Podcast – Life In The Lab

Voice Over:

Welcome to the Dementia Researcher podcast, brought to you by dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk, a network for early career researchers.

Dr Oz Ismail:

Hello and welcome to the Dementia Research podcast. Today we’re going to be discussing life in the lab. My name is Oz Ismail and I’m a PhD student and also used to be a research manager. So this is very relevant to me. Now the lab can be a home, especially when we’re doing long experiments. You can spend hours and hours in the lab doing pointless experiments, countless experiments, most of which in my experience go horribly wrong, but I’m joined today by a bunch of panellists whose experiments go not terribly wrong, but very right. Joining me today is David Steadman, who I understand is a member of a band. We’re going to hear a bit about that as well. We’re also joined by Christina Toomey, who’s a netball enthusiast, and Yolanda Ohene, who’s a tap dancer, but they’re all also scientists by day. So why don’t you introduce yourselves and tell us about what you do during the day. Let’s start with Yolanda.

Yolanda Ohene:

Hi, my name is Yolanda Ohene and I work for the Centre of Advanced Biomedical Imaging at UCL. So my PhD has been in developing an MRI technique to look at blood brain barrier permeability as possibly an early detection methods for neuro degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr Oz Ismail:

And where does the tap dancing come in?

Yolanda Ohene:

Oh yeah, I have to say my opinion about tap dancing is it’s the most underrated dancing. We should see more tap dancing.

Dr Oz Ismail:

All right, and Christina?

Dr Christina Toomey:

So I’m a postdoc now at UCL, based between the Dementia Research Institute of Henrik Setterberg and the Queen Square Brain Bank with Tammaryn Lashley, And basically what my aim is to do is to look at pathology of all the neurodegenerative diseases, and then look at the proteomics for those as well, and try and match up and cross validate them between the two.

Dr Oz Ismail:

And you love netball?

Dr Christina Toomey:

Yes, I do love netball. I play twice a week and the netball world cup is just coming up in a couple of weeks. So very excited about that.

Dr Oz Ismail:

Exciting times, and David?

Dr David Steadman:

Hi, I’m David Steadman. I feel a little bit out of place here because I’m actually a chemist. So on a panel of biologists, the odd one out, but I’m a medicinal chemist and I’m working at the Alzheimer’s Research UK Drug Discovery Institute here at UCL, and as a chemist, kind of my role and the role of our team is to try and develop new medicines against Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, and it’s not just a chemistry team at the Institute. We have biologists and pharmacologists. So a lot of what we do is interdisciplinary research and a lot of collaboration and collegiate kind of work goes into that, which is quite cool, but yeah, as I said, as a chemist, my role is to really make new drugs.

Dr Oz Ismail:

Nice, and I’m going to ask you about your band.

Dr David Steadman:

Please do. I want to try and plug the band.

Dr Oz Ismail:

Yeah, Go for it.

Dr David Steadman:

So I am the lead guitarist of a band called Love Volcano. We are a London based covers band available for all sorts of functions, weddings, birthdays, et cetera. Yeah, and that’s just really a thing that has kind of happened over a few years. Friends of friends who come together and it’s kind of a good thing to do outside of work, let off some steam.

Dr Oz Ismail:

Nice. All right. So I’m going to kick off by asking all of you a controversial question. What is the worst thing you have done in the lab? The question is up for grabs. Anyone can go first.

Dr Christina Toomey:

I think for me, it’s just misplacing a lot of samples. So I work in a brain bank. So every sample is very precious.

Dr Oz Ismail:

That’s fair. When you said misplacing –

Dr Christina Toomey:

Only temporarily, but it’s just then having that mad panic, trying to find where you’ve put them and they’re somewhere deep in a freezer somewhere and you just think, “Oh gosh, what have I done with them?”

Dr Oz Ismail:

Okay, that’s pretty –

Dr Christina Toomey:

But it’s all good. I found them in the end.

Dr Oz Ismail:

Yeah, that’s not the worst thing, but yeah.

Dr Christina Toomey:

I don’t have many bad things, actually.

