Ekin Bolukbasi
- Current job title: Postdoctoral Researcher
- Current location: Institute of Health Ageing, UCL
- Field of research: Ageing
- Education history: BSc University of Edinburgh (2006), PhD University of Edinburgh (2010)
- Wellcome Trust awards: Wellcome Trust-funded PhD Studentship
Tell us about your background.
I am from Turkey and have been living abroad for around 14 years now. I left when I was 15, and finished my schooling in Switzerland before moving to Edinburgh for my undergraduate degree. I really enjoyed it, which was why I decided to stay in Edinburgh to do my PhD - a Wellcome Trust PhD programme in the molecular and cellular basis of disease. I completed my PhD in Professor Margarete Heck's lab in December 2010. In 2011, I started my postdoc at UCL.
Why did you choose your career?
In high school I studied for an International Baccalaureate. It's a great programme, and I ended it by doing my expanded essay in a genetics lab at the University of Geneva. I really enjoyed that, and although I had a feeling that studying biology might be the career for me, the lab experience confirmed that this is what I wanted to do.
How would you describe your job?
This is my first postdoc; I've been doing it for about a year and a half now. I think in the beginning of a project you have to try hard to get your experiments working, so I'm doing a lot of lab work at the moment. Once I start to get some results, I might spend more time analysing them on the computer. However, there are nice opportunities here as well: last summer I helped to prepare a health ageing exhibit (funded by a Trust public engagement grant) for the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, which then toured to a science and technology fair in Bangkok. Last year, along with my colleagues, I organised a course on the biology of ageing for the first-year medical students. So although I do lots of lab work, I’m involved in many other things as well.
In lay terms, what's your science about?
I am working in Professor Dame Linda Partridge's lab at the Institute of Healthy Ageing at UCL, and at the moment my project focuses on checking the mechanisms by which insulin signalling regulates ageing in flies. There is evidence that insulin signalling regulates ageing in worms and mice, as well. I'm looking at how this regulation might be happening. I think whatever comes out of it is going to have an important impact in human ageing, so that is quite exciting. I also feel very privileged to be working in such a great scientific environment.
What are you working on at the moment?
Other research in the lab has shown that a protein called FOXO is heavily involved in the insulin signalling regulation of ageing in flies. I am trying to figure out if there are other factors regulated by FOXO, to build up an accurate picture of this molecular pathway and its effect on ageing.
What's the ultimate aim of your work?
We want to fully characterise the mechanism of ageing, so that one day we can make interventions to provide people with a healthy ageing period. I don't think this will happen soon, but I think long term it will definitely work, particularly as ageing research has seen some important discoveries in the past ten years. If I didn’t believe in it, I wouldn't be doing this research!
What are the difficulties and challenges of being a scientist, and how do you overcome them?
Scientists have to work long hours, often at weekends. We don't have a life where you can just go into the office at 09.00 and leave at 17.00. Sometimes, even if you do your best, things just won't work out. When they do, though, it is such a great feeling. It makes the job worth doing and keeps me motivated. This is what keeps me going, despite the long hours.
How has the Wellcome Trust award influenced your career decisions?
It gave me a real opportunity to work in different locations and different labs, each with quite unrelated topics. It just gave me a much wider vision about research and science in general. I think that was really great, and I wouldn’t have had that with any other PhD programme. In terms of having money for consumables, it really made my life much easier. I think if I were in a lab where I really had to think about my consumables or materials, I don't know if I would have been so motivated to continue in research after my PhD. Also, I have been to quite a few really good conferences - one of the fun parts of science.
What is the best part about doing science?
For me, science is like pieces of a puzzle. It's up to me to put these pieces together, by coming up with hypotheses and performing experiments. This is what I like the most about it, I find it really exciting.
Who is your biggest role model?
It is very difficult to name just one person as a role model as there quite a few very inspiring people among artists, writers, philosophers and - of course - scientists. But I could maybe say Charles Darwin; he came up with his ideas and stuck with them, even when other people found it difficult to accept them. I think that is what science should be about - coming up with novel ideas and even if no one else is actually agreeing with them, it doesn't matter, you just go for it.
Who is your favourite living scientist?
Again, this is a very difficult question as there are a number of great scientists out there whose research I am very fond of. But among the ones whose research I am currently closely following, I can say Professor David Sabatini at MIT. He investigates the regulation of cell growth and is providing the scientific community with great insights on this field.
Who is your favourite scientist in popular culture?
Thomas Hunt Morgan, who said heredity is passed on to other generations on chromosomes by using flies as a model.
What music do you listen to at work?
In the lab I usually have my iPod on. There are certain types of music that I listen to when I am doing certain types of experiment. If I am setting up a qPCR plate, I will be listening to classical music because it really makes me focus. If I'm doing something that requires a bit more energy, then I will go for one of my indie bands. Sometimes jazz is good too.
What are your hobbies?
Living in London - a great place to explore - I quite like going to galleries and exhibitions. The highlight from 2012 was visiting the Leonardo de Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery. It was amazing, especially being a biologist, seeing all the details in his anatomical drawings. I am sure 2013 will be full of exciting opportunities on that front, too.
If you weren’t a scientist, you would be…
I would have studied the history of art. I couldn't have been an artist, as I'm not really talented, but I really enjoy it, and I think if I were involved in research into the history of art, I would have been quite happy.