In the Paths to Science Policy series, we talk to individuals who have a passion for science policy and are active in advocacy through their various roles and careers. The series aims to inform and guide early career scientists interested in science policy. This series is brought to you by the GSA Early Career Scientist Policy and Advocacy Subcommittee.

We interviewed Vence Bonham, who is the acting deputy director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and the head of the Health Disparities Unit in NHGRI’s Social and Behavioral Research Branch. He provides leadership for the Institute’s health equity and workforce diversity programs. As an associate investigator, Bonham’s research focuses on the social implications of genomic knowledge​​ and the use of social constructs, like race and ethnicity, in biomedical research and clinical care. In addition, Bonham studies sickle cell disease.

I wanted to start with a question about your career path. As someone who started his career with a Juris Doctor degree, what sparked your interest in pursuing an academic career in genetics? 

I came to genomics through my interest in health disparities. I always wanted to be an advocate, particularly to address inequities in our society. I saw my role as a lawyer as an opportunity to address those issues. So, I made a decision to go to law school at Ohio State University with the expectation that I would work on legal and equity issues around education. I later became a healthcare lawyer as my interests grew in health equity. That brought me to medicine and to my engagements in medicine and research. I started doing research with several faculty members, and I loved it. After a well-established career as a university attorney at one institution, associate general counsel at another, and being on the board of the National Association of College and University Attorneys, I decided to make a shift. I went back and did a Health Services Research Fellowship at the American Association of Medical Colleges. Because my real passion was around issues of health disparities, my research interests as a faculty member gravitated to work around that, and I gravitated to people who were scholars and experts in health disparities research. That’s what brought me into genomics.

As an investigator, much of your work explores the use of race and ethnicity data in biomedical research. Racial and ethnic categories are very commonly used to recruit participants in genetic and genomic studies. How do you envision the future of bringing people into studies if we no longer use race and ethnicity as a way to diversify the data? Do you think individuals would know their ancestry prior to being in studies? 

How do we identify individuals? We all have so many different identities, including genetic identities. How do we help scientists, the participants in studies, and the general public understand the nuance of identity? I believe that for the foreseeable future, we will use race, in a variety of areas, in our society and in science because race is real and has an impact on people’s lives. If we didn’t have information about racial and ethnic differences, we would be missing important information, and that includes the issue of who’s participating in studies. Now, as geneticists, I think when you’re designing your study, and you’re describing your populations, it doesn’t have to be the same as NIH inclusion reports. If your study is studying an issue about genetic variation and a specific disease, where it’s really much more about understanding ancestral background, then it may be important that you frame and talk about your study populations in a different way than an inclusion report. So I think that’s the key message with moving beyond race in genomic studies. 

Will people start to know their ancestry? I actually think we already see examples of that with large companies like 23andme and ancestry.com, where people are seeking more information about their background. Receiving that information gives people exposure to their genetic ancestry. So I expect that there will be more understanding that individual participants have about the complexity and the richness of their background. What’s really important right now is that the scientists do a better job with regards to how they describe the populations in their studies, because of the implications it has, both for their own studies and the implementation of new knowledge in healthcare and medicine and for the general public’s understanding of findings within studies.

With descriptions of four categories of race and ethnicity, I do still think that they are limited, right? Because people are a lot more nuanced than one category of something. I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that as well with other social constructs like gender. Do you also think that is where the future is moving away from?

I think the answer is definitely yes. And I think the complexity of our identities is so evolving in our ability to talk about it in a way that we used to be so binary, and we’re no longer that. I think it’s important for people to understand those complexities.

How do you think your research influences the policy work that you do? And vice versa? How does that relationship work?

I believe that my research informs my work as an administrator and policymaker. It really enhances my ability to look at issues. I see my research really helping me to understand issues, to be able to communicate examples, and to talk about issues that are important around equity. I see my research being really informed by that. But then, it also flips around. What I’m hearing and what I’m learning from a policy perspective gives me an opportunity for new types of questions to ask in my research. So, it’s really a cycle, but that also makes it fun! 

It seems like science policy in the US is in constant flux, depending on who is in power. In your opinion, what do you think are some of the challenges that we’ll see in the United States? What advice would you give an early career scientist interested in policy?

I would encourage people, while they’re in their fellowships, in their trades, in graduate school, or postdocs, to get exposed and be an engaged citizen. From there, you can determine whether a policy shift is what you’re interested in. Your expertise as a scientist is important to policy making, and there is recognition of that. There are always talks and engagement activities. Each district has a congress member, the state legislators, so get involved. I think that also shows the sincerity of your interest in policy to show that you’re spending your own time getting engaged in the process.

Any concluding remarks?

What I hope came across in this conversation is that careers are not straight lines. People can make different decisions along their careers. There are ways to bridge your knowledge to help your next step in your career. 

Breakthrough discoveries are occurring almost every day, yet the policies that regulate the day-to-day application and determine the funding for these new technologies limit their translation into everyday life. As humankind progresses into the scientific unknown, a couple questions remain: how influential are these policies in terms of developing the scientific enterprise, and what are the regulatory steps to propel these policies into legislation?

“This was my second time taking the course. It was very helpful in contextualizing policy for a scientist. Prior to the course, I had felt like there was so much that I did not know about how the government worked in the way it related to science, and the course does a great job getting us up to speed with how federal agencies and funding work.”

Marah Wahbeh, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

To address these questions, members of the Genetics Society of America’s Early Career Leadership Program teamed up with the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) to participate in the “Introduction to Science Advocacy and Policy” short course offered through FASEB. As a non-profit organization founded in 1912, FASEB is the largest biomedical coalition in the United States that comprises 28 scientific societies and more than 115,000 researchers globally. The Science Advocacy and Policy short course was led and moderated by Yvette Seger, PhD, FASEB’s Director of Science Policy, and Jennifer Zeitzer, FASEB’s Director of Public Affairs.

The course consisted of four one-and-a-half hour sessions over the span of one month. In the first session, participants were introduced to the US government; more specifically, participants learned about key national government agencies and the relationship between these agencies and science policy, as well as the legislative processes that facilitate science policy enactment and implementation. The second session covered various budget and appropriation processes that determine and allocate yearly funding for scientific ventures. The final session introduced the different types and roles of science advisors in the federal government, as well as the differences between the development and implementation of policies and regulations. To conclude the course, participants tested their ability to communicate in the realm of policy by drafting responses to and memos about past or topical policy items. The culmination of all of these sessions developed participants’ skills in policy analysis, writing, and advocacy. 

Members of GSA’s Early Career Leadership Program stated that this was a “great introduction into science policy,” helping to “contextualize policy for a scientist.” The FASEB and GSA Introduction to Science Advocacy and Policy short course will once again be offered in the late spring of 2023. Interested participants should make their interest known, as the 15 slots will fill up quickly.

Please contact jvelez@genetics-gsa.org or yseger@faseb.org for more information. You can learn more about the Genetics Society of America’s Early Career Leadership Program here: Early Career Leadership – Genetics Society of America.

By Daniel J. Gironda

In the Paths to Science Policy series, we talk to individuals who have a passion for science policy and are active in advocacy through their various roles and careers. The series aims to inform and guide early career scientists interested in science policy. This series is brought to you by the GSA Early Career Scientist Policy and Advocacy Subcommittee.

Here I sit down with Lance David Miller, Professor of Cancer Biology, Director of the Breast Cancer Center of Excellence, Associate Director of Basic Sciences, and Co-Director of the Cancer Genomics Shared Resource at Wake Forest School of Medicine. We discuss generating interest in research for up-and-coming academics, the resources available to young scientists, and how policymakers have helped direct funding for young investigators.