Dr David Steadman:

I think I broke a bit of kit. At the beginning of my PhD, I was using a very specific bit of apparatus and it was literally my first week and I think I managed … it was a very sensitive pH probe and I managed to smash it, completely by accident. It cost about a grand to replace, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t a lot of money, but when you first start your PhD and you’re trying to look like you know what you’re doing and you’ve got to go to your boss, cap in hand and say, “Oh, I broke something. It was worth a thousand pounds,” yeah, that didn’t go down too well.

Dr Oz Ismail:

Yeah.

Dr David Steadman:

And that’s pretty tough, but you learn very quickly not to make things a habit. I’ve stabbed myself a few times with various bits of glassware and things like that. As a chemist, that kind of goes with the territory, I think, but thankfully, nothing too major.

Dr Oz Ismail:

How about you, Yolanda?

Yolanda Ohene:

I’m really sorry, but I sneakily stole some olives from the fridge before. So I can’t say names, but yeah.

Dr Oz Ismail:

I mean that still counts as a lab crime, okay? In my days as a research manager, people would come to me and complain about food going missing.

Yolanda Ohene:

Yeah. Sorry, once that was me.

Dr Oz Ismail:

All right. All right. So in the grand scheme of things, no one has done anything that terrible or you don’t want to admit to doing anything that terrible on air, I guess, but that’s part of life, isn’t it? But I guess how do you … the other question I want to know is how do you then manage relationships? The moment something goes wrong, it’s very important that you have the right person to go to. Sometimes you go to your boss, if you’re David and you’re very confident. I would not have done that. I would probably first go a friend of mine and be like, “I did this bad thing.” So how important do you think it is to maintain these relationships in the lab, or do you think it’s not that important?

Dr Christina Toomey:

I think it’s really important, because you’ve got to have your go to like, “Ah, something went wrong,” person –

Dr Oz Ismail:

So they can help cover up your crime.

Dr Christina Toomey:

And preferably if you’ve got them on speed dial, that’s also good. I mean, it’s kind of hard to … sometimes they leak out, these things that you do. So then also having just having [inaudible 00:06:33] is a good thing.

Dr Oz Ismail:

That’s good … what’s the word? Good lab citizenship. Yes. Yes. I like that.

Yolanda Ohene:

Yeah, I would agree. It’s so important to be able to talk to your peers, I think, in the lab. So before you go to the more senior people, I would suggest having a go talking to those and seeing what they think about your mistake, because you might be blowing it out of proportion as well.

Dr David Steadman:

For sure. I think having a support network in the lab is massively important, especially, I don’t know, if you’re doing a masters project or a PhD, or even if you’re starting off as a postdoc, everyone’s been there, everyone’s done stupid things, everyone’s mislaid things or broken things or has imposter syndrome, all that kind of stuff. So I think more often than not, you might be beating yourself up, but someone else is going to say, “Don’t worry, I’ve done exactly the same thing. It’s not a big deal.” So I think yeah, the relationships in the lab I think are absolutely crucial to having a good research environment because it’s such a stress … if you’re doing a PhD, for example, such a stressful environment and you’d be having days where you’re just like, “Why am I doing this? Why am I putting myself through this?” And it’s important to have someone have that perspective. It’s like, “Don’t worry, you’re doing the right thing.” You just got to crack on and have that support.

Dr Oz Ismail:

Yeah. Yeah. During my time as a research manager, I actually really appreciated it when someone would just be honest about it, no matter how big or small that the crime was, because it then made me trust that person more, regardless of how expensive it was going to be to fix it, because I didn’t want to get into a situation where I told people off constantly and then they’d be like, “Oh, this guy is stressful to deal with it.” So yeah, I think it’s important to build those relationships, especially be buddies with your lab manager. Always, always useful, especially because they know where the money is. You did not hear that from me.

Dr David Steadman:

Funny if you have junior members of the lab and stuff like that, you’d much rather someone come to you before they do something they’re not sure about than do that thing and then create a situation that’s a million times worse than what it could have been. So I think it’s important as other members of staff to be approachable and to not be … people don’t have that fear then of coming to you.

Dr Oz Ismail:

Right.

Dr David Steadman:

For sure.

Dr Oz Ismail:

So true. So during my time … when I started my PhD, I remember doing these long, long experiments. So I do … like Yolanda, because we’re in the same lab, I do lots of MRI scans and I used to have to scan for hours and hours and hours late into the night, and for me, the only way I got through that is because I had a buddy who would scan with me. Now can you tell me a bit about what your experiments are like? How long would you spend in the lab and what is your lab environment like? What’s your day like?

