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Thirteen tips for engaging with physicists, as told by a biologist + vice versa

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Thirteen tips for engaging with physicists, as told by a biologist
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03960-z

INTRO (Ken Kosik): As a physician–scientist, many of my colleagues were surprised when I moved my laboratory from the Boston Longwood campus at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts to the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where there is neither a medical school nor a university-affiliated hospital. More than a few e-mails arrived — some expressed puzzlement, some surprise, some had a wink, but all were punctuated with an exclamation mark.

When I made the move ten years ago, I had wanted to shift my biomedical work closer to the interests of physical-science researchers, to discover broadly applicable principles within the framework of biology, and to grasp the multilayered complexity hidden in nearly every question posed by biologists.

The physical sciences are not lacking in Boston. In fact, they are world class. But my lab was on the ‘medical’ side of the Charles River, practically an ocean away from the physical-science labs at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the other side. So, engaging scientists in physics and chemistry, or in computer science and engineering, was challenging — especially for a medical doctor trained rather narrowly in molecular and cellular biology.

My goal was simply to open a conversation and possibly a collaboration with physicists, not to become one. As a relatively small institution with a distinguished faculty in both the physical sciences and engineering, UCSB was, I felt, an ideal place to wade into this territory. Over the ensuing decade, this risky move has resulted in my sharing many graduate students and postdoctoral fellows with computer-science, engineering, physics and chemistry faculty members. These collaborations have greatly broadened the science in all my publications.

I devised a few simple rules to help the biologist in me to cross the divide between the life and physical sciences. In learning to talk to physicists, I discovered that I can communicate better with everyone and clarify for myself what I do and do not understand in my own field... (MORE - the tips, epilog)

COVERED (elaborated on):

1. Understand what ‘I do not understand’ means
2. Seek common ground
3. Recognize the posture of false modesty
4. Keep in mind the maths shortfall in biology
5. Don’t be flummoxed by physicists’ maths
6. Scale matters
7. Consider precision
8. Avoid jargon
9. Skip some details
10. Manage expectations
11. Understand optimization versus the ‘good-enough’ principle
12. Consider a physicist’s perspective on reductionism
13. Physicists laugh a lot
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#2
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Twelve tips for engaging with biologists, as told by a physicist
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03961-y

INTRO (Sarah Bohndiek): It’s amazing how many of biologist Ken Kosik’s points resonate with my experience as a physicist working in the opposite direction. I enjoyed my training in physics largely because it didn’t involve rote learning (needed by biologists to get that encyclopaedic knowledge) and it allowed me to derive much of the material from a few key equations and principles.

In his column, Ken notes that when a physicist says they do not understand something in biology, they are not requesting a lengthy ‘biology 101’ explanation. But I do sometimes want a biology 101 refresher so I can gather a deeper understanding of the biological problem while I think about how to address it.

Ken also talks about being uncomfortable with uncertainty. Personally, I can be quite comfortable with uncertainty when I can take steps to control it; it’s just that, in biological systems, I normally have to accept that I can’t.
A deeper understanding

The PhD I received from University College London in 2008 was in radiation physics, with a focus on evaluating the potential of CMOS image sensors (the silicon behind most smartphone cameras) for application in medical X-ray-diffraction studies.

Most of this research took place in a dark room, where I examined the optical response of the image sensors, but because I was in a department of medical physics and bioengineering, I was exposed to a range of biomedical challenges — including cancer detection.

As I progressed through my studies, I realized that I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of cancer itself and how we might exploit its biology so we could use non-invasive imaging to find the disease.

I hadn’t studied biology since I was 16, so I started looking for postdoctoral positions in ‘friendly’ environments — biophysics, bio-engineering and so on. But I soon realized that, to truly understand cancer, I needed to break out of my comfort zone and immerse myself in that environment.

My first postdoc was in Kevin Brindle’s biochemistry laboratory at the University of Cambridge, UK. I learnt how to hold a pipette, run a magnetic resonance imaging system, conduct animal experiments and design biology studies.

In return, I fixed temperamental magnets, wrote hardware-control code and supervised some of the lab’s more physical-sciences-oriented projects. After three years, I had a much greater understanding of cancer biochemistry and how to conduct in vivo imaging studies, but I was missing exposure to clinical applications and connection to my previous research home in optics.

My second postdoc, with Sam Gambhir in the department of radiology at Stanford University, California, took me back to my roots. I explored new projects in optics, trying to make imaging with optics faster and cheaper than before and opening new horizons in fields such as endoscopy.

As part of Stanford’s Molecular Imaging Program, I saw teams build new technologies in the lab and take them through to first-in-human studies. I was inspired by Sam’s dedication to revolutionizing early cancer detection and his incredible passion for transforming technology into clinical trials. That passion still drives me in my current role at the University of Cambridge, UK, where the mission of my interdisciplinary team is to advance our understanding of tumour evolution using next-generation-imaging sciences. We operate between the department of physics and the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, and this gives us access to a community of optical physicists as well as cancer biologists, and a translational pipeline through to clinical application.

I’m a technology geek at heart. I love to dive into the underlying physics when I design optics and to explore the engineering of new devices; but, for me, the story is never complete without seeing these methods through to application. I feel that the research path I explore today is a synergy of all my experiences.

I am often asked what I learnt as I traversed this path from physics to medicine. The following are the key steps I had to take during my own personal development, which prepared me well to embrace my interdisciplinary career. (MORE - the tips, epilog)

COVERED (elaborated on):

1. Learn the language
2. Get comfortable being uncomfortable
3. Don’t forget that you bring unique skills
4. Test biological-research hypotheses
5. Ask questions
6. Embrace uncertainty
7. Learn statistics
8. Don’t lose touch with your roots
9. Do not blindly accept dogma
10. Perfect your pitch
11. Avoid equations during presentations
12. Find a good mentor
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