Dan: Tell us, what brought you to your career today?

Lance: I’ve always identified myself as being a scientist. Even as a kid, I had these tendencies to want to know how things worked. I loved the natural world. I think I get it from my father, who was a plant pathologist. He used Mendelian genetics to breed tobacco back in the 70s and 80s, when nobody was really doing this. That was always interesting to me and probably has something to do with why my work deals a lot with genetics and genomics today. But I didn’t have my sights set on cancer research or genomics in college, so I decided to go for a master’s in biotechnology at East Carolina University. I really liked the idea of maybe working for some company that develops molecular tools for research. But after I got the degree, my career plans changed. And I thought if I’ve come this far, why not apply what I know towards a major health problem? And why not cancer? Because it affects so many people and it’s something that we should be able to figure out. So, I interviewed at UNC Chapel Hill for a position in their PhD program in Cancer Genetics and Molecular Biology. I started doing cancer research and never looked back.

I became very interested early on in genetics and genomics and some very new technologies that were just coming into play at the time, like microarray technology. The whole revolution of printing DNA microarrays and studying how genes are expressed on the scale of 10s of 1000s at a time, simultaneously, was brand new and being pioneered out of Stanford. And it turned out that my mentor had a connection with the lab at Stanford who was really making microarray technology happen. So, he arranged it so that I could go out there, learn that technology, and bring it back. And that really shaped my career in a huge way because it was a very new technology—the first “omics” technology. So that became a launching pad for the rest of my career. Right as I was completing my PhD research, my mentor was recruited to Singapore. Singapore was putting a lot of money into health sciences and biosciences and wanted to develop basically a version of NIH in Southeast Asia. I then went to Singapore right after receiving my PhD and was there for seven years. As a scientist employee of the Singapore government, I worked with a team to establish the Genome Institute of Singapore, and we had lots of great funding to do real cutting-edge genomics work in cancer.

Dan: On that end, I know Singapore was willing to shell out resources to start these new programs and promote new technologies so that you could open that door to start the cancer genomics research institute. After coming back to the states and having this academic dogfight for grants, is there anything policymakers or advocates can do to help promote funding for prospective research over here?

Lance: I think policymakers have done some really good things. When I came back [from Singapore], I was still a young to mid-level career scientist. It was very competitive to get grants, particularly for someone like myself, who had not been in that environment. I was like an animal raised in the zoo being put out into the wild and having to survive on my own—because in academia you have to learn to survive. Most institutions require that young faculty have a timeline for getting R01s and then hold you to it because, these days, basic dollars from the institution alone are unable to fund researchers and their labs. When I was applying for grants, federal grant funding was on a multi-year decline, as opposed to now, where available grant dollars are on a multi-year climb. So back then, less than 10% of big grants like R01s were getting funded. In that competitive environment, there was a lot of job dissatisfaction. How do you survive and stay passionate about your work? This was a big question and chased a lot of people away from academia and into the commercial sector.

Dan: For young scientists starting their careers, that’s one of the biggest concerns to us—that consistent battle, always scrounging for grants and just trying to survive.

Lance: It is apparent that mechanisms were needed to attract young scientists to academia. Policies were enacted that created funding opportunities for early career investigators specifically so that they were not competing against senior scientists. New policies extended those pay lines dramatically for early career investigators, even doubling them in some cases. So now, early career investigators regularly receive a score boost to help them compete with the more senior researchers. This has been very valuable for keeping young blood in the game. Also, I mentioned earlier that grant pay lines were on a downward trend at one point but recently are on an upward trend. This, too, is due to changing policy: the results of lobbyists and a change in thinking among policymakers that more funds, not less, should be put into science and human health. In 2020, there was a significant push in government to really increase NIH and other government research funding over the coming years, one example being the 21^st Century Cures Act. So now, there’s sort of a promise and commitment to increase funding year after year so that the pay lines keep going up to fund research and to fuel the passion for people like myself and my students.

Dan: To wrap up, what would you want to see from policymakers, scientists, and individuals in the research community moving forward to promote Policy and Advocacy changes to generate more funding for prospective research?

Lance: Policies designed to support and promote visibility of the importance of research and its financial needs are going to be valuable. One thing that impressed me, as an example, was a movement called Stand Up to Cancer. This movement had a lot of celebrities and sports clubs and other high-profile organizations involved. When popular culture backs a movement, society responds, and wheels start to turn. When you have students in their late teens and early 20s, who are trying to make career decisions, how do you get the message to them that academia is not a place of struggle and that you have an opportunity there to guide your own research and to make big strides? I think there continues to be a need for the development of tools for students to not only appreciate what can be accomplished in cancer research but also what that life would look like and what the options are on the career level. In all scientific disciplines, there are pros and cons, there are tripping stones and fast paths all along the road to a highly satisfying career, or even the road to greatness. An important question moving forward is how can new policies move this information into the hands of young people today?

By Daniel J. Gironda

In the Paths to Science Policy series, we talk to individuals who have a passion for science policy and are active in advocacy through their various roles and careers. The series aims to inform and guide early career scientists interested in science policy. This series is brought to you by the GSA Early Career Scientist Policy and Advocacy Subcommittee.

Here I speak with Graça Almeida-Porada, Professor of Regenerative Medicine and Director of the Fetal Research and Therapy Program at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. In our interview, Graça and I discuss her draw to science, her current research with prenatal gene therapies, how public perception can persuade policy changes at a national level, and how young scientists can get involved in policy.

Dan: I thought we could start off with a little bit of background about yourself. Where do you come from, and how did you get into the field of stem cell research and gene therapy?

Graça: I was born and raised in Portugal. Since I was a kid, I have wanted to be a scientist because I loved to read books about the lives of scientists such as Madame Curie, Albert Einstein, and others like Florence Nightingale. They were kind of my superheroes. After finishing medical school, I did my residency, and then I completed a fellowship in hematology/transfusion medicine. I always had this dream of doing research, but in Portugal at the time (over 20 years ago), there weren’t a lot of opportunities to do research, especially for a clinician. During my last year of my fellowship in hematology, I applied for and was awarded a scholarship from the Portuguese government to come to the US to do my PhD, focusing on the impact of cytomegalovirus in patients undergoing bone marrow transplantation. In the lab next door, there was a pioneer in the field of in-utero hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, and I absolutely fell in love with the concept. I thought that it would be absolutely the best thing in the world if you could treat someone before they were born, so they could be born healthy and have no problems afterwards. During my clinical work, I often felt that I didn’t have the tools to treat many of the benign, hematological conditions that I saw on a daily basis—there just weren’t any real solutions. I remember the kids with hemophilia—small kids that we had to poke their veins and put catheters through to give clotting factors. The current state-of-the-art medical treatments just couldn’t offer solutions to these patients. It was this realization, coupled with my desire to do research, that motivated me to come and do my PhD. 

Dan: Given that your work with gene therapies is performed prenatally, there’s probably some pushback. In terms of a conversation with a policymaker or some greater institution, how would you have that conversation with someone saying that you’re playing with their genetics and that it was a higher power’s intention to give them their disease?

Graça: These are very important ethical issues to consider. I want to make it very clear that although we do gene therapy and cell therapy, we do these procedures at a time during development that is ethically acceptable. We don’t ever perform procedures during the embryonic stage; everything we do and are proposing to do is performed during the fetal stage of development, at a time when all the tissues are already patterned and developed. However, this has been a difficult point to get across not just to the general public but also to other colleagues—first, because they are not aware that these procedures are actually quite straightforward from a technical standpoint. Since all fetal therapies involve two individuals, the mother and the fetus, our first concern always has to be the well-being of the mother and her safety, and any procedure we consider cannot ever place the mother at risk.

