Focus In Sound

FOCUS In Sound #37: Jennifer Brophy ERNIE: Welcome to FOCUS In Sound, the podcast series from the FOCUS newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we welcome a young investigator who is pioneering in the field of plant tissue engineering—a remarkable emerging technology that just might eventually save the human race. Jennifer Brophy received one of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund’s Career Awards at the Scientific Interface, or CASI, in 2019. She is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford University, and is a Noyce Family Faculty Fellow and a Chan Zuckerburg Biohub Investigator. Jenn received her BS in bioengineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009 and her PhD in biological engineering from MIT in 2016. She did her postdoc work at Stanford, where she started looking at plants. Today in her lab, she and her colleagues are developing technologies that enable the genetic engineering of plants and their associated microbes with the goal of enabling innovation in agriculture for a sustainable future. Jenn Brophy, welcome to FOCUS In Sound! JENN: Thank you, I’m happy to be here! ERNIE: To get us started, Jenn, why don’t you give us a quick overview of your field, which is known as synthetic biology? JENN: Certainly. Synthetic biology can mean a lot of different things to different people. In my lab, we think of it as advanced genetic engineering, which is essentially applying the principles of engineering to biology in order to reprogram living cells or organisms to do something new. In our lab, that means changing the shapes of plants as they grow, but for different people they engineer organisms to do different things. ERNIE: I see. Building on what you just told us, I’d like to find out more about one of your major areas of research, which is called synthetic gene circuits. I know that it was the subject of one of your most important publications to date, which came out in Science last year. Please explain… JENN: In that work, using synthetic genetic circuits to control gene expression patterns in multi-cellular organisms. This work is really borne out of the observation that gene expression patterns are important for development. In the 1980s—I’m going to do a little historical bit—in the 1980s, scientists discovered a gene in Drosophila called antennapedia that controls the formation of legs, and stunningly, if you express that gene in cells on the head of a fly, you can actually get it to produce legs where it would usually have antenna. Now that’s shocking, but it’s also really highly conserved across organisms. Where you express genes in the body affects the way it develops. And so we were interested in trying to control where in an organism we’re expressing genes in order to change its development. But it raised this question of how do you control gene expression across the body of a multi-cellular organism? So what people usually do when they want to pick out specific cells within a body to express a gene in is they look for a promoter, a region of DNA in that organism’s genome that usually drives expression in only those cells. And that’s great, it works well, but there are a limited of characterized promoters, characterized tissue-specific promoters, that have this capacity to control gene expression so precisely. And so we looked at that, and we were like, well, we can use synthetic genetic circuits to take a limited number of tissue-specific promoters and combine their activities in new ways in order to generate new patterns of gene expression. So the circuits that we built perform Boolean logic operations. They can take two different tissue-specific promoters, for example, and then say, okay, we only want to express our gene of interest where those promoters are both on, in cells where those promoters are both on. And using this type of Boolean logic, we’re able to generate new...

FOCUS In Sound #36: Leenoy Meshulam Octopus during active sleep video: https://www.oist.jp/video/octopus-during-active-sleep Welcome to FOCUS In Sound, the podcast series from the FOCUS newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we get to know a young researcher who in 2022 was the recipient of a Burroughs Wellcome Fund CASI award, the Career Awards at the Scientific Interface. Those awards recognize outstanding scientists who have made significant contributions at the interface of biology and quantitative sciences, bridging the gap between disciplines, and fostering innovation. It’s a five-year grant totaling $500,000. Leenoy Meshulam is a theoretical physicist who is also interested in biological phenomena, especially nervous systems and the brain. She explores the interface between physics and neuroscience. She received her PhD from Princeton University, after completing her master’s degree in physics and biology at Tel Aviv University. She is now a Swartz postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle. Leenoy’s research endeavors have already taken her in some fascinating directions, which we will hear all about, including a remarkable recent publication about the sleeping habits of octopuses. Leenoy Meshulam, welcome to FOCUS In Sound! LEENOY: Hi Ernie. It’s very nice to be here. ERNIE: Let’s start with your latest accomplishment as a co-author of a paper in the journal Nature called “Wake-like skin patterning and neural activity during octopus sleep.” Tell us about the overall findings… LEENOY: So this paper concentrates on a main finding where we saw that the octopus, much like in other animals, actually has two stages of sleep. So we managed to prove that every about hour the octopus goes into a different kind of stage of sleep—an active sleep bout, where similarly to REM sleep for humans, for example, the type of brain waves and the neural activity changes, and this is accompanied by a lot of color and pattern changes on the skin of the octopus while the octopus is still asleep. And so the way the cycle looks is, we have about an hour of sleep that is not the active part, and then a few minutes bout kind of like REM, with lots of color changes on the skin, different kind of neural activity that accompanies it, and then back to the stage that is most of the sleep. Something to keep in mind is that this is the first time that neural activity was recorded in this way in the brain of an octopus. So this is a sleeping octopus we managed to put a Neuropixel in, which means that there is an electrode inside the brain of the octopus that’s, we’re able to filter brainwaves out of to see what the signals look like. Also to see spikes in the brain of the octopus. And we can really see the activity of the brain while this is happening. So it’s both the underlying activity of sleep and the behavioral aspect of the two stages of sleep, and very high-resolution filming of the pattern changes on the skin of the octopus. The skin of the octopus is normally a system that we’re looking at for things like the camouflage of the octopus, right. This is why it has the ability to change so much color to have these coordinated, beautiful patterns that look like the coral reef that it is trying to match behind it. It also has texture changes there. And we just didn’t know before that this happens during the sleep of the octopus. So there are just these bouts of color changes that happen during sleep. ERNIE: So you were really able to correlate the visual and the brain phenomena? LEENOY: Exactly. So this is the underlying neural activity to this active sleep bout that makes it so interesting, because we can actually look at what is happening in the brain and show that this is really sleep. You can really see when you’re looking, if you look at the plotting in the paper, you can see the immediate, sharp transition into...

FOCUS In Sound #35: Michael Ferdig Welcome to FOCUS In Sound, the podcast series from the FOCUS newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we welcome a biomedical scientist who in 2022 was the Burroughs Wellcome Fund’s first Resident Faculty Scholar. Michael Ferdig is a Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, where he has been on the faculty since 2001. He specializes in the genetics and genomics of drug resistance and virulence in the malaria parasite. Malaria is a parasitic infection transmitted by the Anopheles mosquito. Malaria drug resistance is an ongoing topic of major importance in global public health, where the disease is still a significant worldwide contributor to mortality, with nearly a half-million deaths annually. Mike received his BS and MS degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also served a postdoctoral fellowship. He also did a postdoc at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1997 to 2001. Michael Ferdig, welcome to FOCUS In Sound! MIKE: Oh it’s a pleasure to be here, nice to meet you, Ernie. ERNIE: Mike, there is so much for us to talk about, but I’d like to start with what brought you to the Burroughs Wellcome Fund to be its first Resident Faculty Scholar… MIKE: Well, I love the question, because it makes me smile. I was sitting up there in South Bend, Indiana with the fall season approaching, and going into another teaching semester, and putting in another load of grants, trying to get them renewed. And I was in this mental place of, you know, getting to this place in my career where I’ve had plenty of success and things are going well, and I just felt like I was turning the crank and perpetuating myself, and looking around and realizing, in my business, in the business of academic research science, it tends to be what we do. We get to a career place where we almost are content to settle into this safe bubble of self-perpetuation. And I had almost a little bit of a panic about, oh no, is this it? And it happened to be at the same time I was noticing that—I was familiar with the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, just like we are out there as scientists—had just announced this Resident Faculty Scholar. And I thought, this is what I need to do. I need to step away. I had been 20 years at Notre Dame with no request for leave or what they call sabbatical sometimes, and I thought, I need a place where I’m not just going to go make more versions of me, I’m going to go try to find the next version of me, and sort of move into this later phase of my career, and hopefully do things a little more useful and interesting. So it was just kind of magic how it all fell together, I reached out. I had known Victoria McGovern at the Fund for years. She had long been an advocate for infectious disease research, and she said, “Oh yeah, by the way, we do have this fellowship, why don’t you look into it and see if it might fit?” So I applied, and a summertime later, there I was. ERNIE: I know Mike it’s been quite a formative experience for you. Can you tell us a little bit more about some of your activities during the scholarship? Did you have a specific project that you worked on during the sabbatical? MIKE: I did. As imagined in the first place, I do need to strengthen my program, basically I wanted to expand and extend my lab science. We’ve always been what they call bench scientists, experimentalists in the lab. But I work on malaria, which is an organism that infects people around the world and has caused devastating disease for millennia, and I really feel the need to move my work towards the field. So that kind of relevance and extending. But I’d also really noticed, I do a lot of teaching, a lot of moving toward more administrative roles, and I just noticed that this problem of needing to bust out...

