Episode 01 - Karla Neugebauer and Ed Courchaine

For our first episode, I sat down with Karla Neugebauer and Ed Courchaine. Karla joined the Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry faculty in 2013 after more than a decade of serving as a Senior Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology in Dresden, Germany. In addition to her wide-ranging scientific accomplishments, Karla has devoted much time and effort to advocating for gender equality in STEM and promoting visibility of women in the life sciences.

Ed Courchaine is a 3rd year PhD student in Karla’s lab and one of my classmates. Ed earned a BS from UConn and entered the PhD program here at Yale in 2014. In addition to being a preternaturally talented graduate student, Ed also serves as the Natural Science Senator for the Graduate and Professional Student Senate.

In this episode, Karla tells us why she starts the day off by doing laundry, why balance in self-confidence and self-criticism is crucial for a scientific career, and how she went from addressing sexism in science by “putting her head in the sand” to creating the EMBO Women in Life Science (WILS) Database. Near the end of the episode, we bring up the non-holiday-affiliated white elephant in the room and discuss how Ed considers his identity as a white man in creating a more inclusive STEM culture.

"It does take a significant amount of self-awareness to find that realization that everybody else's success doesn't diminish my own potential for success. And, in fact, when everybody else is succeeding, it actually enriches my potential for success. I think that the pressures that maintain the status quo encourage white men to think of science, and just life in general, as a zero-sum game. And I think if you're careful and thoughtful about it, you realize that's just not true."

- Ed Courchaine

Links

Neugebauer Lab website - https://medicine.yale.edu/lab/neugebauer/

EMBO WILS Database - http://www.embo.org/science-policy/women-in-science