Interviews with Scientists: Brittany Berdy
We first “met” Brittany on Twitter while we were perusing the #LabLife hashtag, and we loved her tweets from the lab so much that we invited her to speak to us for our Interviews with Scientists series. And we’re delighted that she said yes!
Brittany is originally from Franklin Lakes / Wyckoff in New Jersey, USA. She received her BA from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY where she researched oxidative stress and its role in sexual selection in the Common Yellowthroat. After that, Brittany went on to study microbiology and received her PhD from Northeastern University with a specialization in microbial cultivation techniques.
After spending years working on the ichip and other in situ cultivation devices with Slava Epstein, Brittany is now delving into the microbiome world; studying honey bees and their microbiome, and how the microbiome is impacted by external factors such as pesticides, and how this impacts the host itself.
Hi Brittany! Our first question is: what was your PhD in?
The short answer is microbiology, with a focus on microbial communities and finding ways to culture organisms that were previously uncultured. The long answer is that I studied the microbial community composition of lake sediment in the High Arctic using a multi-faceted approach. Microbial communities are often studied using culture-dependent methods, like growing on a petri dish, or culture-independent methods such as sequencing the 16S rRNA gene and/or analyzing its expression. I combined culture-independent approaches with traditional cultivation methods, and novel in-situ cultivation devices. This allowed me to compare multiple cultivation approaches, along with which microbes were detected in the community, and of those which were active.
Did you always want to be a scientist when you were younger, and why?
Yes! I have been a scientist for as long as I can remember. I don’t really have an eloquent answer for why, it just was always what I was passionate about. I wanted to be a marine biologist for a while because I found the ocean and its creatures fascinating. I used to love playing with my kiddie microscope, looking at pond water. I loved all animals, I used to catch bugs and newts. I’ve always been fascinated by the diversity of life and how different organisms function. In around 4th grade I did a science project on hand sanitizers vs. traditional soap vs. not washing hands, with petri dishes my dad provided me from the hospital where he worked. This experience, coupled with my father going back to medical school when I was a kid, probably contributed to my interest in microbiology and its relationship to health.
What advice would you give to someone just starting their PhD?
Don’t get discouraged. In many cases people starting their PhD were top of their class, totally awesome students who excelled during their undergraduate years. All of a sudden they are thrown into this world where everyone is incredibly smart and creative and top of their class. It is easy to get discouraged and wonder if you are in the right place, studying the right thing. And then experiments start to fail! Constantly! Science is hard… and students find themselves doubting their own abilities, wondering if they know enough. Don’t give up – it's just part of the PhD experience. Someone once told me when I started my PhD: “If you feel like you know nothing about your topic, you are probably right on track for your PhD and in the same boat as everyone else.”
What did you enjoy most about your PhD?
Learning about myself was by far the most fun part of my PhD experience. I learned that I like to not just do science, but I enjoy teaching, have skills in management and organization, and networking. I had not explored any of these facets of myself during college, I really had just focused on science. In graduate school I started more leadership roles (like creating and leading the Biology Graduate Student Association), spent a lot of time networking for my lab, and ended up being the lab manager. I also was able to teach multiple courses and found out I enjoy that too!
Tell us a bit more about what you’re working on at the moment...
I went from microbial ecology of the Arctic to studying the honeybee… which I didn’t even know I would be doing when I took this postdoc position! I am studying the microbiome of the honeybee, with a special focus on how the honeybees microbiome and immune system is impacted by pesticide exposure. I was just graduating in May, and by August I was a beekeeper! This work has implications for honeybees and their survival, which of course is extremely important ecologically, but also this is important to understand how the human microbiome may be impacted by xenobiotics we ingest in our food/water.
What does a typical day in the lab look like for you?
