In Chapter 10 of 19 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, Stacie Grossman Bloom answers "What Do You Respect Most About People Doing Bench or Laboratory Science Research?" She believes the people who are working as the bench scientists are the people who are solving the problems of the world. She shares the challenge life scientists encounter in their work and the persistence and commitment required to succeed in the job.
Stacie Grossman Bloom is the Executive Director at the NYU Neuroscience Institute at NYU Langone Medical Center. Previously, she was VP and Scientific Director at the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS). She earned her PhD in Neurobiology and Cell Biology at Georgetown University and did a post-doctoral fellowship at Rockefeller University in New York City. She earned her BA in Chemistry and Psychology from the University of Delaware.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: What do you respect most about people doing bench or laboratory science research?
Stacie Grossman Bloom: The people who are working as the bench scientists are the people who are solving the problems of the world. I think every physician who is treating patients in the clinic should have to have a glimpse into the day of a bench scientist, on a day that the experiment isn’t working well.
Erik Michielsen: What does it look like?
Stacie: It’s really frustrating and it’s really hard and usually you are surrounded -- if you are a life scientist -- you are usually surrounded by a million little, tiny, labeled tubes, and pipette tips, and radiation shields, and freezers, and maybe mice, and you’re probably there at two o’clock in the morning, 3 o’clock in the morning because everything is always timed. I appreciate their commitment to that job. That job does not pay well. It’s really hard. And for every experiment that results in a high-quality scientific publication, there are probably a hundred that failed.