and talking and maybe looking at a neighboring lab or something falling into conversation that really then says, Oh, you guys are doing that. Let me Yeah, the course changes you. And that is not just true for participants. It also is true for teaching associates like him. Here's Sam Lord,

Sam Lord [31:40]
From my perspective, as a TA and seeing other TAs. I do think it opens up new avenues I know I know multiple dogs who basically started projects at Woods Hole. They like, come out of the woodwork, and then they continue them for

Vivien
years. Ah, okay. And are you in touch with, I mean, obviously, with people who you know from the course. But are you staying in touch with people that.

Sam Lord
Way, yeah. It's like, yeah. It gives you this little community. You know, you go to a conference and like, you're just like, walking down the hall, and you're constantly, like, waving at people that you took the course with, or TA with, or

Vivien
Nice, nice, nice, nice,

Sam Lord
met at a party. Yeah, there's a lot of and it opens up collaborative ideas

Vivien
One word that kept coming up in interviews about this summer course is the word transformative.

Sam Lord [32.40]
You got the word right, transformative. It really transforms before and after, pushes them on a different path, and career wise too, because, like, they meet all these people, and often they go and do a postdoc, I know as many people, like, just interacting with other people, then they say, Hey, remember I took the course you or I was a TA for so and so you were there. And it just helps people connect

Vivien
right in a way that you can't if you're going to a cell biology meeting or even the more

Sam Lord
that helps too, but it also lets you move out of your field, because, because you go, you're like, Yeah, I was doing, like, cell culture, but you were doing atomic force microscopy, and I learned how to do that cool. Now, I had never thought of that, but now I want to do it that kind of

Vivien
thing. And just briefly, I'd be curious person here, but like so as a chemist, how did you end up in biology kind of but also microscopy?

Sam Lord
I was doing single molecule imaging and microscopy. And we had some collaborations with some cell biology people like image single molecules in cells. And then I did a postdoc where I was kind of imaging cells with collaborating with a biologist, but I realized I want to do more the microscopy side. And I just chatted with dyke, my current pi, and he was looking for someone to help, you know, maintain microscopes. And I was like, Well, I like doing that. That's like, what I like doing day to day.

Vivien
Oh, cool. So you crafted your own kind of a spot based on sort of things you learned and things you had an affinity for,

Sam Lord
huh? Yeah, nice. I slowly moved into this, like biology field.

Vivien
It's always interesting to hear how people transform themselves and their careers. So if you take the course something like that, something transformative might happen to you too.

Vivien
Next you will hear from Dr Will Ratcliff, an evolutionary biologist from Georgia Institute of Technology, who taught in the physiology course for two years at Georgia Tech. He directs the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Quantitative biology, and he studies the evolution of multicellularity. He sent me a cover image from Nature in March of 2025 and it's a striking image. It's a study he did along with colleagues at Georgia Tech and other institutions. Yes, this is a podcast, so you can't see it, but it's beautiful, and you can take a peek because it's in the blog post. I can just say here it's willowy branches of green and yellow. The study is about how whole genomes duplicate themselves for various evolutionary reasons. In the case of yeast, the organisms start out diploid and become tetraploid in his lab, Radcliff runs something called the Multicellularity Long Term Evolution experiment, hello. Um, yes, hi there, Dr Radcliff.

Will Ratcliff [36:00]
Hello. How’s it going.

Vivien M 8:51
I think this is going, wow. How amazing that cover. Gosh, that's pretty cool. It is. I mean, I don't know the paper, unfortunately, because I'm just like a hoppity hop, but I'll look for it for sure. So this is from a past course, I guess, right? But is that led to a paper or, okay, so,

Will Ratcliff
Well, yeah, actually, that interestingly, those that cover was the microscope was, you know, one of the super nice ones they had at the institute. But the paper wasn't actually directly based on something we did during during our time there, I see, but we have, we do have other papers that, like were effectively inspired by our time there. And one of them was just updated this week at Science Advances, and another one in progress.

Vivien
Will Radcliff taught modules in the physiology course for two years, and explains a bit about the menu of ideas he brings to the lab.

