33 Epiphanies

Journey Toward Perfection

I recently finished reading The Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman (see previous post for more). I was actually so eager to see how it ended that I woke up at 4 am to make it through the final section, "Journey Toward Perfection" about Thomas Keller.

I was fortunate to attend a Mechanobiology "retreat" at NUS. I can't write too much about that, since it was a closed meeting and I was present only due to an e-mail mix-up, but it was quite a thought-provoking experience. For instance, what would be the ideal research institute. Are there parallels with Thomas Keller's utopian vision of the ideal kitchen, as transcribed by Ruhlman?

In his ideal kitchen -- and since he always strives to fulfill ideals, he truly hopes one day to make this happen -- there is no head chef, no sous shef, no brigade. There are only five or six cooks [...] who share similar notions of perfection. Each day they will come into the kitchen and cook, just cook. There will be no plan. They will cook as the are inclined. Each cook, equal with all others, will be utterly free to experiment, to let his or her own individual personality and creativity truly propel him or her. The key element in this scenario is this: shared standard of perfection. [eloquently written examples from the culinary world.] In is ideal kitchen all that effort -- which depletes and enervates you, and yet that can be the main work of the day -- will vanish, and with the shackle gone, he believes, a kitchen could really cook.

That passage really struck me when I considered how much time professors spend dealing with bureaucracies, meetings, and inter-personal problems (e.g. different expectations for research than a student), rather than actually doing experiments. My adviser slept less than four hours a night for the past week due to an overlapping of classes to teach, grant proposals to submit, paperwork to fill out, and so on. It also made me ponder the effect that the personality of the professor can have on the group, a theme that Ruhlman also described:

...one notices the effect of the chef's mind on the staff. As the personality of a powerful CEO of a small company, a school principal, or a theatrical director permeats the entire operation over which that person presides, so a chef's mind and personality permeate a kitchen, determine absolutely not only is standards but also its tone and tenor. The people who work there are succesful in durection proportion to their willingness to embrace, to be infused with, the chef's personality. In a strong chef's kitchen those who resist the personality leave or are fired. The weaker the chef, the more nebulous this dynamic becomes.

Based on my research experience so far, I believe that the same can be said about research labs. I have seen how a grad student who thinks on the same wavelength (to use a physics analogy) as his professor can get several major papers published and move up in the academic world, whereas others with conflicting personalities may switch advisers, even after several years.

I also see similarities between how Thomas Keller sees food and how Prof. Osheroff at Stanford sees his experimental apparatus. To Keller, the key to great cooking is understanding every single step of your recipe and according to Osheroff (and countless other scientists, I'm sure) is understanding every single step in your procedure.

I could continue to elaborate on Ruhlman's observations, but I am worried that this is getting out of control. For instance, a recent post about offals on his blog sparked a craving for kway chap (see photo), which then escalated into a 36-hour exploration of Singaporean's culinary offerings (cuttlefish kangong, yong tau foo, tim sum, bao, ice kachang, and bak kut teh). My stomach is a wreck, but I felt that I got a deeper look into Singapore than provided by the standard shopping mall experience.

Moutai + Me = Epiphany

I had a wide-ranging conversation with Prof. Yan, while drinking Tiger beer and moutai (106 proof Chinese liquor!) at a BBQ on Saturday afternoon. We started with politics and discussed the primary differences between the Singaporean and American systems. Singapore has been fortunate to have the long-term leadership of Lee Kuan Yew, who takes the long-term view of what is in the best interests of the island's future, even if it differs from the current public opinion. From here, US politics seems overwhelmed by seemingly endless polls of popular opinion. To be fair, the sizes of the countries are on rather opposite ends of the spectrum and Singapore would have been an entirely different place with a selfish, short-sighted dictator in charge.

We also discussed differences between the university systems. Until the past decade, NUS was a teaching-based institution that followed the old system of faculty organization: the head of the department got his name on all the papers while the assistant professors were viewed as his underlings. More recently, under the leadership of a new president, NUS became one of the world's best research universities and more closely follows the American system of relatively independent research groups within a department. He was so successful that he recently left NUS to start a brand-new university in Saudi Arabia.

Towards the end of the night, Professor Yan also told me about his unconventional route to the United States. He felt that he didn't learn enough with his first PhD from China, but around that time he met a recruiter from Norte Dame university in the US. Since he hadn't taken the GRE, he couldn't apply there, but the recruiter suggested that he look at other schools. He ended up at the University of Chicago working under Prof. John Marko, who was a dedicated mentor and maintained a small group. Marko gave his new student two biophysics problems to solve and the solution to one of them ended up as a publication in Nature, so the university stopped pestering him about never taking the GRE. Prof. Yan is deeply grateful to having Prof. Marko as an adviser and can't overstate the impact that his mentor had on his present career. His comment made me realize that my culinary heroes of the week, fascination with ultra-marathon runners, hours of listening to podcast interviews, etc. all arise from a desire for a similar experience.

The Making of a Scientist

My culinary hero of the week is Michael Ruhlman. His lucid writing and thoughtful observations about food and culture are truly inspiring (I am also envious of his kitchen). Although he began as a journalist, a stint at the CIA was life-transforming and propelled him to a brilliant career. Recently, I have been especially interested in his observations about the training of a chef and comparing that to the career path of a scientist:

The best training for being a professional chef seems to be in the form of an apprenticeship, in which the trainee sequentially masters basic skills before leading a kitchen and creating his style of cuisine. The apprentice is an integral part of the kitchen crew and is immediately (often harshly) criticized if he do not perform adequately. However, after several months of repetitive prep-work for thousands of dishes, the motions become fluid-like and the student starts to achieve a Zen-like kitchen awareness. This is what separates a professional chef from an amateur kitchen hobbyist.

In science, the training consists of textbook-motivated problem sets, which are important, but seem quite disconnected with the work of an actual scientist. Moreover, there is tremendous variety in the range of undergraduate and graduate research experiences. I have had a series of relatively hands-off advisers, but I know there are others who can be viewed as micro-managers. The day-to-day life of a researcher consists of a lot of "grunt-work" in the form of aligning lasers, performing PCR, etc. In my experience, the undergraduate lab courses provided a series of introductions to simplified experiments, but never built up to the point where a "lab awareness" was reached.

I realize that the culinary world and the scientific world have distinct goals, but I wonder if there are others who feel this disconnect between the academic training and the actual work of a scientist.

Running and Research

Besides cooking and GTD, I love to run. I can get into the flow of the activity, as my mind becomes focused and the time passes smoothly. On good days, my time in lab feels the same way. Moreover, research, like running, is at many times a solitary endeavor. This can be the hours spent on a long run or the days (or weeks) spent aligning the lasers of an optical tweezer or trouble-shooting a biochemical protocol. Endurance is essential in the face a 16-week long training plan or day after day of unsuccessful experiments.

Based on a thoroughly unscientific study, I have noticed a strong correlation between my progress with distance running and my advances in my research project. Last semester I discovered the limits of my perseverance with both of these activities. My training for the Standard Chartered Marathon was going great until I was attacked by a lowly virus, resulting in a month-long epic battle with the common cold. For the first week, I refused to accept that I was sick, so I continued running and going to lab, which only accelerated my decline. For the rest of the semester, I could not run more than 10k. At the same time, I was stuck at the same step in my experimental procedure (linking two different types of microspheres with a single strand of DNA).

Now I must return to lab to face the same problem that resulted in physical and mental burnout last year. My marathon training now has a small, fairly stable start, but I am still seeking strategies to achieve the same type of feeling with my research. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.