GENENTECH, USA
Christine Moussion was a Postdoc at IST Austria. She now works as a group leader for Genentech in Califonia. At IST Austria Christine Moussion was in Michael Sixt’s group.
In an interview with Daniela Klammer and Kathrin Pauser which took place during the Science and Industry Day 2018 she answered some interesting questions about her work and how her career developed.
On my business card is my first name and my last name, my position: I am a scientist in cancer immunology at Genentech in San Francisco, my address and my phone number. 😉
I lead a research team in a big pharma company I work in basic science and in the same time I lead 3 to 4 people in the basic science and at the same time I do some drug discovery at the same time. I think the coolest thing about my job is it is all about science. Basic science or applied science so to develop new treatment and also that there is no limitation. So we can do whatever we want in term of support facilities money so I think it is really to have great science and great support.
In the future I think I will go where the science will bring me. All I have worked for now is where I am happy to work on and I hope I can contribute to the development of new treatment for disease and at the same time make great basic science discoveries. And have fun in science.
I trained as a bioengineer in biotechnology and I worked for a short time in a start up in drug development. Then I came back to university because I decided to step back and to learn a new field which was immunology which I got very passionate about. So I did a PhD in immunology and a postdoc at IST Austria in Michael Sixt’s lab. I worked at the migration of leucocytes and developed a new bio imaging technic and assets that I can now apply in my current job. So I looked at immune cells recruitment in tumor and how to stimulate the recruitment of this leucocytes to improve cancer immune therapy.
IST Austria gave me the freedom to explore science the edges of science of my field like working at the interfaces between immunology and bio imaging for example. The platform of bioimaging is amazing and is always stimulating the progress, the development of new techniques. My mentor played the biggest role. He gave me freedom and he gave me support in terms of looking for jobs by connecting with his network and confidence.
IST was my first international experience. So I learned English here because I came from France. So now that I am living in the US the Americans say that I am speaking with a German accent. I am not sure about that I think I still have a strong French accent. Here I connected with a different type of culture and a different kind of science, really multidisciplinary, so I connected with Mathematicians or physicists and that’s what I liked at IST.
If I rely on my experience I would say: follow the science. See where the science will bring you. But take action you are the actor of your career. You have to make decisions if you need to step back if you need to change direction. You have to keep being proactive. Work hard surely for papers. Papers can get you everywhere. Go to conferences, connect to the leaders in your field to see where your field is moving and it’s also easier if you want to work in industry if you already know people working there. So if people know you and they know your way of thinking and the science you want to develop it is easier to get in later on. Chose a good mentor, a supportive mentor is crucial for a great future job.
I have two probably. When I was living in the guest house and also later I was able to cook French recipes and I was able to share French food with my colleges and I could learn recipes from different cuisine like Indian and I loved that a lot. And I also loved the postdoc retreat when we were going to the mountain for skiing. I think that were the two moments where I connected and I made really good friends, really strong connections. So that is probably my favorite moment at IST.
Harold De Vladar was at ISTA from 2009 to 2013 as a postdoc in the Barton Group. He is now CEO and founder of Ribbon Biolabs GmbH. In an interview with Daniela Klammer and Kathrin Pauser which took place during the Science and Industry Day 2017 he talks about what he likes about his research but also about his career and about his time at ISTA when the institute was still very small.
Watch the corresponding video on YouTube
Harold de Vladar, my position: CEO and the name of my startup which is Ribbon Biolabs GmbH.
The essence of my job is to develop the technology to secure the IP of the technology and also to consolidate and make sure that the team is on a good track to develop the technology.
The limitations is that once you start with your own startup you have less freedom to do other things and when you come from an academic background you are probably excited about so many things and then you find yourself restricted doing stuff that you didn’t want to do in the first place like financial sheets or business plans. Which you have to do but what you want to do is just do experiments and equations’ stuff. The cool thing is that you are working for something that is entirely yours. It’s not like working for an institute for two years and after the two years that’s it. It is money you get and you construct your own stuff so it is yours. You develop it as you want you do exactly what you want it is your decision what you are doing and that rocks.
I want to develop this company obviously and I want to be in a position where I am developing new ideas new products or solving new problems related to science. So tech transfer if you wish but real problems and I want to do things that are a bit non canonical, not the standard things. I know it sounds a bit abstract but biology is very vast. There are many interesting things there that you can actually take and make a product out of it for a specific purpose. This is the things I like to make. I would also like to keep a bit of research going like basic research or more explorative research in order to allow the serendipity factor to come to new possibilities.
It’s a complex one. I started as a cell biologist and statistical physics at the same time. Then went into applied math’s only to get more formal tools to work with my stuff related to genetics and evolution. Then I did my PhD in evolutionary ecology, actually I did my PhD in evolution in a group of evolutionary ecology which is what let me to Nick Barton and that is how I ended up at ISTA. And I also have a degree in art and science which sounds very disconnected to all this but it is not.
First of all the connectivity how I connected to the people here which are now in different places either because they were postdocs or because they were exprofessors from here in some other places this allowed a lot of connections directly or indirectly. That was something very important.
And what was also crucial. Having worked with someone like Nick Barton this was an amazing endorsement. We did great job Nick and I, what we did was awesome. It was not on the side of being extra productive but more on the side of taking very challenging problems and solving them. So it was not like salami slicing papers and that created a very idiosyncratic way of seeing science for me because I always gave more importance to this aspect than to publish many papers something that many universities don’t like.
So ISTA determined my career in these two ways in the way I see it but also which options do I have but not by restricting them but by me realizing what is it what I want to do. I always felt more comfortable in Institutes of advanced studies small places where you can think of new things rather than the big shot universities where people go mad with the latest nature cover and you have to race with them. That’s not my style.
For the postdocs of ISTA: Things have probably changed a lot since I left ISTA but I think there are two levels of things that you have to learn as a postdoc. First of all you have to do your work project as it means of learning maturing etc. but you also have to keep a close eye on what you want and what are the next career steps. You can get very distracted with your project and forget that there is a future that you have to fulfill. And I saw many postdocs forgetting these things.
Second, I feel like there is a lot of gab between what is a postdoc and what is a professor and ISTA doesn’t give this feeling of continuity between one and the other. I think at least in my time it was great to be here as a first postdoc but not as a second because you won’t have that much independence you won’t have that much support beyond your project.
I think it was one of these barbeques and we went into the pond, swimming in the pond. I don’t think Tom Henzinger was so happy with us the next day. This was when ISTA was relatively small. We could have staff meetings of the whole institute every week and these meetings didn’t get to more than 20 people. None of the building existed. That was very fun.
Very simple what kind of problems do I really want to solve and how.