Dr Christina Toomey:

So mine is quite varied, actually. So if we’re doing some immunohistochemistry, which is looking at pathology under the microscope, we can spend about a day doing that. However, then there are some experiments that will then last multiple days or some only a couple of hours, but I think the main thing for me, especially when I was doing my PhD, was to talk to other PhD students and even postdocs as well to just kind of always bring yourself back to the centre. You’re thinking, “Oh, I’m doing all these long hours. Is it even worth it?” Kind of thing, but yeah, I think you can easily get off track and not see the importance of what you’re doing for those long experiments, but if you just step back and take a look at why you’re doing it, then it brings you back to focus.

Dr David Steadman:

Sure. I think as a chemist, our day to day is … the time frame of chemistry and biology is very different. It’s something I’ve noticed working with biologists in that biologists can set up … for example, if you’re doing animal studies, you could spend years just developing your model before you do any experiments, whereas for a chemist, our reactions and I think just the time frame is so much shorter. So I could go in the lab and put on five, six experiments that could realistically finish by the end of the day and then crack on and do the next thing, but generally as a chemist, we go through a cycle of sort of design, synthesise, and then test, and it depends where you are in that kind of cycle. You might spend a few weeks designing all the compounds you want to make and then make them, and then test them and wait for the data to come back in before you do your other iterations of design, or you might be in a synthesis cycle where you’re just basically, as we call it, compound bashing, where you have a methodology and you just bash, bash, bash, try and get out as much as you can.

But yeah, I think the time frames for chemistry and biology are very, very different. So we don’t really have long experiments or extended periods where you’d have to stay focused and do a thing through the night, for example. So I think, yeah, we don’t really have that, but I think staying focused if you’re doing seven or eight experiments at once, which is quite common for us, but knowing exactly what’s going on in each one of those is quite difficult and to be organised and make sure you’re not forgetting which one is which and where you’ve put things and all that kind of stuff.

Dr Oz Ismail:

So basically, for better work life balance, be a chemist is what I’m hearing.

Dr David Steadman:

Potentially.

Dr Oz Ismail:

You made it sound amazing, all right? Don’t backtrack.

Yolanda Ohene:

We generally don’t work outside of office hours, generally for most experiments. It’s just –

Dr Oz Ismail:

Is that since you became a postdoc?

Yolanda Ohene:

No, no. Well yeah, I suppose as a PhD student, I did all my experiments in the office hours, but then I did work at home. I don’t want to downplay that. Yeah, I did a lot of work at home, but experiment-wise, our experiments, even if they last over a few days, are actually you leave it for the day and you come back and then do your next part the next day. So it’s not in a sense as bad as your imaging sounds.

Dr Christina Toomey:

Yeah, I suppose I’m the other end as well, that I’m kind of a biophysicist. So you can do the physics side of it. You can tap in and tap out, but when it comes the bio side, you really have to be locked in for the long haul, and unfortunately … I don’t know, they didn’t give me a buddy when I started my PhD. So I’ve been –

Dr Oz Ismail:

It’s because they trusted you. They didn’t trust me.

Yolanda Ohene:

I’ve been a bit of a lone wolf in the lab there, but what’s quite nice is that people look out for each other, and so if you are having quite long days, people come in with sometimes tea. Sometimes it doesn’t have sugar in, but I’ll let them off.

Dr Oz Ismail:

All right. So I’m going to ask you a controversial question, which is not that controversial actually. Have you or have you not ever stolen a reagent from the lab because you were in a rush and not told anyone? We won’t name labs or names, just yes or no. Any of you?

Dr Christina Toomey:

There’s definitely been times when you borrow from maybe the floor above or something like that.

Dr Oz Ismail:

Yes. This is what I want to hear, yep.

Dr Christina Toomey:

But generally we always help each other out. So it kind of goes in swings and roundabouts I think. Everyone does a little bit. As long as you’re not taking the [inaudible 00:13:52].