FOCUS In Sound #34: Lisa Hara Levin Welcome to FOCUS In Sound, the podcast series from the FOCUS newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we meet a veterinarian who has become one of the leading voices in the movement to reduce, refine, or replace the use of animals in research and product development testing, also known as the 3Rs. As we will hear, she recently teamed up with Burroughs Wellcome Fund president Dr. Lou Muglia to publish a highly influential paper called Alternative Thinking about Animals in Research. Lisa Hara Levin is a graduate of Cornell University, received her veterinary degree from the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, and completed her postdoctoral research training at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her professional career has been spent in the animal protection and research environments, notably occupying positions as the Medical Director for New York City’s Animal Care Centers, and now as the Alternatives Director for Coridea, LLC, a premier biotechnology incubator based in New York. Lisa Hara Levin, welcome to FOCUS In Sound! LISA: Thanks, Ernie, I’m happy to be speaking with you. ERNIE: Lisa, to get us started, tell us how you got interested in the cause of promoting alternatives to animal use in testing… LISA: Oh that was a long time ago. I was a veterinary student working summers in a research lab at Johns Hopkins, and I was very fortunate to be mentored by a laboratory animal veterinarian having a great interest in animal welfare, so I started making my baby steps in the 3Rs, that’s the refinement, the reduction, the replacement of animals in research, and that’s a style that I carried with me through into my fellowship at Hopkins and later professional roles, where I was in the animal shelter setting, or I was doing research consultancy, and it’s served me very well. But your question did ask specifically about testing, and I want to make it clear that mentally, I place testing, research, and drug development all in the same what I call philosophical basket, so while maybe I started my career in research my field of vision has enlarged to include the other two areas. ERNIE: Tell us how you and Dr. Muglia connected, and how did the paper come about? LISA: I wanted to launch a project from a university, and I met him during that funding search. He thought the work I proposed was out of the box, and very happily for me, Burroughs Wellcome funded it. It did launch, set off from a different location, but the content remained the same. It was to have two roundtables with what I call the A-plus team from different groups having interest in the development, the regulatory approval, and the implementation of new approach methods. We also call them non-animal methods, or by the acronym NAMs in research, safety testing, and drug development. In terms of the paper, I’d been thinking a while about writing an article examining the NAMs and animal research question, and after the second roundtable was finished, I was scratching my head and said, you know, these conversations should have some place in the piece. So I spoke with Dr. Muglia, and he agreed to be my co-author. ERNIE: Tell us a little bit more about the two roundtables that you mentioned… LISA: I wanted to have the roundtables because to me there has been this needless argument between folks on one side who are endorsing animal use, and folks on another side, and it really is that polarizing at times—folks on the other side, who are in favor of NAMS. And in my view, I think this is entirely due to misunderstandings about each of their roles, in the past, the present, and what the predicted future may be for them in advancing science. So I invited members from the eight stakeholder groups that in my view are most closely associated with these areas, the development, again, the regulatory...

FOCUS In Sound #33: Tammy Collins, Innovation in Regulatory Science Awards (IRSA) Program Welcome to FOCUS In Sound, the podcast series from the FOCUS newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we meet one of the newest members of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund family, Program Officer Dr. Tammy Collins, who joined the Fund in October 2022. Tammy leads the Fund’s efforts in interdisciplinary science, including the Career Awards at the Scientific Interface and the Innovation in Regulatory Science Awards, which we will focus on for this edition of Focus in Sound. Tammy spent the past decade at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences as its director of the NIEHS Office of Fellows’ Career Development. She received her B.S. in Chemistry from Appalachian State University and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Duke University. After a brief postdoc at Duke, she joined NIEHS in 2009, where she developed her passion for working in the scientific career development field. Tammy Collins, welcome to the Fund, and to FOCUS In Sound … TAMMY: Thanks, I’m glad to be here. ERNIE: After so many years in government service mentoring fellows in their career development, what led you to shift your own career development path to the philanthropic sector by joining the Fund? TAMMY: Well, I’m glad that you asked that. So actually, part of my previous role included mentoring fellows on how to apply for grants, including the K99-R00. So I was really excited when I learned about this opportunity at Burroughs Wellcome Fund, where I was still going to get the chance to mentor individuals through the grant process. Specifically, postdocs, with one of the other programs that I oversee, and then faculty. So I’ll be able to learn new skills in mentoring faculty with the Innovations in Regulatory Science program. And in terms of moving from government service to the philanthropic sector, I still see that I am working in the service sector and still providing a service, just in a different avenue. And I’m really excited about being able to have a broad impact in science as it relates to a wide variety of areas, both with the Career Awards at the Scientific Interface as well as the Innovations in Regulatory Science. So I’m excited about those aspects of my work at Burroughs Wellcome Fund. ERNIE: So you didn’t even have to relocate, did you? TAMMY: I didn’t, and actually NIEHS is less than four miles down the road from Burroughs Wellcome Fund, on the same road. So I’m still here in Research Triangle Park. ERNIE: Well Tammy, to get us started on our discussion about regulatory science, would you give us a definition of the field, and tell us why the Fund invests in the sector? TAMMY: Yeah. That’s a question I have gotten a lot of times. People asking, “What is regulatory science?” So regulatory science has actually been defined as the science of developing new tools, standards, and approaches to assess the safety, efficacy, quality, and performance of FDA-regulated products. And Burroughs Wellcome Fund recognizes that regulatory science is a very important field, and it’s often an underserved area of research in the biomedical enterprise. And oftentimes what’s seen is that in translating or moving scientific discoveries into actual interventions that are going to help patients or therapeutic interventions, the regulatory science aspect is often what results in a bottleneck. And so what we want to do is actually help to close the innovation gap in creating new evaluative tools for new emerging technologies, and to do that in a wide variety of areas. We call out some of them in the RFP, but some of the things we’re looking at are specifically in gene therapy, artificial intelligence and machine learning, digital health, model-informed product development, and new technologies that might help to reduce animal testing. So these are just calling out a few areas,...

