Hello, and thank you for listening to the MicroBinFeed podcast. Here, we will be
discussing topics in microbial bioinformatics. We hope that we can give you some
insights, tips, and tricks along the way. There is so much information we all
know from working in the field, but nobody writes it down. There is no manual,
and it's assumed you'll pick it up. We hope to fill in a few of these gaps. My
co-hosts are Dr. Nabil Ali Khan and Dr. Andrew Page. I am Dr. Lee Katz. Both
Andrew and Nabil work in the Quadram Institute in Norwich, UK, where they work
on microbes in food and the impact on human health. I work at Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention and am an adjunct member at the University of
Georgia in the U.S. I'm your host, Andrew Page, and I'm joined today by three
postdocs and a room full of PhD students. So, we have... Heather Felgate. Dr.
Yasir. Emma Waters. Okay. And so, it's a great dream team of postdocs, and we
can take any questions the PhD students may want. But my first question is,
Emma, why on earth would you do a postdoc? It's underpaid. You work long hours,
and, you know, you could be out in the industry earning twice or three times
your salary. So, why do you want to work here? Very true, on all counts, but I
love it. I love research. I love the sort of... You've got a problem, and then
you've got all these range of tools to tackle that problem, and that can be
anything. I love anything from the wet lab side to the computational side. If
there's a problem, there is something to solve it, and the reason that it's so
cool to solve it is because no one else has solved it yet. So, it's a get and
run. So, you enjoy the discovery and exploration and freedom to do that? Yeah,
definitely. What about the money? The money... The money... Oh, the money. So,
there is a lot of hardships with postdocs, definitely. Personally, I am from a
disadvantaged background, so the money side for me, I came from a family where
no one else had gone to university before. So the money side for me, I look at
it, I'm like, wow, I earn more than my parents. But, of course, there is a lot
of expertise, and you've got so many years behind you in that you should be paid
for. So, yes, money could be more. How long did you spend in university? Four.
So, undergrad was four years, then PhD five years. Same as me. Yeah, so you
nearly took ten years of expertise. And is that worth the pay salary? Maybe,
maybe not. No. Heather, what about you? What about your journey here? I'm
similar to Emma, as in I just really like science. I've been a nerd from the
beginning, a bit of an outcast in all parts of my life. But I just enjoy working
as a scientist. I would love to be paid more. I would love to have a permanent
job. But, for now, I'm happy where I am, and I think happiness is more than wage
at the end of the day. I go home and I'm happy most of the time. I come into
work and I'm happy. I've got freedom. I've got a job where, okay, if I turn up
half an hour late, no one's going to have a go at me. I can stay. I can
manipulate my hours to benefit me. It works very well with having a family. As
in, tomorrow I'm going to be at home with my sick kid, but I can work from home.
And I can make up those times another time. I just find it very flexible. I love
the atmosphere. I love using my brain. And I've had a lot of other jobs in my
life as well. And I just always keep coming back to science because I just enjoy
it. So you mentioned contracts and no permanent job. What's the deal with that?
Surely you are a highly paid, highly educated scientist, and you should have a
permanent job. It would be lovely, but I'm grant-based, so there is an end. And
it is stressful. I have the ability, I have a background where I'm financially
supported. If I don't have a job, I will be okay for a couple of months. So it
is quite stressful having to think, oh crap, in six months I'm not going to have
a job. I've got to start looking. But that's also given me a lot of advantages
over the years. I lived in Uganda for six months and taught at a school. I
taught chemistry and biology to a girls' school where they weren't taught
science. That was like, I couldn't get that if I had a job in industry. I
wouldn't be able to just bounce around the world, here, there and everywhere. I
ran a Mexican restaurant in Melbourne for a year. So I'm a qualified chef pretty
much as well, and I ran a coffee shop. So I've had all these experiences, and
none of them have been bad. Was this before or after your PhD? After my PhD.