To go back to your prior query concerning “playing a higher power” by treating these diseases before the child is born, this doesn’t seem to be an issue at all if we treat these diseases after birth. Wouldn’t it be far better to treat these diseases prior to birth and thereby enable the child to be born healthy and reach his/her full potential? As a scientist, I, of course, will always uphold the strictest ethical morals. We are trying to offer a treatment option. We’re not saying everyone should undergo this treatment. This must be the mother’s or the parents’ choice. If people want to try it, fine; if they don’t want to try it, there are other possibilities for treatment after birth. We just have to clearly and accurately communicate the potential benefits and risks to the parents, so that they can make an appropriately informed decision. As such, fetal transplantation is like everything else in science and medicine; the community needs to work together to try to develop these treatments.

Dan: And that’s the beauty of autonomy—the patient’s right to choose comes first. To shift, I think most scientist-politician relationships all begin with communication or lack thereof. How can we best illustrate the efficacy of our work?

Graça: I think that as we (scientists) transmit our results to the scientific community in meetings and conferences, it is imperative to be aware that we must translate the knowledge to the public in general and to clarify questions that the public may have. As I am sure you are aware, policy is intrinsically associated with science, because all scientific funding ultimately comes from the policymakers who allocate funding to the NIH. To create awareness in the community—not just within the general population but also within the scientific community and with the policymakers—is crucial because we can’t develop these therapies without funding. If foundations and institutions, such as the NIH, think that it’s not a good approach to treat the disease, they won’t provide funding, the field dies, and then these potentially transformative treatments never see the light of day. It is vital to appreciate that all these therapies—be they for adults, children, or even for a developing fetus—take time. So, I think policy in sciences is essential because the people in the government who are in charge of making the budget should understand that the country needs to be at the cutting edge of science and be capable of developing new technologies, not just in the field of medicine but in other scientific fields as well. To stay at the edge of innovation, money is needed. If policymakers can facilitate and promote scientific funding, that is certainly something from which the US and every other country would benefit.

Dan: How or what would you recommend for young scientists, such as myself and your students, to help minimize the distribution of misinformation, and how can people get involved?

Graça: Maybe explore alternative career paths in science policy for young people who understand the science and who have worked in a lab. These are the people who can help to bridge multiple different fields and make a huge impact. Young scientists need to be the ones driving and leading science policy and the decision-making process with the lawyers and politicians because scientists understand the science. So that would be a way of ensuring that people who truly understand the issues would be able to use media to reach large groups of people, defend science, and serve as advocates for any type of science, but especially for genetic disorders. Groups like this are essential because science policy is as important as science itself, and such groups enable scientists to help steer science policy and thereby take the future of science in their own hands.

Dan: I agree. We need a greater team effort between the scientists and the policymakers. To understand both the language of science and the language of policy helps push policymakers to actually implement those changes through active communication.

Graça: I think people should be aware that scientists spend their lives working really hard to find solutions to problems that plague humanity. Scientists don’t do things to harm people. We try to develop new tools to get us to a better place, to a healthy state, at least speaking for the people who do biomedical research. At the end of the day, people in science are always happy to speak about their work with anyone who is willing to listen, and they are just trying to make a better world for us and for future generations.

By Sharifu Tusuubira 

In the Paths to Science Policy series, we talk to individuals who have a passion for science policy and are active in advocacy through their various roles and careers. The series aims to inform and guide early career scientists interested in science policy. This series is brought to you by the GSA Early Career Scientist Policy and Advocacy Subcommittee.

We interviewed Dr. Sonia Hall, the President and Chief Executive Officer at BioKansas, a non-profit organization that fosters and supports the regional bioscience ecosystem. Sonia is also a board member of the Council of State Bioscience Associations, and she previously worked as the Director of Engagement and Development for the Genetics Society of America. During her career, she developed numerous educational outreach activities, including co-founding Kansas DNA Day. Sonia advocated for policy change to modernize graduate education and designed communication projects to highlight the important contributions of scientists with diverse life histories. Here, we talk with her about her non-traditional undergraduate experience, how her background in business helped her succeed, and what early career scientists can do to get the training they need for a successful career. 

As someone who started their career in business, what sparked your interest in becoming a science policy champion?  

I was a non-traditional undergraduate student with a decade of work experience in business, two children, and a husband. This made the inequities that exist within higher education and the subsequent opportunities that people get to pursue, very pronounced. I was fortunate to land a really wonderful undergraduate research lab experience with Rob Ward at the University of Kansas. I also received a travel award from the University of Kansas that allowed me to attend my first national conference as an undergraduate. These opportunities altered my trajectory. I applied to the molecular, cellular, and developmental biology program at the University of Kansas and was accepted. The business experience that I brought with me helped me realize that there was a disconnect between the training that was being provided to early career scientists and what was actually needed to succeed in the workplace. This realization allowed me to carve out a unique opportunity to create programming both at the institutional and national level through service with my professional society, the Genetics Society of America. I never lost sight of the inequities and systemic constraints that make it challenging for individuals with diverse life histories to be successful in higher education. 

What role do you see investments, such as attending conferences, having in terms of guiding scientists? 

Sometimes, they’re an access point to opportunity. I likely wouldn’t have been able to go to that conference as an undergraduate without that support. I wonder if there’s sufficient funding to enhance equity within the sciences. Looking at the levels of endowments, at different academic institutions, you’d see some disparity. At an institution like the University of Kansas, which has a lot of international and first-generation students getting a PhD or those coming from rural communities where access to science and scientific training isn’t always as available as it is in an urban core, it is critically important to have those types of travel grants at a high enough frequency.

What role did you play at the GSA to support early career scientists’ access to opportunities? 

When I was working at GSA, I founded the Early Career Leadership Program (ECLP). The inspiration for this program was the need to demonstrate that early career scientists have valuable contributions that they can make to the scientific enterprise, even if they haven’t completed their degree or their postdoctoral work. In the ECLP, students had the access to develop these skills, build network connections, and create deliverables that they could then take out onto the job market to demonstrate that they could successfully do this type of work. This raised their visibility and demonstrated the valuable contributions early career scientists can make toward equity and inclusion. Furthermore, this helps make sure that they get that robust professional development training that they need while preparing them to enter a variety of different positions in any of the career pathways that they pursue. 

At BioKansas, that is still integrated into a lot of our programs, but there’s an additional layer that we have here within the state. The midwest is really challenged by its retention of technically trained scientists. We’re such huge exporters of technically trained scientists, and so there is the need to figure out ways to be able to keep them here. If we utilize a community-based approach to raise our academic institutions to better support our early career scientists, that’s a really great way to share the responsibility, while also leveraging the unique strengths and competencies of those different groups. 

What can early career scientists do to get involved or get the supplementary training that they need? 

Students should get involved in professional societies and associations. The Genetics Society of America has a lot of really fantastic opportunities. Whatever your scientific discipline, find your professional society or association. In every single state, we have a BIO affiliate. They provide a great way to explore opportunities in industry and get industry-specific training.  

Science entrepreneurship is the heart of innovation and commerce. How should we encourage scientists to go into entrepreneurship?

Our academic institutions are a great source of new discoveries and innovations. It’s a difficult path to go from that point of discovery into commercialization. However, that is how we increase the economic capacity and the innovation capacity of our world. For many students, there’s a lack of understanding of what that entrepreneurial pathway looks like and what that process is, so early on in graduate school, it would be useful to get students to think from within an entrepreneurial mindset. 

