Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I mean, I’m just gonna start. I have a lot of questions. I mean, the first one would definitely be just to get a general idea. What is it that you really do as a scientist, like in terms of your role or your responsibilities right now?

Speaker 2: Right. So currently I work at Schrodinger. You know, it’s a computational chemistry company that provides software for drug discovery. I mean, you know, all these things. So what I do, my role is to help customers. So these are people who try to discover drugs using computation to help them be more efficient to use the software in the right way. You know, to answer scientific questions they may have. And yeah, just to discuss science and direct them to the best scientific practices. So that’s my role at the moment.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So there’s a lot of client interaction involved in that, right? I assume.

Speaker 2: Sorry. There are a lot.

Speaker 1: Sorry, a lot of client interactions. Interactions with clients.

Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So there’s a lot of client interaction and I mean, there are various stages of how you approach a client. So first of all, you have to establish some type of credibility with them and this is done on the basis that the client, it’s like it is the customer who decides how much they want to talk to you. So to establish credibility, you have to provide information that is relevant to them, right?

And it is accurate. So that’s something that we all try to do here to provide good scientific guidance. And the hope is then that they will see value interact more and more with me, with the scientists. And yeah, and then you can then what I try to do is to address the problems they have that are specific to their particular project.

So it’s a lot. Yeah, it’s a lot of interacting with other scientists, you know, understanding what are their needs and knowing, you know, how the tools that the company offers, how they can address those needs. If they can, sometimes the tools that we have are not appropriate. And then we do not try to, we don’t try to push the customers to use them because there would be no value for the customers to do that. But yeah, it’s a lot of understanding what they want and then what are the tools and what scientific opinions can be offered to help them.

Speaker 1: Okay, okay. And so, like, to do all this, do you have, like, is there a large variety of problems to tackle? And maybe in the sense that you aren’t always like focused on one specific topic or subject?

Speaker 2: Yeah, there are. So, let me say in the beginning that, you know, drug discovery is very, very important for society. It leads to improving the life of patients, right? Nonetheless, it is only a very small sector in science altogether. If you think about biology or even if you think about chemistry, drug discovery is a tiny part of that in terms of the breadth of scientific projects that exist. Nonetheless, even within drug discovery, because there are many different aspects of drug discovery, there are a lot of different tools, a lot of different answers that companies will try to address.

So, yeah, so the needs of the customers come very, very, very much between different customers. They might be engaged in different stages of drug discovery. They might work with different modalities. That means, you know, the type of drugs that trying to discover are very different. So, they could be, for example, small molecules or peptides that are bigger or even antibodies that are even bigger. And then, you know, the tools that not only we offer, but that are generally applied are very different for these different modalities. And then, you know, there are different challenges that each program or, you know, each particular target, target is the protein that you’re trying to influence to have a therapeutic effect.

So each one of these target proteins, they will have different challenges and then they require different tools. So, yeah, it’s like every customer, every project is different, quite different, one from the other. And that’s a challenge, you know, you need somehow to have a very broad knowledge.

You also have to be able to think on your field when you talk with a customer and, you know, what they’re talking to try to understand what is that they need and what can we offer to help them.

Speaker 1: Okay. And so, when you’re addressing these specific needs, what do you say that you have a lot of freedom in terms of like, freedom to use your creativity to address these needs and find methods to solve the challenges that you may face along the way? Okay.

Speaker 2: So, what we try to do is to provide value. And unfortunately, you know, we don’t, we don’t offer solutions for everything. I wish we did, but we don’t. So, if you want to offer value, but necessarily this restricts the type of solutions you can suggest to somebody. If you only, you know, we only want to offer the solutions that work very well, and therefore we don’t offer that much. So there’s not so much freedom. It’s not a restriction.

Nobody will come and tell you, you cannot do that. But the standards we have is that we have to offer, you have valuable solutions to customers. And therefore, you know, it is only some of our tools that work well for a particular question. And then we only offer those tools. And if we, if there are no tools, then we don’t offer anything. We, we, you know, we discuss with the customers try to provide some hints or other methods, but yeah, we don’t, we don’t suggest something that we don’t feel confident it will work.

