Meet Our Lab Heroes Awards™ 2024 Highly Commended Nominees: Aalok Varma
It’s time to meet another of our Lab Heroes Awards Highly Commended nominees for 2024! Our judging panel chose Aalok Varma as one of ten ‘Lab Stars’ for his advocacy for inclusion, fairness, and gender equity in STEM. He received a wonderful nomination from his labmate Shivangi Verma who described him as ‘a constant source of inspiration’ whose ‘passion for research extends far beyond the confines of the lab bench’.
Aalok is a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Loren Looger’s lab at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He received his undergraduate degree (BSc. Biotechnology) from Manipal University and a PhD in neuroscience from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS-TIFR) in Bangalore, India. His PhD was focused on understanding the physiology of Purkinje neurons in the cerebellum of larval zebrafish in Dr Vatsala Thirumalai’s lab. His postdoctoral research is focused on understanding how life is adapting to climate change, specifically, coleoid cephalopods (i.e. squids, octopuses and cuttlefish) and how their physiology might allow them to adapt favourably to rapidly changing environments.
In addition to his research, he has been an active advocate for positive systemic change in academia and publishing, with significant contributions towards various projects undertaken during his tenure as an eLife Community Ambassador and subsequently a member of eLife’s Early Career Advisory Group (ECAG).
We spoke to Aalok about his career, his research & his thoughts on equity and inclusion in STEM.
Congratulations, Aalok! How did it feel to find out that your colleague had nominated you as their Lab Hero?
It was a pleasant surprise. I also felt a great sense of pride and joy to know that a colleague valued my contributions to their career enough to nominate me for the ‘Lab Hero’ award!
How did it feel to learn you had been chosen as a 'Highly Commended' nominee?
I was thrilled to learn about my selection as a ‘highly commended’ nominee. There were so many great candidates nominated for this award, and it was an honour to be named as one of the few ‘highly commended’ nominees.
Why do you think it’s so important to celebrate life science researchers, and what more could be done to show recognition in life science?
I think people often imagine researchers as being one-dimensional people fixated on solving their niche scientific problem. However, we’re much more than that, and at its heart research is a collaborative endeavour. So celebrating researchers and showcasing their camaraderie is invaluable in changing the perception of researchers and hopefully recruiting more young folks to life science research.
Did you always want to be a scientist when you were younger, and if so, why?
I think I had several different (embarrassing, even!) ideas about what I’d do for my profession, but yes, they almost always were science-related. I was a very inquisitive, hyperactive child and I liked solving problems. Being in India, where science is respected and encouraged, helped cement my interest and become a scientist.
What do you enjoy most about working in STEM?
This is a tough one since there are lots of things I enjoy about working in STEM, but I’d say that the fact that I’m almost always learning something new is perhaps the most enjoyable.
Can you tell us a bit more about what you're working on in the lab at the moment?
Of course! So, my broad aim is to understand how life is adapting to climate change. While humans have contributed to climate change, we’re not the only ones affected by it, and the effects of climate change and global warming are felt by all biological entities. Nevertheless, we still don’t fully understand what these impacts are. So I want to study these impacts. In particular, it appears that the global populations of cephalopods have been rising, suggesting that they might be responding well to a changing environment. Coleoid cephalopods (i.e. squids, octopuses and cuttlefish) are awesome animals with a lot of exciting biology, so I’m trying to figure out how they might be so tolerant of anthropogenic climate change.
What does a typical day in the lab look like for you?
I don’t think there’s a typical day, really. I’m not an early morning worker, so I’m usually in the lab by mid/late morning, and then I might go about experiments throughout the day. There’s also lots of discussion between lab members to come up with new ideas or troubleshoot one another’s experiments. Since I’m currently in the early stages of my postdoc working on a topic that’s very different from what I’ve worked on before, I also spend quite a bit of time reading papers, ideating, and writing fellowship proposals. Oh, and there’s lots and lots of email correspondence, of course!
What do you think are the biggest challenges facing life scientists at the moment?
If you mean from the point of view of academic culture in the life sciences, I think it is what the former director of NCBS called “tenure-itis”, i.e. the obsession with getting tenure at all costs, resulting in people only caring about their lab’s productivity and their resulting tenure. This often leads to members of the laboratory being treated poorly, and/or science that is not reproducible. Oh, and the other big challenge all life scientists are facing at the moment is, of course, funding (or the lack thereof), haha!
Your colleague praised your advocacy for fairness and equality in STEM. Why is this so important to you, and what more could be done to improve conditions and working environments for everyone in STEM?
I think I come from relative privilege since both my parents are well-educated and I myself grew up in a metropolitan city and received high quality education. However, neither of my parents is in academia, which made the learning curve for navigating the academic system a lot steeper. In fact, there have been times when I haven’t been treated fairly or with respect, which felt awful. So I strive to acknowledge that people come from different circumstances and do my best to treat people with fairness. Also, good ideas can come from anyone regardless of their age, gender, qualification, etc. so it even benefits science (and society as a whole) if people are made to feel safe and included. In fact, there is some data to show that diversity benefits science (doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05326-3).
Unfortunately, I think working environments will only improve if the change comes top-down. So I believe that working environments will improve only if advisors are incentivised to do so. For instance, lab health and student feedback could be considered for tenure and/or promotion decisions. Or the right to a respectful work environment needs to be baked into student/postdoc contracts.
What key piece of advice would you give to a younger scientist just starting out in their career?
I would advise young scientists to not worry too much about the specific scientific problem that they’ll dedicate their lives to - there will always be new and interesting problems to solve. Choose a lab with a good environment and help foster that environment. The rest will follow.
How do you see your career developing in the future/where do you see yourself in 10 years?
I see myself being rich and famous in 10 years, haha! Jokes aside, though, I don’t know. I think I will still be doing science in some capacity. Whether it is by running my own lab, or teaching, or science journalism, or as a program officer in a science funding body - who knows? A lot can happen in 10 years, and I’m keeping an open mind.
Who is YOUR lab hero? Which scientist or mentor has inspired you the most in your career so far?
This is putting me in a spot, for sure. Of the many, many people who have inspired me in my career, I’d say my friend Dr Mugdha Sathe, who is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington, has inspired me and influenced my thinking the most so far.
What’s your favourite science quote?
I really like this quote by da Vinci - “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”.
Is there anything else you would like to tell us, eg. specific issues or initiatives in science that you are involved with or are passionate about?
I’m currently volunteering for two groups in San Diego, which I’d like to highlight. They are the Biology Undergraduate and Masters Mentorship Program (BUMMP) at UCSD, and Taste of Science. My role in the former program is to be a mentor to some students doing their undergraduate degree or masters degree in biology, to help them with advice/resources that they might need to figure out what they want to do in their career and how they can go about it. The latter is an organisation that puts together outreach events to get scientists and locals together with the goal of making science more accessible to everyone.
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Thank you so much for speaking to us Aalok! And congratulations once again on being highly commended!
Connect with Aalok:
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LinkedIn: Aalok Varma
Find out more about our Lab Heroes Awards™ 2024 winner and highly commended nominees here: https://hellobio.com/blog/meet-the-lab-heroes-awards-2024-winner.html
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