Dr Oz Ismail:

How about –

Dr David Steadman:

I think in our lab, generally, it’s more that … obviously you keep stock solutions at certain levels and then we have to make up solvents for some of our bits of equipment, for example, and you do find that some people are the takers and not the makers. So they will kind of wait until the stockpile is completely empty, and then just pretend that it’s not there. They’ll take the last bit and then walk away.

Dr Oz Ismail:

There’s never any reagent here, what are you talking about?

Dr David Steadman:

And so little things like that, you quickly find people who sort of never empty bins and never kind of reorder consumables.

Dr Oz Ismail:

This is the dirt I want, yes.

Dr David Steadman:

Things like that. As a lab manager, you probably realize that as well, that there’s always people who never quite have to be the ones who order anything or unpack things or take responsibility for stuff. So that can be a little bit frustrating at times, for sure.

Dr Oz Ismail:

Yeah.

Dr David Steadman:

I’m not that person.

Dr Oz Ismail:

I mean that brings me nicely onto the next question I was going to ask, which is, without naming names, the worst lab member crime. Dish the dirt, what is the worst thing that’s happened in the lab that you’ve thought, “This is the worst thing that someone has done to my science or just to my life today in the lab?” Gosh, you’re all from such nice labs.

Dr Christina Toomey:

I think for me, the main thing is the annoyance of people never doing things around the lab to help out. It’s not one thing in particular, but I think I’ll just reiterate the point that –

Dr Oz Ismail:

Yeah, and how would you deal with that? What would you do?

Dr David Steadman:

Bitch and moan, just bitch and moan.

Dr Christina Toomey:

A lot of emails get sent.

Dr David Steadman:

Passive aggressive notes.

Dr Christina Toomey:

Yeah, passive aggressive emails.

Dr Oz Ismail:

Yeah, notes.

Dr Christina Toomey:

And then just taking things away. Sometimes that has happened, say that people don’t have access to things that they’re not contributing to, but I think that’s a really important lesson for students and undergraduates and PhD students coming in, master’s students, is just to make yourself a team player in the lab, because if you do that, everyone will think much better of you and you’re more likely to get help with your actual science.

Dr Oz Ismail:

So true. Be a good lab citizen.

Dr Christina Toomey:

I think it’s definitely a key point.

Dr Oz Ismail:

Yeah, for sure.

Yolanda Ohene:

Yeah, I’m worried because I can’t think of anything. So I’m like, “Am I the worst?”

Dr David Steadman:

Well you did steal the olives.

Dr Oz Ismail:

Yeah. Aside from the olives, which I also didn’t know about, I can assure you, you’re fine, but I think there’s an important point to make there, which is some of these things, they do actually cost a lot of money. For instance, when I think about stuff that’s frustrated me in the lab is when people have taken say surgical tools, which are very expensive and very fine tools that they’ve used or taken away or they’re put back, but they’ve damaged it and then I have to replace it and it’s very expensive. So those are the things that maybe some people don’t necessarily think about, but it does affect a lab member and their research. So it is … as much as we make jokes about it, from both a lab manager perspective and a PhD student perspective, I would say it’s actually quite annoying when people don’t follow the rules or think about other people, but the way I get around is I just lock everything up. All right. So we’ve talked a lot about the annoying stuff, but tell me about your best day in the lab. Has there ever been a day where you’ve been like, “I have cured something,” because we haven’t cured Alzheimer’s yet, or, “I have made a breakthrough,” or you’ve just felt really good. Tell me about one of those good days in the lab.

Dr Christina Toomey:

I think any day where your experiment works is a good day, but if it’s an experiment that you’ve been working on for a long time and it’s going to be a big part of say your thesis or your next grant proposal or paper, then I think that those days are the best. You’re very happy on those days.

Dr David Steadman:

For sure. I think it’s often not the things you expect. Sometimes you’re waiting for the result of a big experiment and you think, “When this comes out, I’m going to be so pleased,” and it comes out and you go, “Oh, right,” but then other days you can find that you’ve had an incredibly satisfying day for the smallest thing. Sometimes it’s just … at least as a chemist, because we’re synthesising molecules. Sometimes it can take you months to make one molecule that you’ve been aiming to make and there can be loads and loads of failures along the way, and then yeah, when you finally do get to the end of it, sometimes you don’t even care. Okay, we’re making molecules to test, but sometimes you don’t even care if it’s active or does anything. It’s the satisfaction of having gone through the trials and tribulations and actually made it, and you think, “Actually, yeah. Do you know what? That’s what we’re in the lab to do,” to overcome things and to get the satisfaction at the end.