Will Ratcliff
Nicole King was the organizer when I went, she's a multicellularity person, I'm a multicellularity person. They made good sense. So I came twice, 2022, and 2023, then Nicole. People turned it over and to Amy and Cliff, and they're doing something pretty different. And so, you know, they didn't have me back, which was both too bad, but also totally cool. You know, everyone wants to have their own sort of prerogative.

Vivien
The Amy and Cliff he mentions, that's Amy Gladfelter at Duke University, and Cliff Brangwyn at Princeton University. They are both the CO leaders of the physio course these days. Will Radcliffe shares a bit about how he prepares the course because there is not a lot of time, and he wants people to have enough time to do some interesting experiments.

Will Ratcliff [37:50]
Well, I came in 2020, in, 2022, and 2023 for a couple weeks per summer. And, you know, you basically, kind of bring ideas for, like, experiments that the students could do that are sort of, like crazy ideas or things that would work really well if they're incredible microscope core, and they have to be, like doable in like a week because, you know, because you're going to do troubleshooting, and you're going to get, you know, like, so they have to be like, but, but the students are willing to work like insane, like, 18 hour days, you know, they're really, really good, and they're really hard working. But you only have two weeks for your module, so, oh,

Vivien
So you have to prepare. I was talking to Sam on about this, like, prepare everything from reagents to tweaking the parameters and settings on microscopes in order for this to be doable, otherwise, people are still futzing with,

Will Ratcliff
Oh, yeah, and you want to give them some scope to, like, define their own ideas, too. So, like, what I typically do is, or what I did the two times I went, I brought, like, a menu of cool ideas, a whole bunch of strains from our so you know what we do is we're evolving in multicellularity, like multicellular life, from from scratch, over really, really long evolutionary timescales in our laboratory at Georgia sites. So we're about 10,000 generations in right now. And yeah, it's and we've been working on this for 50 15 years. And so, you know, I basically have like, a life's mission to, like, push these organisms as far as they can go before I retire or die 20,30, years,

Vivien
And then others can take it out 10,000 generations. My goodness,

Will Ratcliff
Yep, yep, it's really cool. And so, you know, we bring strains from like, across the entire scope of the experiment, right? And we bring strings to all these labels already built in genetic, genetic reporters and stuff. And we have some ideas of, like, I things that would be cool to look at. And we just kind of present these to the students, and then they take in their own direction. You know, I

Vivien
see So, but you have, and I mean, others have mentioned this too. So for I guess some people might be coming, let's say might be only computer people, or physics people or biophysics people. Others might be really advanced in sort of biosciences, but haven't used this particular microscope, so you have to kind of really dance.

Will Ratcliff
Oh yeah, but that's also a lot of the fun, right? Is those you're both you know, like, yes, you don't really know where someone's strengths and where their knowledge gaps are, because you're just getting to meet a group of 10 people. But at the same time, the fun of that, if someone will be like, Hey, you don't be cool, we should try doing this technique. Like, I've never thought of that before. Like, yeah, I've done this before, and it turns out it's awesome, right? That, to me is, like, a lot of the fun is having this collection of brilliant, diverse people that are just like, throwing stuff at the walls and, like, when things stick, it's really exciting, right? Because you wouldn't have tried doing that.

Vivien
Yeah, no. And I'm looking at your site now, wow, biophysical toughness and all this population genomics, my goodness. So you're really also inviting people who might be, let's say they're in a grad program thinking about their postdoc. They might and they might be thinking, wow, I need to switch to something that is more focused on, say, multicellularity, or biophysics of it, or how to measure I don't know. I'm making this up because I don't know enough about your field.

Will Ratcliff
yeah, and I'm very used to this interdisciplinary thing, because I work at the interface of physics and biology, evolutionary biology. I've directed a PhD program that's an Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in, like, quantitative biology. So it's got math, people, physics people, chemists, biologists, all in one program. So to me, that's, like, very comfortable, right? Like, I love that. I love being in those waters.

