For International Day of Women and Girls in Science, QBI is drawing attention to the the important roles women play in science, and the continuous need for more diversity in STEM. We asked four QBI women who have recently started their own labs, including Balyn Zaro, to share the challenging as well as encouraging experiences they face in their careers.

What research area do you focus on?

My lab is interested in studying how we can make drugs more selective by taking advantages and differences in the ways that different cells and different tissues metabolise drugs. We are also interested in understanding how macrophages and other immune cells confront cancer in infection, and the different proteins that they express in response and whether or not these proteins could inform us about different types of therapeutics that we could develop. 

When did your lab start?

I started my lab in September of 2019, so I had a few months before the shutdown began, but I’ve been lucky to have really talented graduate students and while we are sort of slower than we would like now, we are building towards a more established group. It’s pretty small for now but I’m hoping to grow it. I have to not only make sure their experiments are going well but also whether they are OK, because of the pandemic and the unrest. I think it’s probably a really scary time to be a young, 20-something student. So I am extra protective of them, I think.

What inspired you to pursue a career in science?

I went to college thinking that I was going to be an engineer because I was always really good at math. I was interested in science but I don’t think that I had been particularly inspired by my science classes. As an undergrad I was interested in doing research and so I went to a lab that was doing a lot of chemical engineering research but was in the chemistry department. I realized that a lot of the classes I had taken, even lab sections, really did not convey what the lab environment was and I realized that being a scientist meant, essentially, that at some point you would have complete intellectual freedom to be able to ask questions that you want, and also to be able to learn things that people did not understand before. So, from that experience I realized that I really liked research and I have been moving from this sort of chemical engineering background towards chemistry and biology ever since. I think that was my first time getting lab experience, which was suggested by one of my TA’s in one of my chemistry classes.

What do you think can be done to help encourage more diversity in STEM?

I think that we need to start really really early on. If you’re a kindergartener or a first grader and you’re a girl, and you’re being told that you are not going to be good at math and science or that math and science are hard, I think that is so discouraging from the beginning that it does not give anyone the opportunity to have a science experience that pushes them into the field. I also think that there is not enough diverse representation, not just in universities or academia, but I also didn’t really have amazing female math or science teachers in high school or college that were able to drive my interests. I think that if you go into a classroom and no one looks like you and the teacher never looks like you, then that’s a really hard place to start. The earlier we start, the better. I know there is a lot of effort towards outreach at the college and even high school level, but the early early outreach could also make an impact 10 or 20 years down the line.

Would you say that you’ve encountered gender discrimination in your field?

At different stages and even now, people assume that I work in someone else’s lab. But I think the bigger challenges are earlier on and then once people see that you have your own lab and that they could look at your website, it makes things a bit easier as a woman to say “if you look it up you’ll see that I am an established scientist myself”.  Earlier on you are not really taken seriously, or at some point you will choose to have a family or there will be some sort of decision that has to be made where you can’t have both. Luckily, part of my postdoc experience was in an environment that was extremely supportive of women and diversity in general, so being there and seeing that there were plenty of women in faculty positions and plenty of diverse faculty candidates that were coming in and being hired, made it seem less strange and I felt I could belong without there being an issue based on my gender. That’s an experience that I had at Stanford that I think was transformative in my decision to stay in academia. 

Do you think that women bring a different perspective to science? 

Often, women have more feminine characteristics of being nurturing and wanting to create an environment of growth and opportunity, and so I think it is impossible to separate that; if that’s who you are at home, that’s how you will be in your lab as well. I definitely feel like I’m really proud of my students when they do something amazing and when they struggle with something I feel really terrible and want to help as much as I can, while also giving them the opportunity to learn themselves, and sometimes I don’t know the answer either. I think that there is definitely a more feminine mentorship style, but then I think there are also plenty of men who have a more feminine mentorship style too and there are female faculty that are going to have a more traditional, masculine approach as well.

Having gone through my recent pregnancy, I think being a mother has really taught me about how little scientific research has been done about fertility and pregnancy and post-partum. I started reading what little literature there is about the whole process of pregnancy and birth to understand how I can solve these questions for people because. It seems like these are questions a lot of men wouldn’t answer, and we women have the opportunity now because we have such a talented pool of female scientists who have a good perspective on that.

Do you ever wonder how you will balance your career and family?

I was anxious about it when I first became pregnant and was thinking about planning leave and how it would affect my lab. But now that I have this baby I tell myself “We’ll figure it out...and it will be okay.” I also choose not to have to make the decision between having a family or having a lab, as if they are mutually exclusive. My hope is that my research productivity and track record will speak for itself when the time comes and that I am going to do the best I can do and continue to move forward. I think that it’s really important to show young female graduate students in particular that it does not have to be this moment in time where you are a scientist and if you want to have a family you have to leave the community. There are ways to continue to be a leader and drive your own research program without having to make concessions at home.

Have there been positive changes for women in science that bring you hope?

Something that I really appreciate is scientific history and I think there has been a huge effort to show that women have actually been a part of scientific progress throughout; they just have not received the credit. Giving the women the credit now and bringing up Rosalind Franklin and Marie Curie as actual contributors to the research, shows that it is not that we have allowed women to be a part of the community, but that they have long standing roles in scientific history. I am hopeful that it demonstrates to people that there have been lots of curious women scientists for a long time. I do think that people are increasingly aware of implicit bias and even if they catch themselves in moments, or don’t, that we are moving towards a world where people are learning how to correct one another and to catch their initial assumptions, like assuming a good paper comes from a man’s lab. So, I am hopeful, especially for the graduate students who are in school today. That’s a huge thing for them. I’m excited for a future where this is not all such a big deal. 

What would your advice be to a female entering the STEM field, or what advice do you wish someone had given you?

I started graduate school during the financial crisis in 2008 and I went into it with the thought that I was really excited and that science should be fun. What has driven me from then on has been the belief that I will continue to do this until I don’t enjoy myself. I think that a lot of women choose to quit because it becomes complicated or they have a kid and are in a situation where there are two working parents and one has to stay home. It becomes this decision and I think that if you really love doing science, you continue to do it. And maybe one day you decide that it’s not for you but also deciding “I want to do this until it’s not fun for me anymore” takes a lot of pressure off. As academic scientists you’re in school and everyone is talking about how they want their own lab, then you’re a postdoc and everyone talks about how they want their own lab and you’re an assistant professor and you talk about how you want tenure and it always seems like you are running towards the next school post, but I think taking a step back and thinking about it from the perspective of “I do this because I love it and if I don’t love it than I won’t do it anymore” makes it seem that much more satisfying.