FOCUS In Sound #32: Alfred Mays, Dr. Dudley Flood, Dr. Deanna Townsend-Smith Welcome to FOCUS In Sound, the podcast series from the FOCUS newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we meet a civil rights and education pioneer, Dr. Dudley Flood, and learn about the center named in his honor that is working to advance educational opportunities in North Carolina. To get us started, we will first hear from Burroughs Wellcome Fund Chief Diversity Officer and Strategist, Alfred Mays. Alfred also serves as a Senior Program Officer for the Fund and oversees a variety of significant programs addressing education and diversity. He is going to provide us with some background information about the Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity and Opportunity, which is within the Public School Forum of North Carolina. Alfred, take it away… ALFRED: Thanks, Ernie. I am actually a board member of the Public School Forum. In 2015, the Forum kicked off its sixteenth biennial study group, a yearlong process that involved the work of three committees focused on topics related to expanding educational opportunity in North Carolina: racial equity, low-performing schools, and trauma and resiliency in learning. I had the honor of serving as a co-chair of the racial equity committee. In 2016, Study Group XVI, as it was known, released its final report called “Expanding Educational Opportunity in North Carolina.” It was the product of the collective efforts of more than 175 committee members, and included a detailed Action Plan and Recommendations. The report set the course for the Public School Forum and its partners to continue addressing educational opportunity in North Carolina in the years ahead. One of the important developments was the establishment of the annual Color of Education event, which every year brings together the many stakeholders to address the ongoing issues. Now fast forward to 2019. At the Color of Education event, we announced a catalytic grant of $150,000 from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund to stand up the Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity and Opportunity. The Conway Family Foundation joined Burroughs Wellcome Fund in making a $30,000 gift to support establishment of the center. Dr. Flood was brought on stage for the announcement that we were naming the new center in his honor. It was designed to be a surprise for him, and he was truly delighted. Since then, the Flood Center has become fully staffed, including Senior Director Dr. Deanna Townsend-Smith, from whom we will hear shortly. They are working on a variety of programs, including the Color of Education event, which is coming up for 2022 on Saturday, October 22nd. The theme for this year is “A Walk Through History: How the Past Informs the Present.” The hybrid event will feature keynote speaker Jelani Cobb. To further the Center’s work over the next year, it’s a pleasure to share with you that the Burroughs Wellcome Fund has just made an additional $300,000 grant award to the Center. The Conway Family Foundation has and continues to support fellowships and Color of Education within the Flood Center. Additionally, the Flood Center has received key additional support from Amgen, Kellogg, MDC, Anonymous Trust, Goodnight Foundation, along with additional funding specifically for Color of Education from Corning, Lenovo, the North Carolina Department of Natural Resources, and EPIC. That is where we stand today, and now let’s enjoy hearing from Dr. Flood and Dr. Townsend-Smith. To introduce Dr. Flood, I’m going to pass the microphone back to Ernie… ERNIE: Thanks, Alfred, for that terrific summary of how we got to where we find ourselves today. That history will provide a great context for our conversations with Dr. Flood and Dr. Townsend-Smith. Dr. Dudley Flood was born in 1932 in Winton, North Carolina, a tiny town in Hertford County in the northeastern part of the state. He...

FOCUS In Sound #31: Florence Bourgeois Welcome to FOCUS In Sound, the podcast series from the FOCUS newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we meet a Burroughs Wellcome Fund grantee who is researching issues related to the inclusion of children and adolescents in clinical trials. She has also recently published an important international study of pediatric COVID-19 patients. Dr. Florence Bourgeois is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and a faculty member in the Division of Emergency Medicine and the Computational Health Informatics Program, or CHIP, at Boston Children’s Hospital. She is a graduate of Yale University and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. She was an NRSA research fellow and earned her Master in Public Health degree from the Harvard School of Public Health. In 2017, Florence received an Innovation in Regulatory Science grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund titled “Pediatric regulatory policy: advancing timely and rigorous evaluation of medicines for children.” The award was for up to $500,000 over five years. She has published several studies in the regulatory policy area, and this year she and her colleagues put out their work using electronic health records to track and analyze international trends in hospitalizations for children and youth with COVID-19. Florence Bourgeois, welcome to Focus in Sound… Thank you, thank you for having me. I’m delighted to be able to speak with you today. Would you sketch the broad outlines of the pediatric COVID-19 study for us? Absolutely. This study was a product of a large consortium that came together fairly rapidly at the beginning of the pandemic, so last March and April, leveraging existing infrastructure to be able to aggregate electronic health records across institutions. And not just institutions within the U.S., but internationally. And this presented a terrific platform to be able to look at pediatric patients in particular, since COVID-19 fortunately has had much lower morbidity and mortality in children. But this also means that the patient population that is accessible to us for study is much smaller. So we were able to take an international perspective to characterize the clinical presentation of COVID-19 across hospitals in a number of countries, and also demonstrate this type of large-scale, informatics approach to aggregating data in a rapid fashion, which is particularly important during the evolution of a pandemic like COVID-19. What conclusions did you reach? So we were able to find certain clinical features that were specific to patients with COVID-19, in terms of complications, as well as certain laboratory abnormalities, and we were also able to find that the data quality that we were able to produce using this approach was quite robust. So we are continuing additional studies now leveraging the same resource to dig into other aspects of COVID-19 specifically for kids. How did the study advance our understanding of epidemiological and clinical features associated with COVID-19 in children and youth? One of the findings was that there were abnormalities in coagulation in children. So that is a specific feature that has also been corroborated in other studies. So that would be one specific result. And another one is the complications we saw around cardiac rhythms, disturbances in cardiac rhythms, and also around seizure activity, as an example. So identifying those specific clinical features is another data point to guide further research. During the pandemic, many of the skeptics have been spreading the misinformation that COVID did not affect young people and children. Although rates and severity of infections have been lower, they are far from immune, aren’t they? That’s right. And in addition, not only can kids certainly be infected with SARS-CoV-2, so COVID-19, but...

This edition of FOCUS In Sound is a family affair, as we connect with two members of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, gentlemen who are primary practitioners of the Fund’s profound commitment to supporting science education. I will mercilessly pick their brains to gather their thoughts about the Fund’s activities and the larger importance of science education in our society. Alfred Mays is a senior program officer at the Fund, and serves as the Director and Chief Strategist for Diversity and STEM Education. He began his tenure at the Fund in 2015, and is responsible for strategic program development and diversity in science. He directs a portfolio of competitive and strategic grants and serves on a number of nonprofit educational and civic boards. And Dr. Samuel Houston, Jr., is President and Chief Executive Officer of the North Carolina Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education Center, better known as the SMT Center. He has held that position since 2003. The Center is housed at the Burroughs Wellcome Fund facility in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and is largely supported by the Fund. It is dedicated to the advancement of science, mathematics, and technology in the schools of North Carolina and around the nation. Sam has had a long and distinguished career in science education. Transcription of “Science Education in North Carolina and Beyond” 00;00;02;10 – 00;00;31;04 Ernie Hood Welcome to Focus In Sound, the podcast series from the Focus newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. This edition of Focus In Sound is a Family Affair. As we connect with two of the most prominent members of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund family. Gentlemen who are primary practitioners of the Fund’s profound commitment to supporting science education. 00;00;31;18 – 00;01;02;06 Ernie Hood I will mercilessly pick their brains to gather their thoughts about the Fund’s activities and the larger importance of science education in our society. Alfred Mays is a senior program officer at the Fund and serves as the director and chief strategist for diversity and STEM Education. He began his tenure at the Fund in 2015 and is responsible for strategic program, development and diversity in science. 00;01;02;22 – 00;01;15;04 Ernie Hood He directs a portfolio of competitive and strategic grants and serves on a number of nonprofit, educational and civic boards. Alfred, thanks for joining us on Focus In Sound. 00;01;15;16 – 00;01;16;04 Alfred Mays Thank you, Ernie. 00;01;17;10 – 00;01;51;06 Ernie Hood Dr. Samuel Houston JR is president and chief executive officer of the North Carolina Science, Mathematics and Technology Education Center. Better known as the S.A. Center. He has held that position since 2003. The center is housed at the Burroughs Wellcome Fund facility in research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and is largely supported by the fund. It is dedicated to the advancement of science, mathematics and technology in the schools of North Carolina and around the nation. 00;01;51;22 – 00;02;03;13 Ernie Hood Sam has had a long and distinguished career in science education beyond his many awards. He now has an award named after him. Sam, welcome to Focus In Sound. 00;02;04;03 – 00;02;07;07 Samuel Houston, Jr It’s always a privilege to work with. 00;02;07;07 – 00;02;14;29 Ernie Hood Alfred, let me start with you. Would you give us a broad overview of the Fund’s science education programs? 00;02;15;17 – 00;02;46;05 Alfred Mays So, Ernie, I’ll begin by perhaps going down two separate paths. Within science education, we have formal competitive grants, and we also have strategic and ad hoc initiatives. And down the first part of our competitive awards, we have three key awards that I’d like to note. One would be our student stem enrichment program, and that’s our long standing out-of-school time afterschool support programing for nonprofit organizations across the state of North Carolina to provide...