The first step is stepping outside your academic walls and thinking about the individuals who understand the space. There are a lot of nonprofit organizations that work to support entrepreneurs. Learning about who they are and the support structures that are available is extremely important. As an early career scientist, you shouldn’t navigate the pathway alone. Let us help remove the barriers. 

How should early career scientists handle mentorships as they transition out of grad school to postdoc to working?

It’s absolutely critical to have a mentor at all career levels. The number one thing is to know we don’t ever think that it’s a problem to not know something. We should be learning continuously. That’s one of the strengths that we, as academics, bring into the business community. We have that lifelong learning that we undergo, and mentorship is a way to obtain that learning. I have met some important people in my life as a professional since I’ve taken this role that I depend on, and they provide me with a lot of knowledge and background information as well. Mentors will help you decrease the energy and effort that you have to put into identifying each and every resource because they already have knowledge and expertise far beyond what you have. 

Any parting words?

Going into higher education I realized that the system wasn’t built for people like me. I took the policy and advocacy pathway because I found that the way to disrupt systems and constraints that create inequity is by changing the policies and the processes that exist to keep the inequities in place. So, when I was an undergraduate, I committed to myself that I would do everything I could to change those systems so that other people didn’t encounter the same challenges that I did.  

I think the most important thing that early career scientists need to do is to believe in themselves—when they start to get that feeling in the pit of their stomach that they could be making the wrong decision, they need to evaluate it. Sometimes that’s an opportunity knocking. Sometimes you have to explore that opportunity. I just think that there are so many times that early career scientists feel like they need to fit into the box that somebody else built when all they have to do is put their hand in or their foot. You don’t have to climb all the way in: you can create your own opportunity, build your own box, and make sure it has lots of windows.

Bioinformatics—a scientific discipline that aims to curate, analyze, and distribute biological data—is facing a crisis: a deluge of data is overwhelming laboratories and existing infrastructure. 

Biologists, especially those working in genome sciences, have recognized the importance of big data: in just two decades, the number of genome sequences has increased 10,000-fold (from 180,000 to 1.8 billion genomes) and the number of sequenced bases has increased 25,000-fold (from 640 million to 16 trillion bases). Such a rich collection of genome sequences rivals the esteemed Library of Alexandria, a prestigious collection of roughly half a million scrolls established in approximately 250 BCE.

Similar to the ancient Library of Alexandria, mystery shrouds the genomic library of today. Specifically, unraveling how the 1.8 billion genomes encode organismal complexity and their components—even in “simple” organisms like bacteria—remains a grand challenge. So, what stops us from understanding the link between the data we generate and their biological meaning? One major hurdle is both a challenge and an opportunity. 

The necessary infrastructure of supercomputers and widely distributed analytical pipelines for processing ever-increasing datasets are lacking. As the number of genomes available continues to increase, even as this article is being read, scalable solutions are needed. Cloud-based platforms promise a solution to overcome this hurdle and usher in a new era of understanding in biosciences. We provide an overview of major hurdles the field faces and describe how cloud-based infrastructure may be the silver lining for a rapidly growing field.

The data deluge

Biology generates massive amounts of data every year; almost 40 petabytes, which is roughly equivalent to the entire written works of humankind from the beginning of recorded history in all languages. Instead of simple text files, the types of data generated in biological studies are diverse. There are genome sequences, transcript and protein abundances, growth curves, species presence and abundance in specific environments, and imaging, just to name a few.

One major challenge is that heterogeneous data types are often stored in different formats, require different suites of software for processing and analysis, generate different output file formats, and may require additional software for creating human-interpretable representations of the data. The number of data types (and amount of data) will continue to rise with the advent of new technologies. Curating, storing, and distributing colossal datasets in diverse formats will require innovative solutions.

One solution is a collaboration between academic institutions and bioindustries. Specifically, the latter may have established a computational infrastructure that exceeds what is available to some academic groups; for example, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard use cloud-based platforms to distribute data generated by diverse research consortia.

Cloud analytics

In the future, all analysis and interpretation of biological data will be done using cloud analytics. With resources that vastly exceed the personal computer, desktops and laptops are shifting from analysis hubs to portals linking researchers to cloud architectures. For academic labs, this will drive down hardware costs because a personal computer will only need enough memory to maintain a stable connection to the cloud. That means inexpensive laptops, tablets, and even Raspberry Pis can act as portals to the cloud. Academic labs will no longer face other costs and headaches, such as the maintenance and management of computing infrastructure. 

Major research institutions have already migrated to cloud-based architectures. For example, the European Bioinformatics Institute uses Amazon Web Services’ Elastic Compute Cloud. Following increased demand, there are now numerous providers of cloud-based platforms: Rackspace, VMware, IBM, and Microsoft, among others. With the threat of slashed budgets for scientific research, these services are likely to become even more prominent in academia.

Overcoming (bioinformatics) supply chain issues

Despite advantages in data storage and analytic capacity, a major complexity remains: the development of toolkits and analytical workflows to carry out analyses. Let’s say a cancer biologist wants to investigate the genomic and transcriptomic signatures associated with pancreatic cancer. The researcher likely wants to automate a complete analysis, creating end-to-end bioinformatic processing and analysis to obtain meaningful results from raw data. Doing so requires multiple steps and the handling of diverse data formats. Suppose the researcher completed this herculean task by developing in-house software and a data management system. It would be an amazing feat, but how would it help a biologist studying, for example, colon cancer using a similar analysis for their experiment? This raises an issue of scale. Emailing codebases and describing workflows is a solution that can work for a few people, not many. However, platforms like GitHub offer developers a cloud-based distribution platform. Other distribution hubs like PyPi, Bioconda, and Bioconductor further help to disseminate software packages across the globe. User-friendly platforms like Galaxy, the CLC Workbench from Qiagen, and the console from LatchBio help researchers seamlessly stitch together software and more easily share workflows. Taken together, these advances make it easier for scientists to share their cloud-based work, leading to lower lab costs and a more accessible field of bioinformatics.

A bright future or dark days?

In the future, bioinformatics workflows will be available to academic and citizen scientists alike. With intuitively designed platforms, students in high school, or even elementary school, could conduct bioinformatic research. Imagine that: middle-grade science fairs could feature analysis of terabytes of data—that is amazing! For the readers skeptical of these claims, I urge you to consider the history of the microscope. The early days of microscopy required niche skillsets in lens manufacturing and engineering making microscopes a rare commodity. Since then, microscope manufacturing has improved resulting in lowered costs and allowing the masses to become microscopists. Case in point, a Stanford research group invented the Foldiscope, a paper microscope that has a magnification of 140x and costs less than a dollar. Bioinformatics is in the midst of the same revolution. With the appropriate distribution of tools and access portals to cloud-based infrastructures, everyone in the world can become a bioinformatician. Widely accessible resources, however, will pose new challenges.

In summary, as bioinformatics transitions to cloud-based infrastructures, researchers will find themselves empowered and enabled to conduct experiments all across the globe. Without careful consideration of the major problems, bioinformatics will stagnate or fail to uphold the tenets of scientific rigor and integrity. However, careful consideration of these issues in bioinformatics will steer the ongoing revolution toward an exciting and productive era of cloud-based computing systems, broadening the accessibility of bioinformatics research. The future of bioinformatics research is in the cloud. And behind the clouds, the sun is shining.

Jacob L. Steenwyk is a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Dr. Nicole King at the University of California, Berkeley. He studies genome function and evolution in animals and fungi and develops software for the life sciences.

Kyle Giffin is the co-founder and COO of LatchBio, a cloud infrastructure platform used by biotech companies and labs across the world. Previously at Berkeley, he studied computational & cognitive neuroscience, data science, and entrepreneurship, before leaving school to start Latch.