Vivien M 14:39
Then people have been telling me how they like that experience that might be different from their lab, of like meeting someone who is sort of as a physics thing going on. And I know, and I've been hearing a lot about how great these courses are, but it is also true that there is competition between labs, traditionally, right? And it's not always easy to learn. How to collaborate and share and stuff with people who aren't in your lab. Is there any kind of issue with people who are like, wait, I maybe shouldn't. I don't know, like a, I guess, a culture thing that can come up because they're like, wait, I should really be focused on how I get ahead and be a little egotistical. Or am I just, do you mean in the course? Yeah, in the course, if there's, like, a, you know, it's a different culture, right? So people who are competing with one another in a way, yeah, first to get in, but then, you know, later on, they might be hesitant, or is it, is it just kind of, is the vibe?

Will Ratcliff
vibe is, like, very collaborative, you know, I don't think anybody works independently, right? Everyone works in small teams, right? And that really helps, right? It's not like you have like, three or four people that are independently working on the same question, and, like, one of them could answer it, and that would mean the others don't get to, like, they're working in small groups. They're making really fast progress. They're having a lot of fun, and everyone's doing something different. And like, they get to see what other people are doing. And like, are very supportive and excited by that, you know. Like, there's a lot of like, mutual like, picking up, like, dude, that result is super cool. Hey, have you thought about this? Have you tried this?

Vivien
Nice? Yeah, yeah. So it just engenders that kind of behavior. Instead of, okay, I'm just going to be quiet at my microscope and not say anything, yeah, I've noticed that. And I, as I moved around labs, when I was there, it was kind of like that. I see very cool. And how about like? I know that people have. Some people have told me that, you know, it is expensive, so they need to find funding. And in some cases, you know the former course, TAs, or people who've taken the course are very supportive. But I do think it isn't easy to say you want to go for how long? As a bi How do you feel about that?

Will Ratcliff
I've never been in that position. I've never sent a student. I've only taken people with me. And I don't even know what the cost is, but I would assume it's expensive. So let's say it's $10,000 because I think just based on, like, what I was paying for food and housing, for the TAs that I brought with me, it was like 2000 bucks per person for two weeks for housing and food, and that's not even including registration costs, travel costs,

Vivien
right? No, of course, yeah, no, it's involved. So you add, you add things, and then people, yeah,

Will Ratcliff
so it's going to be a lot of money. And then, of course, you have issues of, like, you know, perceived unfairness within the lab, right? Like, hey, why did so get to do this? I don't get to do it right. Like,

Vivien
or I didn't get to go to cell biology meeting or some Keystone, or Gordon, or, yeah,

Will Ratcliff
yeah. Whereas, you know, like, I try to be fairly even when I'm when people want to go go to summer conferences, it's like, yeah, everybody gets to go to at least one, right? Like, for sure, everyone gets, you know, if you want to do more than one, sure, let's justify it.

Vivien
Will Ratcliff thinks about all of his lab members as he plans letting people go to Courses and conferences. But it still seems rather special to help someone go to a course for seven weeks. You know, you you've experienced it so, you know? So someone who maybe hasn't done or hasn't been to Woods Hole or felt what it's like to be there might have a harder time saying you want to do what for how long?

Will Ratcliff [45:40]
Yeah, you know, what I think is a very common rationale for the students that do go there is like they're in the lab, and that lab is doing, you know, high end cell biology of the kind that Woods holes are really good at, right? They're doing tons of imaging. They're, you know, like they're, they are microscope like masters, and maybe the students coming from a physics background or coming from a genetics background, they don't really have that expertise. And the pi is, like, I want you to go learn these skills and bring them back, all right? Like,

Vivien
Oh, so you're doing something for the lab. Ultimately,

Will Ratcliff
That's common. I think that's really common, right? And I can see that being really, actually quite useful. Like, especially if your lab is changing changing modes, you're going into your area, you don't already have the expertise in house, or you've gone through a bottleneck in funding so that a lot of intellectual knowledge is gone, because those people departed, right? It's like, All right, yeah, go spend your summer at Woods Hole. You're going to come back. You're going to bring all these new techniques. We're going to teach everyone lab how to do it. Yeah, I could justify that for 10,000 Yeah, go for it. That'd be great.

Vivien
yeah, because they see it's one person, but then it multiplies to everyone in the lab, and then it also will enable people even after beyond this person graduating or finishing their postdoc, huh? I see Exactly,

Will Ratcliff
yeah. So I think those are and I did see that. A lot when I was teaching, there was, like, a lot of people were coming in, and they were like, Yeah, you know, I have a physics background, but I'm now. I'm like, in the cellbio lab like, yeah, I see why you're here.