Yeah. That’s very important, you know, to a scientific collaboration academia, you know, I used to work in academia. And there, what are the best solutions are not, it is not known a priori. In fact, a lot of the best solutions are first developed in academia and then they’re made much more robust, much more accurate in industry. So in academia, for example, it’s different if you have a discussion with somebody, you can offer a wide variety of opinions and advice, because the outcome is not expected something that will definitely work. There is a lot of risk in academic or fundamental research as it is called. When you talk about industry, you won’t offer solutions that you feel confident that will work. That’s the biggest difference.

Speaker 1: Okay, okay. Interesting. So I’m just, I’m just like reflecting on that. And so, outside of that, you know, that role as a scientist. I mean, it’s probably part of your role but are you involved in a lot of like different activities like so there’s you already talked about like talking to the client and all that, but you communicate a lot with other teams, you know, like, I like I assume they’re interdependent.

Speaker 2: Of course, yeah, I think that’s the same in all companies and in all, in all types of jobs nowadays. You do have to interact a lot with people in other teams. There are some teams that we interact more with.

Okay, and that’s again, I think that’s probably a common trend. So you know you are in the center, then there are teams to interact more with and other teams are to interact less and less. And that’s also very important because both with the customers and with the other employees of your company, you have to be able to communicate in a clear manner and in a efficient manner. So just because we are all scientists working at Stradegar, it doesn’t mean that we will have the same background and some things that are very well understood in our team, they may not be understood by anybody else in another team. And that’s not because they’re not clever or because they’re not good scientists. It’s just because the domain that they work on is very different to ours. So then, when it comes to interacting with other people in your company, you have to be to communicate clearly to be able to explain clearly what is that you want.

You have to somehow understand what is it that these scientists know. And if you know if you understand what they know that you tailor what you what you tell them. So that’s, you know, again, that’s very common in, I think, in all industries, being able to communicate. It’s a little bit more challenging in science because there is a lot of jargon. And the jargon is used in science because they’re very complex concepts and issues.

And if you use a particular word, it is one word. And if you use it, another scientist who has this deep knowledge, they will understand what you’re saying. If they don’t have this knowledge, then you have to try to explain it. So, yeah, we interact a lot and the roles of the people are different. The backgrounds in terms of their education is different. You know, their goals, what are the what they want to achieve inside the company are different. So, yeah, it’s very interesting.

Yeah. And it is critical, you know, for companies to be successful. It is critical that information can pass along from one team to the other or even within the team. And that’s a challenge I think probably for all companies.

Speaker 1: Yeah, so proper communication is really like is very important. And as expected, obviously. And so you talk about everybody having a different path. I mean, I looked a bit into your path, but I feel like there’s nobody better to explain it than you. So could you like just give me like a little summary of like what you took to get here.

Speaker 2: Yeah, so I did a PhD, right. Like, most of the computational chemists. That’s not the case with all straight beer employees, by the way, many do not have a PhD. They probably have a degree almost everybody. But okay, so I did a PhD and that was in theoretical physics.

So that’s pen and paper theory where you write a lot of equations. And it was not in biology was not related to biology was, you know, for material science. And I think one, you know, one underlying thing that I will try to bring up to use that there’s a lot of flexibility in the career of in science in general, you’re not stuck to whatever you decide in the beginning. So okay, I did my pitch team theoretical physics and I want to do something more related to biology. And I did a computational biophysics so now I was not running writing equations I was working with a computer. I was not good with computers by the way I didn’t like them that much, but I want to do it and then I also switched to biology so these were two changes one towards more biology and the other towards computation. And there I worked on in a national laboratory here in the US in Tennessee it’s a very beautiful place it’s called Oak Ridge Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

And I started as a postdoc and then I, you know, I was offered a permanent position over there, and I stayed for about 15 years I think. So that’s, it’s a national laboratory so one way to think about these places it’s a government laboratory to do research. So you can say that if in one name you have universities, the national laboratories are in the middle. Then industries in the other end. And there are many dimensions there are in many ways that the national labs are in between.