In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we meet Dr. Laura Ensign who is making important strides in nanomedicine for drug delivery, in a variety of therapeutic areas. Her wide-ranging interests and research pursuits focuses on the characterization of biological barriers in health and disease in order to design more effective formulations for prophylactic and therapeutic drug delivery. Transcription of “Interview with Dr. Laura Ensign” 00;00;02;25 – 00;00;41;06 Ernie Hood Welcome to Focus In Sound, the podcast series from the Focus newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this edition of Focus In Sound, we meet a remarkably accomplished young researcher who is making important strides in nanomedicine for drug delivery in a variety of therapeutic areas. Dr. Laura Ensign is the vice chair for Research and the Marcela e Wall Professor of Ophthalmology at the Wilmer Eye Institute Nanomedicine Division, which is part of Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore. 00;00;41;26 – 00;01;16;26 Ernie Hood She is an associate professor in Ophthalmology, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Biomedical engineering, Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences, Gynecology and Obstetrics, Infectious Diseases and Oncology. That long list of appointments reflects her wide ranging interests and research pursuits, which focus on characterization of biological barriers in health and disease in order to design more effective formulations for prophylactic and therapeutic drug delivery. 00;01;17;22 – 00;01;41;28 Ernie Hood She received funding from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund in 2015 for her project, titled The Role of Vaginal Progesterone Delivery in Cervical Remodeling and Preterm Birth, which was part of the fund’s program to encourage preterm birth research and is now called the Next Gen Pregnancy Initiative. Laura Ensign, welcome to Focus In Sound. 00;01;42;17 – 00;01;44;16 Laura Ensign Thank you. It’s fun to be here. 00;01;45;12 – 00;02;02;13 Ernie Hood Laura, I’d like to concentrate first on your work on preterm birth and then will widen out to include much of your other research. Tell us about your recent study of a vaginally delivered nano medicine method for preventing preterm birth. 00;02;03;11 – 00;02;26;13 Laura Ensign So one of the major issues with preterm birth is that there are not many therapeutic options. So we don’t have good ways of preventing preterm birth using drug products. And there’s really only one approved product on the market. And even that product recently had a failed confirmatory clinical trials. And it’s quite possible that that drug will even get removed from the market. 00;02;26;25 – 00;02;48;25 Laura Ensign And so one of the things that we actually sought out to do here was not just to improve drug delivery. So often the research idea we’re maybe looking at better targeting or making drugs more effective, reducing side effects. But in this case, it’s both that. But then also there’s just not a lot of options to begin with. And so we started with progesterone. 00;02;48;25 – 00;03;13;03 Laura Ensign And because that’s something that has been shown to work, it’s progesterone is kind of the pregnancy hormone. And so we were looking at ways to better deliver progesterone vaginally, which has shown in some clinical trials to have some positive effects on preterm birth prevention. But we figured in that case we could do a more targeted, more effective drug delivery to the uterus and the upper tracts. 00;03;13;03 – 00;03;38;06 Laura Ensign And so but the interesting thing that we found in the animal model that we were working with, where we were really focused on inflammations inflammation as a cause of preterm birth, we found that the progesterone alone actually wasn’t working very well. It wasn’t very therapeutically effective. And so what we ended up having to do then was actually more of a drug discovery kind of biology type project where we were then using other...

In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we are honored to welcome to our microphones the winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Dr. Robert Lefkowitz of Duke University. Dr. Lefkowitz is James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Professor of Biochemistry, Professor of Pathology, Professor of Chemistry, and Member of the Duke Cancer Institute. He has been at Duke since 1973. He and his team pioneered understanding of receptors, particularly G-protein coupled receptors, or GPCRs. He has been a member of the board of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund since 2019. Most recently, he just published his memoir, titled “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Stockholm: The Adrenaline-Fueled Adventures of an Accidental Scientist.” Transcription of “Interview with Dr. Robert Lefkowitz” 00;00;02;17 – 00;00;31;15 Ernie Hood Welcome to Focus In Sound, the podcast series from the Focus newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this edition of Focus In Sound, we are honored to welcome to our microphones the winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Dr. Robert Lefkowitz of Duke University. Dr. Lefkowitz is James B, Duke Distinguished Professor of Medicine. 00;00;31;25 – 00;01;06;24 Ernie Hood Professor of Biochemistry. Professor of Pathology. Professor of Chemistry. And a member of the Duke Cancer Institute. He has been at Duke since 1973. He and his team pioneered understanding of receptors, particularly g protein coupled receptors, or GPCRS. He has been a member of the board of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund since 2019. Most recently, he just published his memoir titled A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Stockholm. 00;01;07;07 – 00;01;14;23 Ernie Hood The adrenaline Fueled Adventures of an Accidental Scientist. Bob Lefkowitz, welcome to Focus In Sound. 00;01;15;08 – 00;01;18;03 Robert Lefkowitz Thank you very much, Ernie. It’s a pleasure to be with you today. 00;01;18;19 – 00;01;37;23 Ernie Hood Bob, your contributions to science and medicine are well-documented. So with your permission, I’d like to spend our time together in this setting on some other things, particularly your book and your philosophical approaches to life and to a career in both research and clinical medicine. 00;01;38;01 – 00;01;40;24 Robert Lefkowitz I’d be a pleasure to talk about those things with you today. 00;01;41;08 – 00;01;59;18 Ernie Hood First of all, Bob, I have to tell you how much I enjoyed reading your book. It was warm, funny and really communicated your gregarious personality, your love of science, your devotion to medicine, and your mischievous side. How did the book project come about? 00;02;00;04 – 00;02;20;27 Robert Lefkowitz Well, that’s an interesting story. As you know from reading the book, I’m a bit of a raconteur and I love telling stories. I love telling stories. And anybody who’s worked with me or knows me knows that I love to tell stories, sort of like your aging grandfather. I mean, you hear the same ones over and over, but at least I always know people to regale with my various stories. 00;02;21;05 – 00;02;59;16 Robert Lefkowitz In any case, for golly, a couple of decades now people have been urging me to write some of these stories up. They keep saying Bob wanted to write a book, wanted to write a memoir, tell the stories. And I always could find reasons not to do it. And I strongly suspect I would not do it. But then several years ago, one of my former trainees, one of my former postdoctoral fellows, a guy named Randy Hall, who had been with me in the nineties for a few years and is now a professor of pharmacology at Emory, was visiting me because he, like me, is an ardent duke basketball fan, and he comes up once every few 00;02;59;16 – 00;03;16;07 Robert Lefkowitz years to watch a game with me. And over dinner before the game, I was regaling him with stories and he started with the usual refrain, Bob, why don’t you write these things up? And I said, Man, I can’t do...