Yolanda Ohene:

Yeah. I think for me, I just love … it sounds really nerdy, learning new things, and so when you learn a new technique … because I come from a physics background, I learned how to do a PCR, which is a very … I think it’s quite a basic biology technique –

Dr Christina Toomey:

Fair, yeah.

Yolanda Ohene:

But the first time that I ever got a PCR curve, I was like, “Whoa, this is brilliant.”

Dr Oz Ismail:

You say that, but I am biologist, and I spent six months trying to do a Western blot, which is just basically trying to quantify a protein. It’s something that … it’s like the ABC’s of biology, I think, and everybody can do this, and I was the idiot who just couldn’t do it and I spent six months in this lab in America trying to optimise this, and it worked on my last week there, and for me, that was the best day, even though it’s the most basic thing ever.

Yolanda Ohene:

No, yeah. I agree. Stuff like that is good. If you’ve been working on something and optimising protocols and it finally works after not working for ages, then that’s really good.

Dr David Steadman:

I think it is important for researchers coming up, students, and so on is that don’t expect things to work the first time and actually appreciate when they’re not, because it will be so satisfying. You will get there one way or another and it will be worth it when you get there. It’s easy when things are going well, but when things are going hard and you’re in that dip, then it’s tough, but it’s when you get to the rise again and things started getting good, that’s when it really feels satisfying, for sure.

Dr Oz Ismail:

So you’re all seasoned lab members, right? And obviously people probably do ask you a lot to train new people. Thoughts? Do you like it? Do you hate it? You can be honest.

Yolanda Ohene:

It’s not for me. I’ve got my protocol locked down. I’m in and out.

Dr Oz Ismail:

Don’t mess around.

Yolanda Ohene:

Yeah, don’t be slowing me down.

Dr Oz Ismail:

Survival of the fittest, Yolanda. No messing.

Dr Christina Toomey:

So for me, it’s actually a bit of a mixed answer, I guess, because since I’ve become a postdoc, I –

Dr Oz Ismail:

You have to do it .

Dr Christina Toomey:

– help a lot of PhD. Well, no, but I help a lot of PhD students, but now I have a master’s student of my own.

Dr Oz Ismail:

Nice.

Dr Christina Toomey:

And then I’ve got some summer students come in that are undergrads and things, but it all depends on the student, I find, and I think the main thing for me, the biggest bug bear with training students is that they don’t appreciate how busy you are and that you’re actually going out of your way to help them, but if you get a student that does appreciate that and is really keen to learn and is really motivated, then I think it’s actually quite rewarding to teach somebody and inspire them to also pursue science.

Dr Oz Ismail:

Yeah, but how do you then manage that … because it’s important that you manage that relationship, because they know you’re a senior member in the lab, but also you need to be able to maintain that relationship with them as you’re training them and also tell them to back off when you need them to back off so you can get on with your own postdoc work.

Dr Christina Toomey:

Yeah.

Dr Oz Ismail:

How do you manage that?

Dr Christina Toomey:

So I think I’m still learning, but I think actually the importance is to try and remember what it’s like to be at their level, for one thing. So to try and empathise with them as to what they’re probably worrying about, and so you can have honest conversations about that and then to try and be helpful, but then actually still be quite assertive and set meetings or times that they can talk to you about these things if they have a problem. Try to be as open as you can, obviously, but if you are really busy, then you need to do that, because otherwise your time just does get encroached upon and you really struggle to actually complete your own research.

Dr David Steadman:

Sure. I think it can be quite difficult, and I agree, it does depend on the student. I find the students who actually want to learn are the ones that are more fun to kind of teach and to supervise, because I have seen students come in with very little experience, but who, for whatever reason, they’re just absolutely convinced that what they’re doing and the way they’re doing it is right, and no matter how much you say, “Maybe you could consider that I’ve maybe got a bit more of experience and maybe this is the best way to do it, or a different way,” when they’re not willing to learn and they’re very maybe single-minded and maybe a bit arrogant sometimes, that can be quite tricky, because all you can really say is, “If you want to do it that way, that’s fine, but I’m saying it’s probably not the best.” So I think when you’ve got humble students who really, really want to learn and are quite passionate, then it can be quite fun, for sure.