You know you mentioned earlier that you know the freedom to do stuff again you know in industry you’re not restricted nobody will come and tell you what to do or not to do. But you have to have solutions that work it has to be very applied science that you do. In contrast in the very in the other side is universities where they do a lot of fundamental science.

So there you have a lot of freedom you can choose to do whatever you want. And the national labs are kind of in between. So you know, you need to do research that is somehow aligned with the institution it’s not difficult to find this because they have very, very broad interests, but you’re not as free as if you like as universities. So, and you know it’s the same with the salary you know the salaries probably between the industry and academia and you know there are many you know the, you know how how formal the workplace is also the universities can be very informal industries tends to be more formal and the labs are in between the national labs. Yeah, so I’ve worked there for 15 years and I did so there I had to do a lot of different research. That’s a requirement to be successful there you have to seize opportunities and they they’re on different scientific discipline so I did. Yeah, a very great variety of type of science, much, much broader than I would have done in university, or usually you work on one thing you become successful and you continue that because you have been successful. And it’s the same thing with industry in the national labs you’re almost forced to divest a lot and then to learn new things.

Yeah, and after that in about after 15 years. So I did a lot of basic research so that means a fundamental understanding so maybe an engineer discovered something very interesting and it worked very well and it was great it was it was a big achievement, but they didn’t know why it works you know what what’s the physics behind it you know, obtaining a mechanism as it is called in science that explains what are the physical forces that that give rise to this phenomenon. Yeah, so it’s the only problem that is that the impact of my work is not immediate so you obtain some understanding and then maybe another engineer will use it to maybe make another product or improve it.

So the impact is many years down the line. And I wanted, you know, for my own satisfaction I wanted a more immediate impact in industry offers that so definitely in industry that the problems that you solve. They are current, you know, there is a current need that is being addressed by the problems we solve. And that’s why I want to move to industry and in terms of computation. Using computers. The biggest power is having predictions that are accurate if you can make predictions that are accurate on the computer. You don’t need to do a lot of experiments that can really accelerate. You know the discovery of drugs or materials or whatever you’re doing.

So then I looked for a comment that is known to have the best predictive tools and that’s why I chose a straighter. But yeah, when you know through academia with my PhD and then I went intermediate if you like to do a national laboratory I had a you know, a career there. And then I switched to industry.

And I say, just a couple more things you know I mentioned how I changed. I changed to computational biophysics format, working in the national lab. When I worked to industry I also, you know, I hadn’t really done a lot of drug discovery before so that was also a very big change in the theme in the, in the domain of science that I’m working now. That was one big change. And the other big change of course was going from the academic workplace of a national lab, going to the, you know, doing this to the shredder.

So that was another big change I think. So, yeah, it’s I think it’s important to understand in general that even in science that is quite a rigid, professional field. Still, there’s a lot of opportunity to make changes in your career.

Speaker 1: Yeah, um, I mean, I was going to ask a bit about the difference between, you know, on a national lab and maybe you know, industry and university but you, I feel like you wrote that down very nicely.

Speaker 2: Um, yeah, yeah, I think they so it’s, it’s, yeah, so university one of the aims of the university is also to educate young people, right. So as a professor, you have to teach a little bit.

I also teach by the way as a side gig, but anyway, but yeah, so, so that component is unique to universities, the education of the young, the young people. That’s not the case in national labs. You don’t have PhD students. We have a career scientist, it’s called a postdoc, you know, postdoctoral fellows, but these are not PhD students, they are actually employees of the national lab. And that educational part is even smaller usually in industry. So, yeah, the type of freedom on the type of research you do so definitely in the company, it is very, very well defined.

It is the, the science that is relevant to the mission of the company. That’s what you’re going to do. You’re not going to be paid by the company to do something entirely different. The other end is the universities where a professor can more or less choose what they want to study.

Okay. If they’re in a chemistry department, they have to do a little bit something with chemistry, but even that is not very strict. And in the national labs, you have to be aligned with a little bit with the mission of the national lab. But as I said, that’s a very broad mission. So you’re giving a lot of freedom. Yeah, so I think these are the big, you know, the flexibility and the teaching young young people. These are the biggest differences. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Is there a difference in how you grew your skills in each one of these environments? Like, did you grow different skills? Yeah, there is.