In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we meet a Burroughs Wellcome Fund grantee who is innovating in methods of detecting infectious disease. Dr. Amy Wesolowski is an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. She holds a BA from College of the Atlantic, and earned her PhD from Carnegie Mellon in 2014. She completed her postdoc at the TH Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University. Amy received a 2016 Career Awards at the Scientific Interface, or CASI, grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund to further her work on the impact of human travel on infectious disease dynamics. She has studied those elements associated with malaria, dengue fever, rubella, measles, Ebola, and most recently, COVID-19. She uses data generated from mobile phone calling records to quantify travel patterns. Transcription of “Interview with Amy Wesolowski” 00;00;02;00 – 00;00;34;00 Ernie Hood Welcome to Focus In Sound, the podcast series from the Focus newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this edition of Focus In Sound, we meet a Burroughs Wellcome Fund grantee who is innovating in methods of detecting infectious diseases. Dr. Amy Amy Wesolowski is an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. 00;00;34;10 – 00;01;03;27 Ernie Hood She holds a B.A. from College of the Atlantic and earned her Ph.D. degree from Carnegie Mellon in 2014. She completed her postdoc at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University. Amy received the 2016 career awards at the Scientific Interface, or Cassie Grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund to further her work on the impact of human travel on infectious disease dynamics. 00;01;04;07 – 00;01;24;28 Ernie Hood She has studied those elements associated with malaria, dengue fever, rubella, measles, Ebola, and most recently, COVID 19. She uses data generated from mobile phone calling records to quantify travel patterns. Amy Wesolowski, welcome to Focus In Sound. 00;01;25;17 – 00;01;26;12 Amy Wesolowski Thanks for having me. 00;01;26;27 – 00;01;30;10 Ernie Hood Tell us about the overall approach your research employs. 00;01;30;27 – 00;01;59;15 Amy Wesolowski Sure. The majority of my research is really focused on trying to understand how people travel and ways that we can measure and quantify human mobility patterns and then how that relates to infectious disease dynamics. So that’s sort of the focus of the first welcome grant that I have. It’s really trying to use particularly mobile phone data and other sources of data in low and middle income countries to try to quantify and model human travel patterns. 00;01;59;15 – 00;02;04;06 Amy Wesolowski Then look at how those patterns can help inform models of disease spread. 00;02;05;03 – 00;02;11;25 Ernie Hood How did you use that approach to study COVID 19 patterns, as you published recently in Nature Communications. 00;02;12;12 – 00;02;40;25 Amy Wesolowski That Nature communications paper is trying to look at how we might be able to use mobile phone data to monitor and evaluate different aspects of the pandemic. So in general, mobile phone data is often used to try to look at how people are traveling or if there’s like aggregations or congregations of people in different places. And given that most of COVID is transmission, a lot of it happens in sort of like enclosed places and things. 00;02;41;10 – 00;02;59;04 Amy Wesolowski We’re trying to figure out different ways that you can kind of measure these things. So if you put in travel restrictions, do people travel less if you put in additional social distancing? Do people go to grocery stores less? And so mobile phone data can help provide sort of a real time estimate of those measures and metrics that we can try to evaluate. 00;02;59;27 – 00;03;21;23 Amy Wesolowski Are people actually...

In this Special Edition of FOCUS In Sound, we meet with the CEO and President of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Dr. Louis Muglia, who will guide us through the Fund’s multi-faceted response to the COVID-19 pandemic and will discuss the Fund’s stance on Social Justice. Transcription of “Interview with Louis Muglia” 00;00;02;02 – 00;00;32;25 Ernie Hood Welcome to a special edition of Focus In Sound, the podcast series from the Focus newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this special edition of Focus In Sound, we meet with the CEO and president of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Dr. Louis Muglia, who will guide us through the fund’s multifaceted response to the COVID 19 pandemic and will discuss the fund’s stance on social justice. 00;00;33;23 – 00;00;36;16 Ernie Hood Lou, thank you for joining us on Focus In Sound. 00;00;36;26 – 00;00;47;16 Louis Muglia Ernie, thank you for this interview. I look forward to it and conveying some of the enthusiasm I feel about what Burroughs Wellcome Fund can contribute during this extraordinary time. 00;00;48;07 – 00;01;01;19 Ernie Hood Lou, you were named president and CEO of the fund in January of this year and the ink was hardly dry on your contract when the COVID 19 crisis cropped up. What has that been like for you? 00;01;02;14 – 00;01;24;02 Louis Muglia Well, I can tell you, when I started at the Burroughs Wellcome Fund as the president and CEO of the organization in January of 2020, I had had a long experience with the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I had been one of their initial awardees in the biomedical sciences in 1995. I’ve been an advisor under review committees for many years, including up until I became the president. 00;01;24;14 – 00;01;47;25 Louis Muglia And I was so excited about not only what the Burroughs Wellcome Fund had been doing, but also the potential it has for moving forward as a real intellectual innovation catalyst for all kinds of great science moving forward. And we began a strategic planning exercise at that point about what things we want to keep, what things we wanted to modify, which things we wanted to move forward. 00;01;48;07 – 00;02;17;13 Louis Muglia And I must say, COVID 19 was not one of the considerations in that portfolio at the time. And at this point, I don’t think COVID 19 is changing our long term strategies, trajectories and priorities. But what it has reinforced to me is how important organizations like the Burroughs Wellcome Fund are That can be flexible, adaptable, nimble and prioritize based on acute needs to invest funding in critical situations. 00;02;17;24 – 00;02;44;28 Louis Muglia And so as challenging, as devastating as the issues around human health and COVID 19 have been around, the continued wounds that racial injustice portend for society, we’ve been allowed to have our organization step up to the challenge and figure out how we can have the most impact in this transformative period of human history. 00;02;45;18 – 00;02;52;10 Ernie Hood Let’s explore the fund’s response to the pandemic. How has it affected Burroughs Wellcome Fund operations? 00;02;52;24 – 00;03;14;11 Louis Muglia Well, just in the way we work every day. I mean, we’re a small family of Burroughs Wellcome Fundstaff. We have an extensive extended family of advisors and colleagues that we use our board of trustees to help us shape our mission moving forward. And usually we hosted those events at the Burroughs Wellcome Fund headquarters in Research Triangle Park. 00;03;14;12 – 00;03;42;17 Louis Muglia It’s an incredible facility that is a real opportunity to generate a hub for engagement across not only Research Park but across the United States and across the United States and Canada, which we look forward to doing when times again allow that to be a safe opportunity for us. But what’s happened is we’ve moved to entirely virtual platforms, entirely video conference engagements with our advisory committees,...

In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we meet a Burroughs Wellcome Fund grantee who is not only an accomplished scientist, but also a published children’s book author. Dr. Theanne Griffith has just had the first two of her three-book STEM-themed chapter book series called The Magnificent Makers released, with number 3 scheduled to come out in September 2020. Griffith is an instructor in the Department of Physiology, Pharmacology, and Neuroscience at Rutgers University. She is a neuroscientist with a Ph.D. from Northwestern University. She completed her postdoc at Columbia University in 2019. In 2017 she was recognized in the Burroughs Wellcome Fund’s Postdoctoral Enrichment Program. Transcription of “Interview with Dr. Theanne Griffith” 00;00;02;13 – 00;00;40;21 Ernie Hood Welcome to Focus In Sound, the podcast series from the Focus newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this edition of Focus In Sound, we meet a Burroughs Wellcome Fund grantee who is not only an accomplished scientist, but also a published children’s book author. Dr. Theanne Griffith has just had the first two of her three book, STEM themed chapter books series called The Magnificent Makers, released with number three scheduled to come out in September 2020. 00;00;42;03 – 00;01;22;01 Ernie Hood Griffith is an instructor in the Department of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience at Rutgers University. She is a neuroscientist with a Ph.D. from Northwestern University. She completed her postdoc at Columbia University in 2019. In 2017, she was recognized in the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Postdoctoral Enrichment Program, the PDP provides a total of $60,000 over three years to support the career development activities for underrepresented minority postdocs, rural fellows. Theanne Griffith. 00;01;22;09 – 00;01;24;02 Ernie Hood Welcome to Focus In Sound. 00;01;24;12 – 00;01;26;19 Theanne Griffith Thank you. I’m really delighted to be here. 00;01;27;10 – 00;01;40;06 Ernie Hood Then I’d like to start our conversation by getting to know you a bit more. Tell us about your journey and what got you to where you are today. As both an academic researcher and an author. 00;01;40;14 – 00;02;07;23 Theanne Griffith Well, I’ve definitely always been a science kid. Ever since I was little, I’ve been really fascinated and curious about the world around me and understanding it. When I was younger, I went through phases of wanting to be a vet and then a doctor. But then when I was in high school, I took an AP biology class where I was introduced to neuroscience, and then I absolutely fell in love with neuroscience and went on to pursue my bachelor’s at Smith College. 00;02;08;16 – 00;02;35;05 Theanne Griffith Subsequently, I got my doctorate at Northwestern University. I’ve always been really excited about research and fascinated by the brain and our nervous system in general. But something that I’ve also always been really passionate about was, you know, reading and writing or storytelling. And so I’ve always had kind of a dream of becoming an author, but I didn’t necessarily know how to accomplish that. 00;02;35;05 – 00;02;56;15 Theanne Griffith And I think I’ve spent a lot of time just focusing on science, perhaps a more traditional career path. But then when I was working as a postdoc at Columbia University and I was on maternity leave with my first daughter, I kind of had this like epiphany where I decided, now’s the time. If you really want to be a writer, just go for it. 00;02;56;16 – 00;03;18;07 Theanne Griffith And I always knew I wanted to write children’s books. Children’s books, I feel like, are very special. And you really have an opportunity to engage kids in whatever you’re writing at such an early age when their imagination is really limitless. And so, you know, I started I created a website. I did all of the things to try and kind of pursue this career as an author. 00;03;18;07 – 00;03;39;27...