Dr Oz Ismail:

So, one of my favourite moments in the lab every week is a Friday evening. Not because I get to go home, because without fail … because we’re in a lab where everyone gets on with everybody, without fail, around 4:30, there’ll be a murmur of moving to the pub, and by 5, 5:30 it’s definitely happening. Everybody goes to pub.

Dr David Steadman:

[inaudible 00:23:54].

Dr Oz Ismail:

I mean, because this is on record, I’m trying to pretend to be a good person, David. I’m still at UCL trying to get my PhD, but to me that’s been a key part of maintaining sort of my own happiness in the lab, is having a social aspect to lab life, and it’s not just Friday evenings. We do organise other events where we go out together as well, but I have been in labs where that’s not something they do, but it’s still a great lab and everybody gets on from nine to five where we’re all in the same space and genuinely [inaudible 00:00:24:33]. So how important do you guys think that is? And do you think that factors into your wellbeing?

Yolanda Ohene:

Yeah, I think that definitely, definitely factors in, and whether it’s going to the pub on a Friday or any day, or maybe having lunch together, if there’s some sort of social aspect of the lab, I think that definitely makes things a lot easier, and also you get to know people on a non-scientific level as well, and you can find out some really interesting things about who you work with, which is also great. I worked in France for a little bit and they love to have the longest lunch possible, and that was excellent.

Dr Christina Toomey:

Yeah, for me, I think fairly similar, it’s really good to be socialising with your lab colleagues, because that’s the kind of atmosphere where you get to know somebody and then you will feel comfortable to go and talk to people when you’re having mistakes in the lab or struggling with a long experiment, et cetera. However, actually recently in my lab, we’ve probably done it a little less than what we’re used to and you can actually really tell the difference, and so we’re trying to pick that back up again, and we went on Friday to the pub, but yeah, I think it’s really good, especially to talk to go and socialise with your peers, especially I think.

Dr David Steadman:

Yeah, I agree. I think in a similar way, I’ve been in labs that have had a large social aspect and some that haven’t and I’ve enjoyed both. I mean during my PhD, yeah, we’d go out a fair amount and there were quite a few PhD students. So I think if you have your peers, people on the same level of kind of research as you, early career researchers, yeah, having that social aspect is good and you always have someone to moan at or someone who can empathise with your situation, like, “My experiments didn’t work today,” and empathise over a drink and stuff, and that’s great, but yeah, I think labs tend to … they find a way to socialise. If you’re not going out after the lab … you find that some labs are more chatty at lunchtimes or coffee breaks or stuff like that. So I think generally labs find a way to socialise with each other, but I’m a big fan of the Friday night pub, for sure.

Dr Christina Toomey:

Yeah, and just to add though. Actually, you have to be careful when you are socialising to include everybody, because actually … and that’s where it comes into lunch breaks and coffee breaks maybe is also a good time to socialize, because there’s people obviously with children, et cetera in the lab –

Dr David Steadman:

And people who don’t want to drink as well.

Dr Christina Toomey:

And I think previously in the past, some people don’t necessarily want to go to the pub, especially if they don’t drink, et cetera, but yeah, so you can socialise in lots of different ways, including the pub, then that’s sort of [inaudible 00:27:28].

Dr Oz Ismail:

Great. Well, sadly, we’ve come to the end of our chat today, but I’ve really enjoyed talking to all three of you. I’d like to thank all of you for taking the time to come in to chat to Dementia Researcher. You can visit our website anytime and look at our profiles, and do go and look at our profiles, because we tap dance and play net ball and have bands and such. If you have anything else to add on this topic, please do post your comments. We want to hear from you. Drop us a line on Twitter using the hashtag ECRdementia. Finally, please remember to subscribe to this podcast and tell people, tell your friends. We are on SoundCloud, iTunes, Spotify, everywhere. Please share, and also post your review. My name is Oz. I’ve had a great time. Thank you and goodbye.

Voice Over:

This was a podcast brought to you by Dementia Researcher, everything you need in one place. Register today at dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.

END