Speaker 2: And that’s probably common in all professions. So it’s not only the different environment, it’s also your progression. But in the university as a PhD student, you have to find a lot of the things on your own.

That’s the whole purpose. So you move from an undergraduate student where people are teaching you, right? So it is difficult. You have to work very hard. You have to study. But you have a professor in some ways teaching you something. In the PhD, it is not like that. You’re expected to advance a very small field beyond the current knowledge. And there’s no way that somebody can teach you that because it is not known at the moment, the thing that you’re trying to discover. And also you have to learn how to be an independent scientist. And it is difficult.

Okay. And usually, you know, the first, you know, one year or two years or three years are spent usually in the development of a scientist to become a little bit more independent. And it’s quite a painful experience. It’s not PhDs, yeah, it can pose challenges to people. So you ask, you know, how you learn so or how you develop.

So in the beginning in the PhD, you have to learn a lot on your own. So that’s something you learn. It’s a great experience. You really become master of something that, you know, nobody else knows. So it’s fantastic, but it is a challenging. Then after that, you have acquired this knowledge and then you want to apply it and you want to be successful.

You want to make the most out of that. And that’s usually the postdoctoral degree or the early professor. And that could be a professor or the equivalent, you know, and nearly staff scientists.

That’s how people are the permanent staff are calling the national labs. So there you want to really advance the sense, become very good at it, and actually use it to solve important scientific problems. And then the phase after that, in the academic world is to grow your labs or to be able to hire people, you know, students to work for your postdocs or fellows. And that requires an entirely new skill, which is to write the grants, you have to write applications in a very academic manner to get funding. So, yeah, and that is also very difficult. You know, the success rate is very low. Everybody wants to do it.

You know, the standards are very high and that’s a difficult process. But if you do that, you can then hire people to help you do the work, right? So you can get more work done. And a lot of times, you know, the people that you hire are brilliant and you benefit from their, you know, from their ingenuity and their hard work as well. So that’s, you know, growing in terms of being able to make your team bigger and again, the scientific, so in the academic environment, that means writing grants, getting more funding. And then there’s also the aspect of working with other people. So nowadays, science is not one professor doing their own thing.

It doesn’t work like that. Almost always we’re part of a team that do different stuff. So somebody might be a chemist and then somebody might be a physicist, or one might be doing computation, whereas the other one is doing experiments. And again, being able to work with people is very important in science and in everywhere nowadays. The same thing that I mentioned earlier for communication. So communication is important. You know, teamwork. And yeah, you know, having very good ideas and trying to make them successful. So, yeah, that’s the path of growth in the academic environment. Yeah.

Speaker 1: You mentioned like some of the skills that you know you develop and that people are looking for as you move on. So I’ve heard a lot. I’ve heard a few times people talking about taking taking ownership of a of a project and you know, at the same time, being able to take the initiative and themselves look for for solutions, but also not being afraid to ask others when they have questions. That’s what you say that’s that’s an important skill to.

Speaker 2: Oh my God, it’s so important actually. I was talking to some students, you know that are mentored in the company at the moment and they were my students and you them from cune, you see, see the rest of your anyway not only the most important thing you can do is ask questions when good when you workplace. I told them I’m much older than you when I was hired here. I felt embarrassed myself I thought I cannot go and ask everybody because there were so many things I didn’t know.

And I. So what somebody should do is go and ask questions I think a healthy work environment where whether that’s university, especially university, or even a company a healthy work environment. And then, when I’m expecting the new hires to go and ask questions and there’s no there should be no judgment. We’re not expected to know everything when we go to a new environment or at any time. And again, you know, because I’m not that young anymore something I’ve realized is that when I don’t understand something it’s usually not my fault you know maybe it was not probably explained to me, or maybe it might be new knowledge that other people don’t know as well.

So it is very important to ask questions it is very important to ask for help in the beginning. And, you know, yeah, I think another big difference with academia with especially with universities is that the pace and the demand of the things that you have to do depends on you that’s that’s that’s one challenge. So, in an industry, you may have an actual hard deadline, let’s say in three months time, and then everything has to be done in these three months, more or less.