In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we meet a Burroughs Wellcome Fund grantee who participated in the development of a remarkable new pathogen detection technology that may be vastly important in the detection and surveillance of COVID-19, among several other pathogens. He and his colleagues have just had a landmark paper published in Nature, describing the technology and its importance in the battle against the pandemic pathogen. With this story moving so rapidly, I should include that we recorded this interview on April 17, 2020. Transcription of “Interview with Paul Blainey” 00;00;03;27 – 00;00;33;02 Ernie Hood Welcome to Focus In Sound, the podcast series from the Focus newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this edition of Focus In Sound, we meet a Burroughs Wellcome Fund grantee who participated in the development of a remarkable new pathogen detection technology that may be vastly important in the detection and surveillance of COVID 19, among several other pathogens. 00;00;33;21 – 00;01;12;25 Ernie Hood He and his colleagues have just had a landmark paper published in Nature describing the technology and its importance in the battle against the pandemic pathogen. With this story moving so rapidly, I should include that we record of this interview on April 17th, 2020. Dr. Paul Blainey is a career member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and a tenured associate professor in the Department of Biological Engineering at M.I.T. He is an expert in micro analysis systems for studies of individual molecules and cells. 00;01;13;09 – 00;01;45;24 Ernie Hood He is applying this technology to advance the understanding of DNA protein interactions, evolutionary processes, functional differences between cells, disease processes and drug target discovery. Paul holds a B.S. in chemistry and a B.A. in mathematics from the University of Washington and earned his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Harvard University. He completed his postdoctoral research at Stanford University in the laboratory of Steven Quake. 00;01;46;11 – 00;02;23;23 Ernie Hood He was recognized by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund in 2011 with the career award at the scientific interface. When he was still at Stanford, the award description in 2011 was particularly prescient, as it talked about from single cells to populations using microfluidics, genomics and culture to better understand infectious disease. In the post genomic era. The just published Nature paper is titled Massive Multiplexed Nucleic Acid Detection with CAS 13. 00;02;24;09 – 00;02;36;06 Ernie Hood The new platform it describes may be a huge game changer in the quest for large scale testing for COVID 19 infections. Paul Blainey, welcome to Focus In Sound. 00;02;36;12 – 00;02;38;14 Paul Blainey Thank you very much. I’m so glad to be here. 00;02;38;25 – 00;02;46;12 Ernie Hood Paul, introduce us to this new testing platform that you and your colleagues have developed called Karman CAS 13. 00;02;46;21 – 00;03;20;08 Paul Blainey This has been a wonderful effort by a really amazing team. And so let me start by acknowledging the rest of the team. This was a really tightly integrated collaboration between my research group, Pardis Sabeti Research Group and Brode and Deb Hong’s research group at the Breast. And in particular, I want to acknowledge a lot of the junior team members, particularly postdocs Sherry Ackerman, Cameron Myhrvold and two students, Gautham Thakur and Kathryn Frechette, who made just a special contribution along with the broader team. 00;03;20;22 – 00;03;51;05 Paul Blainey Now the system we put together is a really interesting and powerful fusion of new microfluidic technology and an amazing CRISPR based nucleic acid detection assay called Sherlock. And so what we did was find a way to implement the Sherlock assay chemistry in teeny, tiny nanometer scale microdroplets that are spread out in an array that enables us to read...

In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we focus on a dynamic scientist from UCLA who has been recognized in the past by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and we’ll see how that recognition has had a profound effect on her work, her career, and her scientific contributions. Transcription of “Interview with Ariana Anderson” 00;00;02;02 – 00;00;32;26 Ernie Hood Welcome to Focus In Sound, the podcast series from the Focus newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this edition of Focus In Sound, we focus on a dynamic young scientist from UCLA who has been recognized in the past by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and we’ll see how that recognition has had a profound effect on her work, her career and her scientific contributions. 00;00;33;15 – 00;01;06;07 Ernie Hood Dr. Ariana Anderson is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA, where she also received herbs and Ph.D. degrees. She is also principal investigator and director of the UCLA Laboratory of Computational Neuropsychology. In 2014, she received the Burroughs Wellcome Fund career Award at the Scientific Interface, a $500,000 grant to fund her work over a five year period. 00;01;06;26 – 00;01;29;14 Ernie Hood She was given the Cassie specifically to support her research on the placebo effect. We will hear all about that. But Dr. Anderson has used the funding along with her K 25 career award from the National Institute on Aging to pursue a variety of important scientific endeavors. Ariana Anderson, welcome to Focus In Sound. 00;01;29;23 – 00;01;31;10 Ariana Anderson Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here with you. 00;01;31;23 – 00;01;52;27 Ernie Hood I know you are the proud mother of four children, but I’d like to start our conversation with the venture you have referred to as your fifth child, the free app you’ve developed and released called Chatter Baby, which is available at Chatter Baby Dawg. Tell us about this app designed to measure and interpret infants Cries. 00;01;53;15 – 00;02;15;26 Ariana Anderson Chatter Babies is an app that we developed for two purposes. The first purpose of the app is to help parents understand what their baby needs. Now, there’s a long history of scientific literature going back about 50 years that looks at the differences in infant cries associated with not just with different states. So, for example, a baby in pain cries differently, but also looking at markers of neurodevelopmental disorders. 00;02;16;15 – 00;02;36;03 Ariana Anderson So, for example, some of the earliest work found that babies with bacterial meningitis, babies with Down’s syndrome, babies with epilepsy may show different patterns of their cries than babies who are neurocognitive bleed intact. What we wanted to do do was to see whether or not we could develop an app that would, first of all, help parents predict what was wrong with their child at that moment. 00;02;36;03 – 00;02;49;19 Ariana Anderson Is baby fussy, hungry or in pain? But second of all, collect infant cry data for another purpose, which is to see whether long term babies with abnormal cry patterns become more likely to get a later developmental disorder such as autism. 00;02;50;09 – 00;02;55;12 Ernie Hood So how did you develop and train the artificial intelligence powered algorithm? 00;02;55;25 – 00;03;18;02 Ariana Anderson Well, like any algorithm, what we needed was lots of data. So we collected almost 2000 total audio samples of babies. Now, these babies were either laughing neutral, or they were crying from a stimulus, which was labeled by the mother and also an expert mom panel who went checked it over. So, for example, we got painful cries from babies who were either getting vaccinated or getting their ears pierced. 00;03;18;17 – 00;03;34;22 Ariana Anderson The other cries like hungry or fussy or scared or tired were things that were nominated by the parents. And then we had a mom panel go through...