It’s no secret that the unique situation we are experiencing as the result of the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) outbreak is deeply affecting the lives of millions around the world, both directly and indirectly. Scientists have had to adapt, where possible, to work remotely, only performing what is deemed “critical” by a given administration. This begs the question: how have the sciences been affected by the COVID lockdown in the short and long term? 

Trainees at all levels have been negatively affected. Future trainees applying to graduate school may encounter smaller class acceptance sizes due to changes in funding and endowment and an overall US recession, while many schools are bracing for an application surge across all disciplines. For trainees already in grad school, fellowships are offering periods of “forgiveness” due to the change in productivity. 

However, certain social inequities are highlighted by this challenging time. Postdocs ready for the academic job market have had the unfortunate challenge of many institutes cancelling searches and introducing hiring freezes until 2021. Some job searches have continued and positions have been filled, because the money has been allocated, per hiring guidelines. Still, graduate students and postdocs have also lost critical training and tool development in their research. Principal investigators are also affected: the expectation to work from home has certainly been challenging for those on the tenure clock. Furthermore, the disruptions from the pandemic will disproportionately affect the careers of female academics for years to come. In addition to training being disrupted, critical equipment shortages have slowed research. Science is resilient—we have adapted to the pandemic-related work changes. However, these changes have had and will have long lasting effects. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how we work and train in the sciences, but we must not let it interrupt our progress or the support network that we have. The basic sciences need continued support, now more than ever. While the COVID-19 vaccine has been touted as a one-year victory, it is actually the culmination of over 10 years of basic science research, funded by the NIH. In order to continue science funding, we must advocate for ourselves as scientists. To do this, members of GSA’s Early Career Leadership Program Policy and Advocacy subcommittee partnered with the Coalition for Life Sciences (CLS) to put on a Virtual Hill Day. 

“What is a Hill Day?” is something we all wondered a few years ago when hearing the term. At a Hill Day, supporters of a given cause gather with an organization and advocate for a cause, either in-person or virtually, with legislators. This can happen either in their local or Washington, DC offices (on Capitol Hill). The goal of these meetings is to meet with lawmakers in order to get their support for a specific issue.  

We partnered with the CLS in order to advocate for increased funding to the NIH. Our subcommittee advisor, Lynn Marquis, a liaison between the GSA, the CLS, and Capitol Hill, helped us set up these meetings. In our sessions with legislators, we advocated for providing $46.111 billion in NIH funding for the 2022 fiscal year, which is a $3.177 billion increase over the 2021 funding level. This level of funding would allow for the NIH’s base budget to keep pace with the biomedical research and development price index (BRDPI), while allowing for a meaningful growth of 5%. Additionally, we asked for at least $10 billion in emergency relief for NIH, an amount that is provided in the Research Investment to Spark the Economy Act or the RISE Act. 

Below, we share our experiences with our respective representatives. 

Lucero Rogel:  

For our Capitol Hill Day, I met with a health policy adviser for Senator Padilla (D-CA) and a legislative correspondent for Senator Feinstein (D-CA). For this meeting, my fellow peer, Nathaniel and our subcommittee mentor, Lynn Marquis also attended. As a first-time participant, I was both anxious and excited. I didn’t know what to expect or if I had prepared enough. At the same time, I was eager to advocate for science funding and make a strong case for why continued support of the NIH is important. 

As soon as I joined the first meeting via zoom, my nervousness slipped away, as the staff member was very welcoming and approachable. As we discussed our research and experiences as early career scientists (especially during these COVID times), I saw that the staff member was attentive and interested in understanding our perspectives. He was also knowledgeable about the issues we discussed, which was refreshing. I left the first meeting feeling confident and ready to tackle the next one. 

Our second meeting was held over a conference call, and although the staff member was responsive, we struggled to assess their engagement level. The meeting felt somewhat rushed, but, nevertheless, we were able to advocate for increased NIH funding and for use of RISE Act emergency relief funds to protect vital, ongoing research projects affected by the lab shutdowns. Overall, this experience was rewarding and has given me confidence to speak about issues important to my communities and to build relationships with the offices of my representatives. 

Nathaniel Noblett: 

I was nervous going into my Hill Day experience, as I do not work at an American institution and I have not had the chance to advocate for science funding to legislators prior to this. For the Hill Day, I partnered with Lucero for two meetings with congressional representatives from California. Given how busy senators usually are, we met with legislative aides, who were knowledgeable about health care legislation. Each meeting took approximately 20 to 30 minutes, during which I talked about my work and some of the problems that the ongoing pandemic has caused for early career researchers, and advocated for NIH funding. 

The conversations went well, with a few questions on either side. Most of the legislators, while understanding, were unaware of some issues, such as how several months of disruptions can lead to delays in careers for early career researchers. I was also able to bring up some of my colleagues’ issues, such as the impact of travel restrictions on conference attendance and collaborations. Sharing these issues helped me to support my colleagues in a tangible way. After the meetings I sent out two follow-up emails restating our position on NIH funding and was pleasantly surprised to get a short reply thanking me from one of the offices.  

Overall, I feel that that the experience was a great opportunity to share how important continued NIH funding as well as COVID relief is to the work of graduate students. I would encourage anyone who is interested to sign up for a future Hill Day. Researchers at different stages of their careers have faced some unique challenges in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, making it important that diverse voices from the research community get to speak out. If I could have changed anything in a future Hill Day that I may participate in, I would hope that the meetings could be conducted in person or on Zoom with video function. The second congressional meeting took place over a conference call, which made communicating our experiences difficult. 

Marah Wahbeh: 

Participating in my first ever Hill Day was a fun and enriching experience. As a scientist and graduate student who is interested in science policy, I have become increasingly aware of the impact of politics on science during the last few years. Through participating in Hill Day, I got the opportunity to be an active participant in advocating for and shaping policies that have implications for science funding and early career scientists.  

My Hill Day consisted of three meetings with three different congressional offices in Maryland. During the meetings, I shared how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the scientific community, emphasizing its impact on early career scientists. Impacts include the extended shutdowns of labs, the slow return to work, as well as disruptions to the timelines of graduation and post-graduation plans. In sharing these experiences, I highlighted the need for an annual increase in research funding to support scientific research as well as additional COVID relief funding to alleviate the impact of the pandemic on the science community, especially on those who are most vulnerable.  

The congressional staff I met with were very understanding and supportive. They acknowledged that the pandemic has made a clear impact on scientists at all career stages and how that can be detrimental to the growth of scientific research.    

Through this experience I learned that, as students, we have the power to make an impact beyond what we do in the lab. Advocating for our needs to those who make policies is important—it is not as intimidating or difficult as I had anticipated it would be. I am excited to continue making the voices of early career scientists heard, advocating for scientific research, and for future Hill Days! 

Balint Kacsoh:  

I was quite apprehensive about participating in a Hill Day at first–I have no experience in speaking with politicians and had no idea of what to expect. Would I meet with the actual lawmaker? A random aide? Would they care about what I said? Why would they care? Then my cynicism came into play. Would they only pretend to care to get a vote? Would there be any follow-up? Would they engage? What is the point of this? Luckily, for the most part, this experience felt productive and illuminating. 

Let me begin by saying I met with aides to the lawmakers. Senators and representatives are indeed often too busy to meet with constituents. However, several of the aides I spoke with were very helpful. In speaking with representatives from both NJ (where I live), and PA (where I work), I was able to actively advocate for basic science research by informing the aides of the effect of the lockdown on research. For example, many lawmakers assumed we lost only a few months’ time, when in reality, many of us have lost years from this delay–animals had to be sacked, reagents not made, aging experiments stopped, and so forth, causing long term delays that extend to a post vaccination era. Furthermore, many aides/lawmakers were unaware of the unavailability of standard, day-to-day reagents such as pipette tips and gloves, causing further work delays.