I usually am in lab by 9:30am, with a coffee. I check emails, and make sure any lab management/administrative tasks are taken care of. Then I usually plan, set up, organize, and start experiments. There is usually another coffee in between somewhere. The morning is usually organizational, planning, or meetings. Oh – papers! Lots of checking the literature and reading papers. Then lunch is at noon always because I am starving by then. I spend the rest of the afternoon and evening doing actual experiments, whether it is tending to my hives, testing honeybees in cup cages, looking at different bacteria, or various other molecular biology experiments like PCR. I am pretty much in lab until sometime between 6:15pm (on a good day!) and 9:00pm.
If you weren’t a scientist, what do you think you’d be doing?
I can’t imagine not doing science, BUT I have interests and goals beyond bench science. I’ve always wanted to go into policy, maybe get an internship in Washington, DC – I want to be able to use my knowledge to help the pubic and influence health and environmental policy. Or I’d go into public health/epidemiology or work at the WHO or CDC. Or go all out in business and aim to run a science/biotech company. My interests are pretty diverse… who knows where I will end up!
Outside the lab, what do you enjoy doing?
I guess I am a typical scientist, but I don’t have much of a life outside of the lab! Any free time I have is spent wedding planning! Generally though, if I am not working at lab, I am working at home, or doing a part-time teaching job. I love my friends and family and really enjoy the time I get to spend with them… I am pretty political also, so I tend to spend my time outside of lab trying to learn about politics and the current state of affairs both foreign and domestic. This is something I also discovered about myself in graduate school, so I have a lot of learning left to do. And podcasts and baking!
What is it about your field of research that gets you most excited?
The potential to solve problems bigger than the project… for example the specific project I am working on now focuses on a pesticide and the impact it has on the microbiome of the honey bee, but we as humans ingest some of these pesticides in our water, and we know our microbiome is critical for our health, so this project has implications beyond just the hives I am tending to. And honeybees are so important in agriculture, if I can have even a small impact on saving them, contribute a little knowledge to help them thrive, this could help agriculturally globally – and getting to be a part of something bigger is awesome. Plus, with microbiology and microbiome work SO MUCH IS UNKNOWN – it’s a blank slate almost.
Which scientists working today do you most admire, and why?
Well, I would have to start by saying my advisor currently (Dr. Robert Brucker) – I took this job for a reason! I think he is an awesome scientist, and mentor, and willing to think outside of the box and combine knowledge from multiple disciplines. I am excited to have the opportunity to work here!
I also was really motivated by and admire scientists from Northeastern where I graduated, and I would be remiss to not mention Veronica-Godoy Carter and Slava Epstein. Slava was my advisor, and the way his mind works is beyond brilliant. He thinks in creative ways and sees the world in ways I can’t even describe. It pushed me to think about the world and problem solving differently. Veronica was an amazing mentor, is a truly amazing scientist, and an incredible example of a woman in science and I have admired her from my first interview at Northeastern for graduate school.
But in terms of my “celebrity scientists” … Bonnie Bassler is just beyond motivational, and brilliant! Also, one of the most exciting talks I ever saw was by Lawrence David, who was mentored by Eric Alm and Peter Turnbaugh (also scientists I admire). From there, I tended to follow those three people. I think what they study is fascinating, and their work on microbial dynamics and succession of microbes within the gut is what motivated me to move into microbiome work in the first place.
What’s your favourite science joke OR science quote?
I always thought the science pick up lines were funny – not because they were good but they made me giggle. Most are not appropriate though, so I’ll go with a quote. Who knows if they are 100% true quotes but I’ve always liked them:
“The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson
“Basic research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I am doing.” – Wernher von Braun
What do you think is the greatest scientific discovery of all time?
That is a really tough one… and I don’t think I can give a specific answer… the original light microscope maybe is up there because it really pioneered microbiology as a science and allowed us to see things we had never seen before.
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Thank you so much for speaking to us, Brittany! Your research sounds fascinating, and incredibly valuable. We wish you the best of luck with everything!
Connect with Brittany on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/brittany-berdy
Follow Brittany on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bmb22
Find Brittany’s publications: https://www.nature.com/articles/nprot.2017.074