This special edition of FOCUS In Sound is a panel discussion on career development from the Fund’s headquarters in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina on October 10, 2018, during the Networking Meeting for New Awardees. Transcription of “2018 Career Development Panel” 00;00;00;28 – 00;00;28;26 Ernie Hood Welcome to a special edition of Focus In Sound, the podcast series from the Focus newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this special edition of Focus In Sound, we bring you a panel discussion on career development that took place at the fund’s headquarters in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, on October 10th, 2018. 00;00;29;08 – 00;01;00;24 Ernie Hood During the networking meeting for new awardees, the awardees were treated to the wisdom of four distinguished guests from different backgrounds and at different stages of their careers. Dr. Nancy Andrews is the Nanaline H. Duke, professor of pediatric and Dean emeritus of the Duke University School of Medicine. Among her many achievements, she has been chair of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund board since 2015. 00;01;01;13 – 00;01;29;09 Ernie Hood Dr. Merrie Mosedale is a research assistant professor in the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapy Ethics at the University of North Carolina Eshelman School of Pharmacy. She is the recipient of a Burroughs Wellcome Fund. Innovations in Regulatory Science Award. Dr. Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena is chair of the Department of Genetics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. 00;01;29;22 – 00;02;05;11 Ernie Hood As chair, he oversees the department’s research enterprise, including multiple dedicated research centers. He is an international leader in the field of genetics. Dr. Rasheed Gbadegesin is a professor of pediatrics and professor in medicine at the Duke University School of Medicine. He is the principal investigator of a recently awarded Burroughs Wellcome Fund Physician, Scientist, Institutional Award. We begin with a brief introduction by Burroughs Wellcome Fund President Dr. John Burris. 00;02;05;25 – 00;02;40;14 Ernie Hood Then each of the four panelists will speak about their careers for a few moments, followed by questions from the event’s attendees. I will voice the questions from the audience to enhance their audio quality. We hope you enjoy the discussion and find it a value wherever you find yourself in your career path. Dr. Burris Today, we’re very excited to have four distinguished panelists who are going to provide advice from their perspectives on establishing a career established in your laboratory. 00;02;41;00 – 00;02;46;27 Ernie Hood Each of them comes from a slightly different perspective, and I think that will be helpful to you, Dr. Andrews. 00;02;47;18 – 00;03;09;13 Nancy Andrews So in thinking about what to say today and having done this, I don’t know, three or four times, maybe more, before I wanted to choose a topic that I thought probably wouldn’t come up with the other speakers because they’ll they’ll be able to help you in in practical ways that I may be a little too remote to help with. 00;03;09;29 – 00;03;32;00 Nancy Andrews I should say I maybe this is another disclosure. For ten years, I was the dean of the medical school at Duke. And so I watched many new faculty members come in in that role. And so I know something about it from that perspective and years ago, starting my own lab. But I wanted to to mention something that I think might otherwise be forgotten. 00;03;32;00 – 00;03;54;26 Nancy Andrews But looking back at my own career was very important. And in fact, your in being here kind of taking the advice I’m about to give you. And and that is that in science, perhaps this is true in any field. Networking is really important or building your network. And you do that in many ways. You do that by going to meetings like this. 00;03;55;06 – 00;04;23;19 Nancy Andrews You may do it by being...

Program Officer Alfred Mays Provides Insight into the Career Awards for Science and Mathematics Teachers Transcription of “Career Awards for Science and Mathematics Teachers” 00;00;02;19 – 00;00;20;01 Ernie Hood We are here to share some important information about the career award for science and mathematics teachers from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. Joining me now is fund program officer for Science Education and Diversity, Alfred Mays, who oversees the award program. 00;00;20;01 – 00;00;43;26 Alfred Mays The Career Awards for Science and Math Teachers is one of our more recent awards. We’ve had several cycles It’s being offered every other year. We begin in 2012 and we concluded our last session in 2016. Now we’re upon our next cycle and we’re looking forward to creating greater awareness across the state with this particular award as its title. 00;00;44;01 – 00;00;52;17 Alfred Mays It recognizes the best and brightest in STEM across the state. It references science and math, but we like to say that it’s really recognizing STEM teachers. 00;00;52;26 – 00;01;01;15 Ernie Hood Alfred The deadline is rapidly approaching for this year’s awards applications. Fill us in on when it is and what needs to be done. 00;01;01;18 – 00;01;30;28 Alfred Mays We open up the request for proposals on May 21st through an online submission that can be made through the open application period, which, as you stated, closes September 24th of this year. And we did that in a strategic way. We want to provide teachers with awareness of this award at the end of the school year that would allow them time over the summer to actually reflect and prepare their proposal and to hopefully make final submission at the beginning of the school year. 00;01;31;03 – 00;01;44;07 Alfred Mays We typically ended the application previously in mid-September, but knowing how busy teachers are at the beginning of each school year, we decided to extend it an additional week. So we’re very hopeful that that will result in an increase in the applicant pool. 00;01;44;08 – 00;01;50;26 Ernie Hood Are there any other important aspects of the application process that interested teachers need to know? 00;01;51;02 – 00;02;24;19 Alfred Mays I think the grant applications and in some instances can be intimidating, especially when you’re referring to the best and brightest across the state in STEM teaching and learning. I would offer to teachers that the Burroughs Wellcome Fund seeks to recognize the best and brightest, and we know that teachers across the state are talented. Many of them feel that promoting themselves is somewhat difficult, but we seek for them to do that, to highlight their accomplishments, to highlight the body of work, their successes and what they would propose in terms of having an impact on student growth and outcomes. 00;02;25;02 – 00;02;41;00 Alfred Mays So the grant application itself is somewhat formal. The process and reviewing selections is somewhat formal, but teachers should be able to relax and simply reflect and propose knowing that they do wonderful things in the classroom every day. And we just like to know more about what they’re doing and recognize that. 00;02;42;10 – 00;02;50;04 Ernie Hood So should interested teachers contact you directly if they have questions about the application process or the status of their applications? 00;02;50;09 – 00;03;14;24 Alfred Mays I think those interested in applying should perhaps go to our website and get a get general overview of the the award program itself. And after reviewing the information, share on the website, feel free to give our staff a call for any questions or if they’re in need of additional information. I would also suggest that those interested perhaps visit our website and look at our prior award recipients. 00;03;14;24 – 00;03;27;21 Alfred Mays Our cohort of awardees stand ready to answer questions and actually share information about their experience from the application process...