After my PhD I struggled with writing my thesis. I had a bit of a mental
breakdown. So I found out I was really dyslexic. I moved to Melbourne for a year
and did a bit of teaching there, but also worked as a restaurant. So it gives
you the flexibility with life. I could just move straight into industry at the
age of whatever I was when I finished my PhD, 24, 25 or something, and I could
be in that same job now. I wouldn't have the life experiences I've had. So you
recommend going and taking a few years out and getting a life experience before
you then go and do a postdoc? Yeah, there's a big world to look at and play
with. You've got entrepreneurial resilience, actually. I'm impressed. Wow. My
journey's boring, if you say. I did my PhD and then came here, and then the last
five years I'm here. But you've moved country. Yes, before PhD, yes, I moved
country. I started my undergrad in biomedical sciences in 2002, and it was two
and a half years. And then I worked in hospital for one year. And then I
thought, okay, I want to do postgrad, and then a master's in biomedical
sciences. And then I did one year research there, and I liked it. I thought,
okay, it's interesting. I want to do a master's in research now, and then I did
a master's in research there. And then I worked as a teaching research fellow,
and then I came to do a PhD in Birmingham. So that's how I sucked up in
research, and I started liking it. It's a dangerous job if you are coming into
research. You might start liking it. So be careful. Does anyone have any
questions for the panel? You know, you've got postdocs at different career
stages, and they may be able to provide insights for what's ahead of you for the
next few years. How to keep sane, advice? You don't start off sane. You wouldn't
apply for a PhD if you were sane. How do you handle, say, people you've grown up
with or went to school with who are now maybe took a slightly different path to
you and maybe are earning a lot more? Like, does that ever make you regret
staying in research? No. It is funny. So recently, well, I'm around early 30s.
So, yeah, there's a lot of people that I know at the same age, and now they're
getting to, like, managing director's stage, and, like, you start to hear the
money they're on. You're like, ooh, I could have done that. But then you look at
them as well, and you're like, you're so stressful. Like, you and your life is
so stressful. You are so stressed. You're ageing as I look at you. You're
melting like a candle. You may be better off in the money sort of way, but are
you happy as a whole? So you hit that perfectly, Heather, by saying, actually,
I've got the flexibility to do what I want. There may be an end date to my
contract, but I know in this place I'm happy right now. I don't have to do the
nine to five or anything like that. I can arrange my day how I want it to be. It
depends what you want out of life. Do you want a Lamborghini? I don't know. You
definitely. I'd quite like a Mustang if anyone was to buy me one. What do you
want out of life? You've got to ask your main question. What's going to make you
happy? Is a load of money going to make you happy? And if that is, then you
follow that. So you just follow the routes that make you happy. So, Heather, if
you were in a corporate environment, do you think they'd let you have your blue
hair? Oh, hell no. I'm not even allowed to work at Primark, mate. You're not
allowed to have non-natural hair colour at Primark. Oh, my God. I know. That's
crazy. No. I guess they're doing a rules are like, you know, you need shoes in
the lab kind of thing. And yeah, that's about it. Yeah. I'm allowed to be who I
am. Wear a lab coat. Yeah. Yeah. Be who you are. You can explore your sort of
what you enjoy as well nicely with research. So there's other bits of it where
you can find joy. So things like outreach. You've got all the opportunities to
interact with the public in the way you want to interact with them, which is
something I really like. So there's all these different events where you can
inspire kids to come and like to be a scientist or whatever they want to be. So
they can go down the money route or the other route, but that's like you're at
least inspiring them to do science. Yeah. And I think the thing I like about
science is solving the puzzle or doing some experiment when it works. That gives
you so much. Me and you. We're a dream team at the moment. So, yeah. So that's
the amazing thing that can happen. So it makes you a day or weekend or week or
month basically. Or it can make it miserable if it's not working.  So when we
were trying to develop this method, and it wasn't working, that was not a good
period at all. So that was quite depressing. But I had a very good team member,
and we were working together. And I think it was the resilience and
encouragement that was coming from my team member, Keith. And that's how we