Vivien
Yeah. It's like finding, finding your community. And ultimately, I mean, some people have been so abusive, and I'm like, it totally changed my career outlook and what I wanted to do. So this is really powerful. So I understand this might be hard, but like this summer, so you don't do this. Are you doing something like this or, Oh,

Will Ratcliff
Not hard at all. Not really. I this summer, I'm doing a lot of travel for talks. I've got like, four European trips scheduled for different conferences, and it's pretty crazy, actually. And I'm spending two weeks in California with my family in between, so basically for two months and traveling for all but one or two weeks.

Vivien
But it's not the same, like you're not, it's not like you have people coming along and you are hanging out and maybe tinkering in somebody's lab as a, I don't know, I guess what they call visiting someone? Yeah, no,

Will Ratcliff [48.30]
Not at all. Not at all. In fact, if I was, if I was like, given the opportunity to go back to physio, I would turn down a keynote talk in Paris kind of thing to do that, because it's really, it's it's incredibly valuable. I mean, you've heard the you've heard what the students have said.

But like, from, from a professor perspective, it's both, like, really fun, because you don't really get to roll your sleeves up and get dirty in the lab very often. You know, I'm on my computer all day, every day. I'm managing, I'm writing grants and dealing with MTAs. So, yeah, that's my job. My job is like, make sure everything is running. But I don't really get to be in the trenches on the front lines very often, right? That's usually filtered through a few steps of students that then do a bunch of stuff and come talk to me, and I look at their data, and we discuss their data. They go back to the lab and I stay in my office, you know, like, that's kind of life for most professors. So this is the opposite this. You're in the lab, you're, you're like, dude, let me get on the microscope. Show me how to do this. You're like, I got an idea we should do this. Let me collect data.

Vivien
Aren't you also, like, I don't know. I mean, I this whole setup of thing, and the lasers that don't, aren't constant and all that stuff. I mean, you guys have a lot of, as we say in New York, futzing to do. It's so it's not. It might not. The trenches are not that fun all the time, but I guess it's problem solving, huh? Okay,

Will Ratcliff
It's problem solving. It's also, you know, yes, it's if I had to choose to be in the lab all the time, or in the office all the time. I'd probably choose the office because I get to have a kind of like, the scope of things I work on is so broad, the impact that I can have is so large, because I can leverage my time so efficiently. You know, I get a lot of joy out of that, a lot of satisfaction. But I spent a decade in the lab all the time. And going back to that feels like coming home

Vivien
I see: so Paris, and no, but yes to the lab. Wow, that's yeah, that's a draw,

Will Ratcliff
Yeah. And then, and then secondarily, this would be hard to, like, appreciate till I've actually gone through it. But like, when I'm working on project with students. I think in a certain even though we try not to be we're naturally a little conservative. We work. You know, when a new student joins the lab, we work on ideas that we think are going to work. They're the logical next step, right? Hey, this is an important topic. We have preliminary data. Why don't you do a PhD on it? That'd be really cool. It's gonna work. You're gonna get your PhD. You're gonna get big papers.

Vivien
You're trying to help them not sink their life. You know, 10 years later or seven years later, it's not coming together, and they're freaking out because you

Will Ratcliff [51:00]
can't do that. That's not, that's not like a responsible thing to do, right? You want to give them projects that are very likely to work. Woods, hole is like, very different, right? You are just doing you have one or two weeks to explore and to play, and if it doesn't work, that's fine. If it works, that's great. But the goal is not that it works. The goal is to just try exciting things, and you'd be great if it works. But like, that's their success isn't dependent on whether or not, like, the idea is like a publishable unit at the end of it, it's like we're able to get data, we're able to explore, are we able to test hypotheses, learn, learn new techniques, learn conceptual domains. Research has taken, like, fundamentally exciting new pathways that are, that are now things that we're working on for like, five years. Well, let's see for three for the last three years, a couple of major projects in our lab are things that started at Woods Hole, ideas we kind of had ahead of time but wouldn't have really invested in, and then really congealed at Woods Hole, like, wow, this is exciting, and going to work. That's crazy. That's cool. Let's keep going. And honestly. Of you probably wouldn't have ever done them if not for having those two weeks to, like, try them full, full strength, try them right?