In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we focus on an outstanding teacher, Andi Webb, who has been recognized in the past by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and we’ll see what impact that recognition has had on her career, her teaching, and her life. Transcription of “Interview with Andi Webb” 00;00;02;20 – 00;00;28;28 Ernie Hood Welcome to Focus In Sound, the podcast series from the Focus newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this edition of Focus In Sound, we focus on an outstanding teacher who has been recognized in the past by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and we’ll see what impact that recognition has had on her career, her teaching and her life. 00;00;29;21 – 00;01;07;08 Ernie Hood Andi Webb is a math coach at Alderman Road Elementary School in Fayetteville, North Carolina. She has 19 years of experience in the classroom with a proven track record of leadership at many grade levels and in different subject areas. She is an instructional coach and mentor for other teachers and has led professional development opportunities for teachers. Andi was born and raised in North Carolina and received her education in the Cumberland County schools and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington with a double major in elementary education and English. 00;01;07;25 – 00;01;32;13 Ernie Hood She earned a master’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in education with a focus on K through eight science education. As we go here, she has traveled all over the world pursuing her passion for teaching science and math. Among the many honors Andi has won for her teaching achievements. She is a national board certified teacher. 00;01;33;01 – 00;01;53;21 Ernie Hood In 2015, she was honored with a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award for Science and Mathematics Teachers. The career award provides $175,000 in support over five years to eligible teachers in the North Carolina public school system. Andi Webb, welcome to Focus In Sound. 00;01;53;27 – 00;01;55;00 Andi Webb Thank you for having me. 00;01;55;22 – 00;02;06;14 Ernie Hood Andi, you’re roughly halfway through your five year career award funding. What has the career award allowed you to do that you would otherwise have been unable to do? 00;02;07;08 – 00;02;29;21 Andi Webb The career award has provided opportunities for high quality professional development, not only for myself, but for my colleagues on our Singapore team. The career award has also provided instructional materials for the teachers throughout my school. Kindergarten through fifth grade, as well as put instruction materials in the hands of our students that they did not have previously. 00;02;30;00 – 00;02;39;01 Ernie Hood Well, you have certainly been quite the world traveler over the past several years. Tell us a bit about some of the places you’ve visited and experience as you’ve had. 00;02;40;03 – 00;03;17;17 Andi Webb I’ve had the privilege to travel to six out of seven continents and approximately 40 countries. One of my favorite countries to travel is Indonesia. I’ve been there three times now and have hopes to return again. I worked there through a program that partnered American teachers with schools in predominantly Muslim areas. The school where I worked was formed for displaced children after the 2000 forced Toonami and I feel that the people there are what I call my Chinese family because the school is for Kola Soup, my bank, the school in Aceh, Indonesia. 00;03;18;23 – 00;03;21;29 Ernie Hood How have these many travels affected you as an educator? 00;03;23;05 – 00;03;44;26 Andi Webb The travels have affected me as an educator by making me much more open minded. I don’t think that I was closed minded prior to my travels, but I do believe that I am much more open minded than I was previously. I also think that my travels have enabled me to better relate to our students who come from different areas of the world...

In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we check in with Dr. John Burris, President of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, for an annual report in sound for the Fund for 2017. It was quite a significant year in many ways for the Fund, where John has been president since 2008. Transcription of “2017 Annual Report with John Burris” 00;00;04;22 – 00;00;33;00 Ernie Hood Welcome to Focus In Sound, the podcast series from the Focus newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this edition of Focus In Sound, we check in with Dr. John Burris, president of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund for an annual report in Sound for the Fund for 2017. It was quite a significant year in many ways for the fund where John has been president since 2008. 00;00;33;19 – 00;00;40;02 Ernie Hood John hardly seems possible that a year has actually gone by since our last Focus In Sound conversation. 00;00;40;15 – 00;00;45;19 John Burris It’s been a very eventful year and I’m looking forward to chatting with you again, Ernie. 00;00;46;03 – 00;01;02;06 Ernie Hood Well, when we spoke last year, you cited the fund’s support for several researchers responding to the Zika crisis as perhaps the headline for 2016. What would you see as the lead story when it comes to the fund’s activities in 2017? 00;01;03;17 – 00;01;30;00 John Burris I think the recognition and we are not uniquely in recognizing this, that there’s an enormous group of individuals who could be doing biomedical research but are not for a variety of reasons, and those are individuals who have only an M.D. degree. Turns out that less than one and a half percent of the MDs in the United States actually conduct research. 00;01;30;13 – 00;02;08;08 John Burris And that means that certainly most of the rest are not in a position or interested in research. But if we can gather a few of those other 98 and a half percent, the individuals who are MDs to do research, we could greatly expand the number of individuals tackling the important questions that we see in biomedical research. So I think the board’s recognition of this and as I said, it’s not a new one, but the boards decision to try to do something about this, I guess I would say, is sort of our lead take home of things that we’re doing differently in 2017 and going into 2018. 00;02;08;19 – 00;02;14;25 Ernie Hood I see. Now is that the support for the funding of career awards for medical scientists? 00;02;15;11 – 00;02;41;24 John Burris No, this is actually going past that. The career words from medical scientists in the most part of those awardees, most of them are M.D. PhDs. In other words, they’re committed to a research career. They’ve specifically gotten a Ph.D., which has helped train them in research. We’re talking about the rest of the group, both in medical school and in practicing physicians, those who only have received an M.D.. 00;02;42;12 – 00;03;31;02 John Burris We’re approaching this also from a different perspective than the career awards in medical sciences, which go to individuals. We felt that the sort of point that would make the most sense to tackle this issue is at the institutional level. There are 115 plus medical schools in the United States, and we decided if we can fund a few of those medical schools specifically to do something with their curriculum, something with their training, something with residence, something with fellows, something with junior faculty members that would provide them with an environment that enables them to both learn more about research and then also to conduct research that that would be the best way. 00;03;31;02 – 00;03;54;20 John Burris In other words, to be greater multiplier, to provide large grants to several medical schools, and then tell them, try your novel ideas, see if we can increase the number of MDs who are doing research that way. So that’s why the program is quite different than CAMHS, which is the career awards in medical science, as you...

In this edition of FOCUS In Sound, we check in with Dr. John Burris, President of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, for an annual report in sound for the Fund for 2016. It was a momentous year in so many ways, including for the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, where John has been president since 2008. Transcription of “Interview with John Burris” 00;00;07;27 – 00;00;39;13 Ernie Hood Welcome to Focus In Sound, the podcast series from the Focus newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this edition of Focus In Sound, we check in with Dr. John Burris, president of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund for an annual report in Sound for the Fund for 2016. It was a momentous year in so many ways, including for the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, where John has been president since 2008. 00;00;40;21 – 00;00;43;05 Ernie Hood Dr. John Burris, welcome to Focus In Sound. 00;00;44;00 – 00;00;47;25 John Burris Greetings to you, Ernie. It’s always a pleasure to see you and have a chance to chat with you. 00;00;48;15 – 00;01;00;17 Ernie Hood Well, John, we want to go over several of the fund’s 2016 highlights, but get us started. What would you see as the headline for the year? Was there one overarching development in your thinking? 00;01;01;05 – 00;01;25;05 John Burris I think, as always, it’s a whole variety since we fund a large number of researchers. But one of the things that sort of jumped out at me is the response of a number of our awardees to the Zika crisis. It turns out that we had funded no one specifically in Zika. In fact, almost no one was being funded in the United States or the world on Zika. 00;01;25;05 – 00;01;58;22 John Burris But we had, because of our philosophy, which is to pick the best and brightest investigators, we had a number of investigators with the tools which enabled them to shift their focus from other model organisms, other viral diseases, other mosquito borne pathogens, and focus on Zika. So in a relatively short period of time, six or eight of our investigators actually had projects on Zika, ranging from one new was looking at how Zika was crossing the placenta. 00;01;59;02 – 00;02;28;28 John Burris Another looking at the epidemiology of Zika. So I think as an illustration of our philosophy, which is to find investigators who have the tools, the initiative, the innovative skills to pursue questions that they not necessarily even knew about when they started the project, when they started as scientists was borne out in this response to Zika. So we were very pleased with that. 00;02;28;28 – 00;02;36;16 John Burris And we put together a brochure slash booklet which chronicles the activities of six of our investigators working on Zika. 00;02;36;23 – 00;02;44;21 Ernie Hood John, what you just told me speaks very much also to what I would perceive as the flexibility of of the fund. 00;02;45;09 – 00;03;12;13 John Burris Yes. And I think probably when we talk to the individuals who receive funding from us, who are career development authorities and others, they comment that one of the reasons they particularly like being funded by the Burroughs Wellcome is that we don’t expect them to spend all their money in one year. So we don’t see anybody spending on December 28th and ordering 10,000 pipettes to use up their money for the year. 00;03;12;16 – 00;03;32;21 John Burris We let them carry money forward and we tell them we’re really betting on you as an individual and we’re betting that you will do a good job in science, in answering important questions. And we’re as flexible as those scientists are if they change direction. And it’s a reasonable change. The dollars are flexible and follow them. 00;03;33;15 – 00;03;42;24 Ernie Hood John, The fund’s basic mission, of course, is to fund biomedical research and education. How would you say that mission was pursued in 2016? 00;03;43;17 – 00;04;24;01 John Burris Well, we fund individuals and organizations, the individuals doing...