Some of our conversations with aides lasted our whole allotted 30 minutes, while others concluded in less than 15. These patterns generally synchronized with the interest and engagement of the aide–some were there to listen and help, others were there to get information and get out. This came across in my follow-up emails to the aides–I thanked them for their time and re-stated what we were advocating for. I heard back from most of the aides–the ones that engaged in our conversations, but not all. The effect of this is simple: those that engage have more aligned interests than those who did not. Thus, I know who I will be supporting the next election.  

My take-away from this experience is that engagement in the political forum is essential for scientists. We cannot and should not expect lawmakers to be informed on what we need for our work. By advocating for what we need, proposals and bills can be better tailored to fit what the scientific community needs. I hope I made a difference with this Hill Day and I look forward to the next one.  

Katie Maniates: 

I’m no stranger to making phone calls or sending emails to my elected representatives but I’d never had an opportunity to participate in a Hill Day where I actually talked to people involved in making the legislative decisions that impact my life and livelihood. The Hill Day that the CLS set up for us was virtual due to COVID-19 which proved to be both a benefit and a detriment. On the one hand, I didn’t have to take time out of the lab to travel to Washington, DC, however, it is inherently more difficult to have quality conversations in Zoom meetings.  

Overall, this was a fulfilling experience. I recently moved to New Jersey for a postdoc position and was able to share with the members of the offices of my New Jersey elected officials why increasing research funding is essential. Since Balint also lives in New Jersey, we both shared the large impact that COVID-19 has had on fundamental research. Sharing our firsthand experiences felt like a tangible way to advocate for NIH funding in a system where it can be difficult for early career researchers’ voices to be heard. 

The legislative aides that I engaged with were largely interested in hearing what we had to say. These meetings did make it clear that as scientists, we’re often not engaged in the process of developing policies which directly impact us. One example of this was when we encountered acronyms and jargon that our partners at CLS would have to translate for us. This was an illuminating experience, and I hope to participate in additional Hill Days (both virtual and in-person!) as they become available.  

About the Authors:

Balint Kacsoh is a co-chair of the Early Career Scientist Policy and Advocacy and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Balint is passionate about science communication and science policy communication to members of the community outside of the scientific field.

Katherine Maniates is a co-chair of the Early Career Leadership Program Policy and Advocacy Subcommittee and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Waksman Institute at Rutgers University studying the genetic and molecular underpinnings of fertilization. She is committed to demystifying how science policy decisions are made and connecting scientists with policy and advocacy initiatives. 

Nathaniel Noblett is a member of the Early Career Scientist Policy and Advocacy Subcommittee and a senior PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa. He is currently researching neurodevelopment in the C. elegans embryo and pursuing his interest in using science policy to make research more equitable, open, and sustainable.

Lucero Rogel is a member of the Early Career Policy and Advocacy Subcommittee and a PhD candidate in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University. She enjoys learning about different scientific fields and hopes to one day use her scientific background to inform policy. 

Marah Wahbeh is a member of the Early Career Scientist Policy and Advocacy Subcommittee and a 5th year PhD candidate in Human Genetics at Johns Hopkins. She works in the lab of Dimitri Avramopoulos where she studies schizophrenia genetic risk variants in stem cells.

Our safety and prosperity are more dependent than ever on scientific breakthroughs. Medical advances like vaccines, rapid diagnostics, and new drugs all require a robust and innovative STEM workforce, as do other endeavors that hinge on genetic research, including agriculture, biotechnology, and conservation. The contributions of immigrant and visiting scientists in the US have substantially advanced the research enterprise in this country—and therefore the nation as a whole.

It is clearly in the US national interest to continue to hire international scientists. The US reaps the benefit of their creativity, talent, and hard work. If this country does not continue to hire them, other countries will reap those benefits instead. Yet, on June 22, 2020, President Trump issued an executive order banning individuals from entering the US under certain nonimmigrant visa classes, effective through the end of the year. Among those affected are postdoctoral researchers, university faculty, and industry scientists who are currently outside the country and seeking an H1-B visa. It does not affect researchers already in the US on June 24, 2020, nor does it apply to those who are overseas but have a valid H1-B visa stamp. Unfortunately, it does affect scientists who have been trapped abroad waiting for US consulates to reopen to process their H1-B applications and renewals.

The new ban is an extension of an order from April 22, 2020, which suspended the approval of new green cards issued outside the US. Another proclamation from May 29, 2020, bars entry for Chinese graduate students and visiting researchers with ties to institutions affiliated with the Chinese military. It also follows reports that the Trump administration is considering restrictions on the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, which allows international students to remain in the US temporarily after graduation to complete their training, for example as a postdoctoral researcher.

As the Executive Committee of the GSA Board of Directors, we are concerned that these actions are undermining scientific progress and making it even more difficult to accelerate the innovation that is sorely needed in these challenging times. As scientists, we are also concerned for the wellbeing of our colleagues and their families. Such restrictions not only block researchers from entering the country, they also place huge burdens of uncertainty and stress on international researchers already at work in the US.

Although the new restrictions were announced as measures to help the US labor market, they will not create new research jobs for US citizens. Institutions are already incentivized to hire US citizens over foreign scientists by existing labor, immigration, and funding rules. International scientists are hired generally when no similarly qualified US citizen is available, and they are paid the same wages as similarly qualified Americans.

The rationale for the ban also fails to acknowledge the unique importance of international scientific researchers to the economy. Scientific research and technological innovation in the US drives its economic productivity. Part of that success has been due to this country’s ability to attract the best scientists in the world. These highly-trained and skilled STEM workers advance science and stimulate the economy through their discoveries.

Recognizing both the economic and health benefits of biomedical research, US policymakers have long provided bipartisan support for funding the National Institutes of Health and other federal research agencies. These efforts will be squandered if the US research enterprise is no longer able to recruit the most qualified graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, technicians, staff scientists, and group leaders.

In 2017, nearly a third of those in the US-trained doctoral workforce in academia were born overseas. Even when these researchers leave the US, they continue to benefit this country and science as a whole through the strong intellectual links they forge and the collaborations they seed.

The GSA joins many other scientific organizations in opposing the new executive order and other policies that erode the norm of international collaboration in science. We will continue to monitor proposed legislation and executive orders to keep the GSA community informed of any developments.

We urge our colleagues to support researchers affected by these restrictions in your own labs and institutions. Make sure they have access to expert advice on their visa options. Provide flexibility in their job offers. Understand that they have additional demands on their time and energy. Recognize the stress they are experiencing. Ask what kind of help they need.

If you are an immigrant or non-immigrant scientist, or if your research involves international collaboration, consider sharing your story at the AAAS Science Without Borders website. Or email admin@genetics-gsa.org to propose a guest post for publication on this blog. Personal stories of how policy impacts science and science impacts society are among the most effective ways to communicate exactly what is at stake when we close our borders to researchers.

Executive Committee, on behalf of the Board of Directors

Denise Montell President

Hugo Bellen Vice-President

Terry Magnuson Immediate Past President

Erika Matunis Secretary

Mike Buszczak Treasurer

Swathi Arur At-Large Director

Guest post by Giovanna Collu.

Are you planning a visit to Capitol Hill to advocate for science? We asked Giovanna Collu, former Co-Chair of the Early Career Scientist Policy Subcommittee, to discuss the lessons she learned representing GSA at a Hill Day organized by the Federation of American Societies For Experimental Biology (FASEB).  As well as representing GSA, Giovanna has also represented the American Physiological Society as an Early Career Advocacy Fellow.