And that really focuses your effort and your attention to this particular task. In university it’s not like that it’s a very open ended work, you know, yeah, very open ended work, which is great it allows people to be very creative. They don’t have, you know, deadlines all the time, but it can also lead to some slackness, you know, to some, you know, lack of efficiency, which is fine.

It works well, it’s just a very different way of working. But yeah, like self motivation is probably a more important characteristic for somebody who is successful in academia because self motivation is not necessary in industry you are forced, you know, by the deadlines and the nature of the work to be much more focused on achieving results. And especially in the beginning, you know, with a PhD can be a very long road and you know, as I said, the PhD is a little bit of a challenge I think for most people, I have talked to or for everybody actually. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Um, that’s that’s very interesting. Um, so I mean that was, that was like, pretty high level. But just right now just as the next like more more basic question on, can you just like describe to me what like a basic day would look like for you. Or basic day.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So like everybody we, you know, I start by. So, yeah, what I do is, in the beginning of the week, I, I try to think, what are the things I want to achieve that week a little bit and you know, you cannot plan too much because during the week more things will accumulate. And then I, you know, if there’s a deadline I note it and I work around that.

So in the week I review my goals, right. And then I, you know, I check my emails to see if there’s anything that is urgent that needs to be dealt with on that time. And around the there are, you know, meetings with most of the times it’s customers. So these are calls I have to take and they’re, they take the time is set.

I cannot move it or the maybe internal meetings and around the those meetings. I try to do my set scientific work, which usually means running some calculations or thinking about the program, a problem or asking people in the company, what is the best approach. So yeah, my most of my days, writing, writing emails to customers where I respond to their questions. Having goals with customers where again we discussed science, you know, I try to understand what is it that they want to do.

How can I help them? It’s often the case that I may not have all the answers when I speak to them, then I have to go back and do some research, read a little bit myself, ask other people, make sure I understand everything and then transmit it in an accurate way to the customers. Then, you know, we do our own, you know, internal research so that means I do a lot of science myself, you know, run calculations, try to make sure I have run them properly to analyze them properly to draw the right scientific conclusions from those. But yeah, that’s the main things it’s responding to emails, having video calls and doing calculations. These are the main activities.

Speaker 1: Yeah, so things kind of like shape, shape, take the time around meetings. Those kind of like dictate.

Speaker 2: Yeah, so I try for example I try to stack the meetings one after the other, and that leaves a little bit of a continue time if I can do it, you know, and then that leaves a continue time where I can get when I can focus on something that’s very important. Because if you have only, you know, half an hour or something, by the time you really get into it and you start understanding you have to stop and then try to come back into it and it’s not it sounds trivial but it is not. And I think that’s the case with most people even for me, if I do something today if I come back to it a week later I have forgotten a lot of all these, you know, good ideas and understanding that I had. So that’s not always possible so you know you have to learn to adjust. You know one thing we can do is to make sure I have to get this thing done by the, you know, before the next meeting starts for example, and then push yourself make something very efficient for 1015 minutes. And then at least, you know one part is complete and then, if you want to start, you know that part has been completed.

The worst is if you stop, and you haven’t completed something because you have to go back to it start from the beginning some ways, and it’s not great. Another thing that you have to do and it’s called prioritization so that means, you know how do you choose what what what work on okay and it’s not trivial that. But yeah and then sometimes there is an interplay between some that has to be done because it is important for the company but maybe there’s something else that you enjoy more doing like something scientifically more interesting for example. And it’s important at work not only to do things that are right for the company but also for you to enjoy it’s important to that we enjoy our work. And one way of doing it is, it’s up to us you know it’s nobody else is prerogative to make us enjoy our work so we have to do stuff during our work that we also enjoy. And you know that’s a great. It’s a great power that pushes us to become better at what we do if we enjoy it. I worked a. Yes, that’s it.

Speaker 1: Um, I mean you talked about enjoying your work. Oftentimes that comes with like, also having a good work life balance do you feel like you have that.

Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think so work life balance is very good at the university. So there, especially if you were you were somebody like me you know you don’t, you don’t really report your writing I didn’t really report to some because I had enough funding you know was successful nobody was, you know telling me anything. But. Yeah, so work life balance I think goes with the amount of work you do you know. Yeah, so we do work hard in that straight.

I think that’s that’s common in you know common is that are successful. Yeah, a lot of it is up to you I think a lot of it is up to us you know I’m not. Yeah, I think you have to expect from yourself to find the right balance. And if something’s not right just to talk to people you know you can talk to your colleagues you can talk to your manager.

I would imagine a lot of places definitely straight here, but the most places would be receptive to somebody saying I think I’m working too much and you know to change something. And they will try and find a good solution for you. But yeah I think in general in the US in America and in the private sector for sure. You know there is pressure to be to be productive to work hard. And if you want to do that, you know you have to, yeah, you have to try to be efficient during your time so that’s something you can do you can become more efficient it is very difficult but you know, maybe some people can work for only 48 hours a day and achieve great things and these are very successful people of course. But yeah I don’t I don’t think it’s for me it’s not the major it’s not it’s not something I think about I enjoy working and you know if I feel tired one week. I try to think you know what I could spend my time less on that thing just to decrease it and I can recharge my batteries a little bit. But I think it is mainly up to me it’s mainly up to the people you know we are responsible for our life that’s the way I see it.

Speaker 1: Yeah you talked about. What is it liking liking the work you do and just being being in a good state of mind on when you’re working I definitely agree that that’s, that’s important. So, just, just as like a general question. Did you have any sort of like a mentor that helped you on your on your path.

Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think so I had, you know, great people who have helped me of course you know, like men, like the number of people who have helped me is, you know, I cannot even count them. Not mentor necessarily so you know my, my professor for the PhD he was a very good man, you know he was a very good scientist and he was a professor in Cambridge so he was very smart you know very accomplished, but also a good, you know, good.

And you know very good human being in addition to being an excellent scientist. And then after that I worked with my postdoc advisor, and he had you know great overview, you know I learned a lot a lot of things from him. You know then from people like collaborated when I was younger so you know I came into their projects as a younger scientist who was trying to grow and a lot of them provided a lot of feedback. So, yeah, I think there, there have been many, many people that have helped me and it is important also to. So, when people give you advice, it’s important to try to take it in a little bit process it you don’t keep everything of course right most and sometimes you may even disagree with that but it’s important to try to see what is it that this person was trying to tell me. So I think that’s something I do I do well, you know when I speak to people that try to understand what are they telling me. And you know how could I use this information a little bit. Not to improve myself to.

Speaker 1: Um, I mean, um, I don’t have many more questions but you talked about advice that you’ve received on the other end the advice on the other hand to give me as like a high school student in the position I’m in if maybe in general or if I’m trying to, you know, attain a position like the one you’re in right now.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. So, my advice is to be positive. Okay, and the reason I say that is that there are, you know, you have talked to many people already right and you know many people, the road to success, anything if you like to happiness is there, you know, a limited number of ways that you can reach that. So you need to be positive, you need to know that things will work out in the end. Okay, so that’s one one advice that I have for you not not to be deterred, you know if things go wrong, it doesn’t matter you will find another way. Um, and so that’s that’s one advice you know you need to find something that you like this will drive you to work more on it. So definitely finding something that that gives you satisfaction that’s not easy by the way and it may be different to the first thing that comes in your mind. It takes a little bit of time, a little bit of searching to understand what is that like. So for me, for example, after I finished my PhD I was fed up the science I didn’t want to do that and I tried other things and I realized I don’t actually like this other things I like doing the science a lot. So you know it’s, it’s not, it’s not trivial to find what is that you like. Yeah, and I think you know, there’s a lot of things you know you, you need to be a little bit brave and you know face the things that are not, are not, you know that you can work on and improve about yourself, try to identify them and work a little bit on them. Yeah, I don’t know I’m not I’m not giving very good advice.

I think I need something more specific. But yeah, so yeah for young people I think the main thing is yeah like you know, there are many, there are a lot of different paths and you will shape your own and I have no doubt about that. And yeah, that’s my only advice.

Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s perfect advice.