survived through those six months of optimising this method. That was quite
brutal. But yeah, now we're happy. It started working, and then since then, it
hasn't broken. So one of the good things about academia is being able to pivot
to different things. Like during the pandemic, you set up a collaboration with
Pakistan to do a SARS-CoV-2 sequencing. Yeah. And it was just, you know, use
your personal connections, and you were given the space and freedom to go and to
do that. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah, that's a very cool thing. It
depends on like which group you're working in, like here. As Andrew has
mentioned, I was just a postdoc, but I was given the freedom to collaborate
independently back home in Pakistan, where I collaborated with the university I
was studying before coming here. And we did sequence about 600 SARS-CoV-2
samples. And that was almost half of the samples that were sequenced by the
whole country at that point. That was a huge contribution. And that not only
contributed to our science, but also towards the community, not only locally in
Pakistan, but internationally, because it kind of modulated their travel policy
and how they're going to shape it, and they're going to let the people go
outside the country and like accept the visitors or not. So that was a very huge
international contribution that we had made by just staying here. And it
depends. It happened only because I was in this kind of academic setup. If it
would have been kind of any other industrial or profit-driven one, then it would
have been possible. But you're underselling yourself there. Like the deal was
that, or the situation was that, Pakistan was on a red list for the UK. And, you
know, the UK is one of the biggest sources of tourism for Pakistan. I presume
there's a lot of expats going back. And so they wanted to get off the red list,
but they needed proof through genome sequencing that there wasn't an issue
there. And, of course, there was a proof we could provide. And, in fact, I think
at that time, it was that the fear was that the Delta variant was in Pakistan
and would come in. But actually, our sequencing showed that that was not the
case. It was actually a totally different variant. It was the Alpha variant,
which was imported from the UK. So it was actually the opposite problem. You
helped people, Yasir. I mean, we helped people as a team. You made people happy.
You can make people meet up with their families again. Yeah, no, we all helped
them together here. So it was a very good teamwork from QIB and North Korea. So
it was nice. I think there is a good distinction between academia and industry,
actually, because academia is normally focused on helping people in one way or
another, where industry is probably more or less helping these industries get
more money. So it's actually giving you more joy to help the people with your
research, isn't it? You do get a lot more freedom. I just decided to start
tracking Haemolyticus a couple of weeks ago. And now I've got a new best friend
who works in the Arctic University. And I'm like, oh, I could have a little trip
over there one day. Got a new friend in Utrecht and stuff. And you can be free
with who you want to chat to. You're not compounded by IP protection and stuff
like that, where you can't just keep your project to yourself. I can just call
up someone who I don't even know tomorrow and talk about what I do. And do they
want to collaborate? Do we want to be on a paper together? Let's do something
fun. New friend, I want to visit the Arctic. Exactly, and then you are free to
write grants if you feel like you have the capabilities and you want to expand.
You can write grants and you can acquire more money. And if you want to move up
in the ladder or something, yeah, there's a freedom to go that route as well. It
depends how enthusiastic you are in that kind of path. But if you do like money,
I'd recommend, to keep your options open, I'd recommend going down to
bioinformatics, data science route, not the lab route. You'll have more earning
potential generally in industry, just to keep them aside. Whereas if you're down
the lab route, it's more narrow focused and there's not as many opportunities.
Okay, we'll leave it there. So thank you very much, Emma, Heather, and Yasir for
this lovely chat and careers. Thank you to our audience of PhD students who have
stayed extra late just for this talk. Thank you so much for listening to us at
home. If you like this podcast, please subscribe and rate us on iTunes, Spotify,
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And if you don't like this podcast, please don't do anything. This podcast was
recorded by the Microbial Bioinformatics Group. The opinions expressed here are
our own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CDC or the Quadram
Institute.