What is the key for a successful visit to Capitol Hill?

Preparation is important—both in terms of understanding your audience and practicing what you want to say to them. Begin by researching the lawmakers whose office you will visit. You can do this by checking their committee assignment, which will tell you the areas over which they have the most influence. You can also look at their published positions on specific issues and learn more throughout the year by reading district newsletters and attending town halls or other public events.  

You’ll need to prepare an elevator pitch about your research. Depending on the availability of office staffers, you might not speak with someone whose background is in science, so you should prepare a brief description of your research that is understandable to non-scientists. Try to focus on the impact of your research and the reasons why you are working on this project rather than the technical details—you want your enthusiasm for the topic to come across. Your elevator pitch should set you up so that it’s clear you have the expertise to make an informed and reasonable request. Make sure that you have a specific ‘ask’; if you are working with an organization such as FASEB, they may provide you with specific language. On our visit, it was to include a $2 billion raise for NIH in the final fiscal year 2018 omnibus appropriations bill.

Why is this preparation important?

Knowing the background of the people you will meet with enables you to tailor your message to be most persuasive. Ideally, you want to present your request as the solution to a common problem, which means you need to try and frame your concern in a way that is appropriate to each individual. For each office that you visit, you might need to have different arguments, or at least place a different emphasis on those arguments, in order to better frame your request. The better prepared you are the more professional you will seem, which will give added weight to your message.

Tell us a little about your recent visit to the Hill.

The visit was organized by FASEB, who provided training and informational materials to leave with each office. As co-chairs of the ECS Policy Sub-committee, Emily Lescak and I represented GSA. It was notable that we were the only early career scientists to attend; it is great to be part of a society that puts trust in early career scientists!

We were grouped by region and, along with four other scientists, I visited the offices of New York’s 6th, 12th, 13th, and 14th districts, along with that of Senator Schumer. Our requests for increases in research funding for fiscal year 2018 were warmly received, and we were often asked what else they could do to help. Being part of a diverse group of advocates from different backgrounds and a mix of public and private universities and medical schools allowed us to present a range of examples for why federal funding for research is important. For instance, we explained that NSF funding supports infrastructure, which brings resources to local underserved communities and enhances educational opportunities. This broad range of experiences can help to avoid the appearance of self-interest in asking for more funding for your own field specifically and demonstrates the broader impact of research dollars.

What if you are visiting an office in a state whose economy isn’t as dependent on scientific research?

It’s helpful to use  FASEB’s factsheets that show the amount of research funding coming into each district; even if the state economy isn’t heavily reliant on research, there might still be a significant contribution in specific areas. Beyond the dollar amount, you can tell the story of how research funding supports the whole scientific enterprise—research grants and overheads contribute to salary for technical and administrative support, often from the local area, and can allow institutions to engage with the local community through outreach efforts. Examples from your own lab can help to illustrate the point. Many people outside of academia don’t realize that individual labs have a lot in common with small businesses and that loss of a grant or unpredictable future funding can lead to job losses and increased staff turnover.

There are also specific funding mechanisms that are designed to build research capacity in states with historically low levels of NIH funding, like the Institutional Development Award (IDeA) program, for example. If you live in one of these states, you can discuss the benefits of these federal programs with your Member of Congress.

Generally speaking, there is widespread and bipartisan support for biomedical research. Speaking about the broader impact of your work in terms of understanding basic biological processes, as well as any medical, industrial, or agricultural implications, can be another good starting point.  

What are key advocacy areas that you’d encourage scientists to discuss?

The meetings provide an opportunity to talk about issues that scientists face, including uncertainty around future increases in federal research funding. The sustainability of the research enterprise is important for researchers of all stages, but for many early career scientists, unpredictability is a key deciding factor in choosing to pursue other career options. The long-term effect of uncertainty on the composition of the biomedical workforce needs to be communicated to lawmakers. Personal stories from early career scientists can be powerful in explaining the barriers to entering academia or receiving training for non-academic careers.

As a society, GSA has many members working with experimental organisms. Our community must advocate for continued funding of research using these organisms. Part of that advocacy involves explaining the breakthroughs in basic science and biomedicine that are based on discoveries made using these organisms.    

What were the greatest benefits, to you as a professional, that came from your visit?

Being part of a diverse group of scientists gave me the opportunity to learn about all the different ways that federal research funding supports our local community. Overall, I found Hill Day to be an equalizing experience—early career scientists are just as able to advocate effectively as senior faculty. We should have more students and postdocs involved in advocacy activities, especially as we are the ones entering the scientific professions and will be the workforce of the future. Moreover, many of the challenges faced by early career scientists will be different from those faced by more senior faculty. Our advocacy needs to be as diverse as our community. Everyone brings a different and compelling perspective to share!

About the Author:

Giovanna Collu is a former co-chair of the Early Career Scientist Policy Committee and a postdoctoral fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Giovanna’s goal is to increase advocacy opportunities for early career scientists with a focus on diversity and inclusion.

Guest authors Sanjai Patel and Andreas Prokop explain why school biology lessons are important places to advocate fundamental biomedical research, and they present strategies developed by the Manchester Fly Facility to bring Drosophila research into primary and secondary classrooms.

The need for fundamental biology research has perhaps never been greater than today, yet the conditions for meaningful biology research are in dire straits (e.g. 15; 5; 46; 42; 23; 25; 16; 12; bulliedintobadscience.org). Rectifying this situation requires science communication (scicomm) based on genuine long-term commitment paired with clever, engaging, and impactful strategies and narratives — aspiring to reach out to relevant target audiences and eventually also convince decision and policy makers.

Today’s school pupils will shape the future of our society. They are therefore a highly relevant audience for scientists who want to have a lasting impact on public support for fundamental research and science-backed policy. There is also clear evidence that experiences in early life impact later attitudes and decision making (1; 6; 17). Importantly, scientists working in fundamental biomedical research have the advantage that their area of expertise tends to be closely related to topics taught in school biology lessons. This provides excellent opportunities to collaborate with teachers in order to improve lesson content and the pupils’ experience of science.

I regularly encounter long-term retention of school experiences when talking with visitors at science fairs about Drosophila research and its importance (36); those who have seen Drosophila in schools, even decades ago, often want to share this experience with me and tend to engage more openly in dialogue from the start. Therefore, engaging with schools should be a no-brainer for scientists with a long-term vision, and we provide here some insights into the school work of the “Manchester Fly Facility” (ManFly) initiative, as an example that readers might find helpful.

Aims of the “Manchester Fly Facility” scicomm initiative

To our knowledge, the Manchester Fly Facility (ManFly) is the only long-term initiative dedicated to communicating and advocating for Drosophila research, alongside more research-oriented initiatives such as DrosAfrica (22; 44)and partly also TReND in Africa. Primarily driven by the two authors of this article, ManFly was launched in 2011 and has gradually expanded into six main areas of activity that reach a wide spectrum of audiences (26b; 27). These include:

• the development of resources for fly practical training;
• presentations at science fairs;
• science fair organization (e.g. the “Brain Box” event with over 5K visitors; 37);
• the making of educational movies (19);
• school engagement (see below); and
• encouraging other drosophilists and teachers to adopt our scicomm ideas and resources (see below).

Two of these ManFly activities stand out for their potential impact. Firstly, the fly training resources have had a major impact worldwide, with ~100,000 views and ~31,000 downloads across the four dissemination platforms (8; 28;29;41). Secondly, our school work has had the strongest growth and likely has the biggest future potential, as will be explained in the following.