Vivien
And also, you're not alone there or in a core facility, but you're sitting at a scope and you've got, you know, you're three hours booked, but you can't talk to anyone, and you certainly can't feel any excitement around you because you're alone in that room.

Will Ratcliff [52:40]
That's right. That's right. And you know what? Also, the microscope staff are awesome, and on this paper, we just had accepted last week one of their core staff members, Tanner Fadero. I don't know if you met or talked to Tanner, but he's like the core physios, microscopist. He's a co author on the paper, because he, like, had such good ideas for, like, what to do. They were like, You should

Vivien
be Oh, well. So basically, they're there for the summer, or they're they're also staff. They're full time.

Will Ratcliff
He's, uh, only there for the summer. He's only there for the course. I see,

Vivien
wow, I see, so you really have someone that you can constantly ping, but also, who's really interested in what you're doing? So it kind of is like a contagious, I mean, good, contagious, hmm, neat. More

Will Ratcliff
Even than that, like, so, you know, we wanted to image, you know, we work on this multicellular yeast, which, in a in the first physios Summer, summer school, we found, like, wow, they create these, like, they overcome diffusion, like, you know, diffusion limitation by making flows like a sea sponge that, like, suck in from the outside, from the outside.

Vivien
Yeah, I'm watching the video now that you, I mean, you have lovely gifs. Wow. I'm like, this is drawing me in, and I'm not even

Will Ratcliff
That gif was taken, and that's what this paper, that was just accepted last week, is on. And in the second year we came back and we got these beautiful Tanner was like, we need to image these things from the side so you can really see the volcano in action. And really, yeah, it's cool.

Vivien
And sees, oh, because it's not flat, obviously. Ah, okay, yeah, yeah,

Will Ratcliff
The first ones are all looking down at the top. Really, you want to see it from the side. So Tanner was like, Yeah, let's go from the side. Let's buy these, buy these mirrors. And so, you know, you can just buy them from store labs have them shipped here. And so I just bought some with my credit card, and I come back the next day, and Tanner is like, Hey, we got it working, but it wasn't quite the right mirror. So, like, I just bought some more, like, with my own credit card, you know, was like, bullshit, man, you've just earned yourself authorship.

Vivien
And it's also so creative, too, right? Because they're saying, oh, you know, this is the type of mirror that we need, because I could see how it wasn't distorting in some way or something, huh? Exactly.

Will Ratcliff
She came up with core ideas then even was just like, so invested in the project. He was like, you know, spending his own money to make it move along. You know, wouldn't take any any payment back. I was like, Can I reimburse? He's like, totally cool. Just so excited about the science

Vivien
and that, of course, is also good for the students too, who are all of a sudden, really enabled in that, in that moment. If the course sounds like All work and no play, well, that is, as you have heard from others, not completely true. Here's will Radcliffe,

Will Ratcliff
Because all that other stuff really adds to the social bonding dynamic, right? We're going to the beach together, going on hikes or Martha's Vineyard or whatever.

Vivien
I realized well into the conversation, I wasn't sure what discipline will Radcliffe was in and how he self defined himself. Labels, what do I call you? Do I call you a quantitative biologist, or, I know labels are so boring, but, oh yeah,

Will Ratcliff [55.50]
You could do that, or evolutionary biologist, because that's like, really, I see myself is primarily an evolutionary biologist. Everything. I think about it through the lens of evolution, but I use many tools, right physics, math, computation, synthetic biology, like classic directed evolution, like kind of use it all, but it's in the service of thinking about evolutionary questions.

Vivien
That was conversations with scientists. Today's episode was about summer courses, in particular, the course physiology at the Marine Biological lab, MBL in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Today's guests were Dr Daria Ivanova from the University of Geneva, Dr. Sam Lord from the University of California, San Francisco, and Dr Will Ratcliff at Georgia Tech. The music in this podcast is Watercolor Beach by Kitrano, licensed from artlist.io

And I just wanted to say because there's confusion about these things, sometimes the participants and their institutions didn't pay to be in this podcast. It was also not paid for by the MBL. This is independent journalism that I produce in my living room. I'm Vivien Marx, thanks for listening.