A more effective way to engage pupils

As detailed in previous publications (26b; 27), ManFly’s school outreach was born out of our ideas developed for science fair presentations. Initially, we went into schools to showcase Drosophila research but learned very quickly that this approach is not very effective. Although it does address one important objective of teachers, that is, to bring pupils in contact with real researchers, it is far more powerful to also align with the teachers’ task of conveying curriculum-relevant content. This approach gains the attention of more pupils whilst generating memorable encounters with fruit flies, and it provides excellent opportunities to develop true dialogue between the two professional groups of scientists and teachers.

By now, ManFly has gathered experiences from over 80 events, including visits to schools, visits by school classes, and teacher seminars. We use these events to optimize our strategies and resources, and have formalized this approach through the launch of the “droso4schools” project in 2015 (10; 26a).

The droso4schools project: teaching with flies not about flies

The overarching objective of droso4schools is to use Drosophila as an effective tool for teaching curriculum-relevant content in biology school classes — ideally to achieve that its use would become a recommended or prescribed strategy in national curricula. Drosophila has essential advantages to this end: fruit fly research covers a broad spectrum of fundamental biology topics, providing excellent conceptual understanding, and there are many opportunities to perform micro-experiments that are memorable, cheap, simple, and easy to set up, even by teachers with little background in this area.

To achieve our objectives we capitalize on mutual collaboration with teachers: we as researchers bring our scientific experience and knowledge and can suggest conceptual improvements to content, and spice things up with engaging anecdotes, experiments, and relevant examples. Teachers provide the essential professional expertise of the curriculum and of effective teaching styles that match the realities of school life.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQKFtt3p2C8&w=500]

To implement teacher collaboration and/or get professional feedback, we use three different strategies:

• We place graduate students as teaching assistants in schools and have regular meetings during this placement (10; 26a).
• We invite teachers to continuing professional development events, which is an effective way of obtaining feedback and hearing a wider spectrum of teacher views (2).
• We build trust through repeated extracurricular school visits involving up to 200 pupils experiencing 3–4 different lessons in a single day. This also provides excellent opportunities to test new or improved resources (34).

The key products of all our school activities are our school lesson resources (Box 1; 30). So far, we have developed six lessons that are completed for teacher use and comprise a PowerPoint file accompanied by support materials (homework tasks, activity sheets, teacher notes, risk assessments). Two further lessons are under development but are already suited for extracurricular school visits. All of these lessons use Drosophila as a teaching tool to address a specific curriculum-relevant topic and are spiced up with micro-experiments and examples of research relevance.

Our classes are highly interactive and all contain micro-experiments. Examples shown are: A) using optogenetics to induce epilepsy-like seizures; B) identifying genetic marker mutations; C) performing dissections of maggots and colour reactions to demonstrate enzymatic activity; D) performing the climbing assay followed by data analysis and statistics. Experimental instructions are available at (39).

Outreach opportunities in primary schools

Most of our school resources aim at the higher levels of secondary school. More recently we also explored how to introduce Drosophila in meaningful ways in primary schools. Primary school engagement reaches kids at an even earlier age and provides opportunities to spawn fascination for and appreciation of nature, biology, or evolutionary theory, thus potentially influencing their future attitudes towards societal, ecological, or scientific challenges (see also 13; 14). But primary schools also pose new challenges:

• primary teachers tend to have less or no scientific training, and the nature of any collaboration tends to be less science-centred than in secondary schools;
• science is not as high a priority in primary schools (45);
• pupils are curiosity-driven but less prepared to follow scientific logic; it can sometimes be surprising what messages kids take away from lessons.

Illustrating the metamorphosis of muscles during the pupal stage of Drosophila to pupils. Source: movie taken and modified from Wikimedia (4).

For primary schools, the national school curriculum in England lists three relevant topics: inheritance, life cycle, and evolution (7), of which we chose the latter two. For both topics, Drosophila offers fantastic conceptual and experimental opportunities, as is detailed in our recent blog post (35). For example, pupils can observe and protocol the life cycle of flies in only two weeks and there is unique understanding of the metamorphosis that transforms Drosophila maggots into flies. The surprising fact that concepts of human biology can be discovered through work in flies is an example par excellence for concepts of deep homology, evolutionary trees, and the idea of common ancestors (11; this can be further enriched in secondary schools by uniquely enlightening fly examples of population genetics or speciation; 9; 3; 24). To actively engage the kids with evolution, they use microscopes to look at flies carrying marker mutations, and then use this experience to jointly invent an evolutionary tree.

Screenshot from the evolution lesson. Fly images were generated using the free “Genotype Builder” (29; 41).

The key challenges: evaluating and marketing our resources

Developing our lesson pool was a lengthy and laborious process, yet it was only the first step; since then, we have been faced with the far greater challenge of (a) evaluating the lessons and (b) encouraging others to use them.

Carrying out evaluations is a science of its own and requires strategy, time, and human resources to degrees that must be carefully considered from the start (43). So far, we have used simple surveys. In these surveys, pupils usually expressed positive views about enjoyment of the event, seem to have gained new understanding of biology topics (details in 34and 35), and the data suggest that we are able to ignite an interest in Drosophila: thus, before our school visits, awareness of fruit fly research was low, whereas afterwards there was strong support for introducing Drosophila in classrooms and even the use of fruit flies in research. These results look very promising but will have to be properly validated, for example by using pre- versus post-event surveys to assess knowledge gain, long-term surveys to test knowledge retention, or homework tasks to appraise depth of understanding and of subject engagement.

Evaluation results from a primary and a secondary school visit (details in 34; 35) demonstrating how lack of knowledge about Drosophila research can be turned into strong support. Click image to see a larger version.

To have maximum impact, we aim to encourage the use of our resources and ideas within the communities of teachers and drosophilists. This requires spreading awareness of the resources and facilitating their use. As an essential step to this end, we freely share our resources, for which we launched two dedicated figshare.com repository sites: the first one is primarily for teachers and hosts the six completed lessons (37); the second site is for drosophilists and provides access to extracurricular lessons and science fair materials (39).

As a further measure, we launched the droso4schools support website (20). This website introduces and links to our resources, provides lesson-specific pages with details about the content, and additional information about Drosophila (“Why fly?” and “Organs“).

These online resources provide proof-of-principle for our strategy and can now develop their own momentum, either by being actively used or serving as a template for resource development. With this in mind, we are promoting them through blog posts (30; 34; 35), talks and workshops at international conferences (31; 32; 40), journal articles for teachers (10) or drosophilists (26a), and finding allies who can help to drive the agenda politically or institutionally (see last section).

An appeal to scientists to join the school endeavor

What has been achieved so far with our school work is promising, as illustrated not only by the evaluations, but also by teacher and researcher comments from across the globe, as evidenced in our impact document (21). However, we hope that more teachers and drosophilists will be inspired to capitalize on our resources — be it using them as they are, adapting them for modified classes, or taking them as examples for designing lessons on new topics! If the principal strategy gains sufficient momentum and more of us adopt the necessary collaborative spirit across disciplines, communities and countries, and the relevant learned societies and science organizations drive the science education agenda politically (33), there is a realistic chance that flies can become established as routinely used teaching tools in schools — to the benefit of teachers, pupils, and researchers alike.

About the authors:

Both authors work at the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Healthof The University of Manchester. Sanjai Patelis the manager of the Manchester Fly Facility, Andreas Prokopis professor of neurobiology and academic head of the facility, and together theydrive the “Manchester Fly Facility” initiative and the ‘droso4schools‘ project mentioned in this blog post.         

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