My Track Record

image taken from http://depts.washington.edu/tcmi/

In my haste to note the passing of Kevin Conley, my primary graduate school adviser, I failed to mention a sad coincidence, which is that my OTHER graduate school adviser had just died eight days earlier.

Marty Kushmerick was, in a word, brilliant.  He knew a lot about a lot of things; breadth and depth coexisted happily in his brain.  Though his field was muscle biology, he taught himself way more thermodynamics, mathematical modeling, and nuclear physics than the average muscle biologist (e.g., me) could ever dream of. This allowed him to ask all sorts of scientific questions and collaborate with all sorts of people, who found his brilliance both charming and useful.

Kevin was one such person.

Two of Kevin’s greatest studies (Conley et al. 1997 and 1998) dismantled the prevailing model of the control of glycolysis in skeletal muscle. These studies were based on the fact that glycolysis produces lactic acid, which lowers the pH, which can be measured with 31P NMR spectroscopy, our lab’s primary technique at the time. However, it’s awfully hard to calculate precise RATES of glycolysis, as Kevin needed to do. I don’t think Kevin could have navigated the arcane details of proton stoichiometry on his own; fortunately, he had Marty to do the math (Kushmerick 1997) and thus provide the foundation for his own work.

While Kevin and Marty had distinct strengths and personalities, they shared a sincere and profound enthusiasm for the day-to-day work of scientific research. This was obvious to all who knew them.  They were visibly excited when they found an insightful paper in the literature or thought of a new experiment to try. It was fun to be in their lab in the late ’90s and early ’00s in part because THEY were having fun.

Fifteen-plus years later, it’s hard for me to conjure up that atmosphere, to remember what it felt like. This song helps, though. (Marty makes a cameo at 2:33.)

Last night I received the news that my Ph.D. adviser had just died of cancer.

For me, this was one of those moments of asking myself, “Did I ever thank this person adequately for what they did for me?”

Kevin and I had a complicated relationship. As a scientist and as a mentor, he had his share of blind spots, and as a graduate student, I had numerous deficiencies of my own.  What is indisputable is that he took his advising role very seriously, and gave it his full attention, and did everything he could to help me along my path, which he accepted as different from his own.  He treated me, above all else, with kindness and generosity.

Technically, I had two graduate advisers: Kevin and Marty Kushmerick. Kevin did almost all of the actual advising, but he knew that it was useful for me to be associated with Marty, a more senior and more famous scientist. Thus, at conferences and such, I would always say, “I work with Kevin and Marty.” Kevin never objected to this, though he surely deserved more credit than that.

In the winter and spring of 2000, my work was not going well, and Kevin and I were finding it hard to have productive discussions. I suggested that I spend the summer at a high-altitude training study that had accepted me as a research subject. A greedier adviser would have stopped me from going — shouldn’t I be in the lab, generating more data for him? But Kevin, to his great credit, let me go.  I had an experience that was useful scientifically (I got to see first-hand how complex human studies are conducted), and that also helped reset our relationship. When I returned, we were able to communicate with less frustration.

A final act of selflessness on Kevin’s part came when I was wrapping up my dissertation. There was one chapter that he found unconvincing (for reasons that I never really understood). He was not willing to have the paper published with his name on it; however, he did let me publish it. If this seems like a no-brainer, it wasn’t; research leaders are often VERY conservative and controlling about the papers that come out of their labs.

The above examples stick out in my mind, yet they fail to capture what might have been most important of all, which was simply that Kevin allowed me to barge into his office and ask for help whenever I wanted. This wasn’t necessarily an efficient arrangement for getting work done or helping me become more resourceful and independent, but it certainly indicated the extent of Kevin’s commitment to me.

Years after I left the lab, I wrote an odd little parody of the classic Bob Dylan song Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.  The lyrics were, most directly, about the frustrations of doing research. But the subtext of “Knockin’ On Kevin’s Door” was that, as an often-rudderless graduate student, I was very fortunate to have an adviser who was always, always, always willing to make time for me.

I should have told him this more directly, with more explicit gratitude.

I hope he got the message anyway.

[image from UW Dept. of Radiology website]

Our lab is currently abuzz with World Cup soccer highlights. We even have an office pool. But whenever I’m inclined to dismiss my colleagues’ discussions as silly or excessive, I think of George Kosaly.

Between 2005 and 2007, I worked with George on the mathematical modeling of methylotrophic metabolism. This work was eventually published as part our Journal of Bacteriology paper Formate as the main branch point for methylotrophic metabolism in Methylobacterium extorquens AM1.

George, a sharp and dedicated scientist, taught me a lot about the interplay of mathematical modeling and experimentation. What I remember best about our conversations, though, is George’s advocacy of science as a fundamentally social pursuit. This stance is, in part, simply a pragmatic one: modelers and experimentalists need to talk to each other so that each group is informed by what the other is doing. But there’s more to it than that. Working with smart, likable colleagues is enlightening and fun, so you put more of yourself into it, and better results emerge. Even in science.

My work with George was itself an example of this. George, a professor of mechanical engineering, was in the process of retiring and knew relatively little biology, so it didn’t necessarily make sense for me to invest a lot of effort in developing a collaboration with him. Yet I found him charming, and our meetings eventually became quite productive. He taught me about modeling, and I taught him about biology, which he approached with the wonder and curiosity of a gifted child. The above-mentioned study that emerged from this exchange, though imperfect, is the best one I’ve ever done, and it happened in large part because we enjoyed each other’s company. The social aspect of the work was central to it, not ancillary.

George died last June at the age of 75, but at least a few bits of his wisdom live on in my brain. Although I don’t share my coworkers’ enthusiasm for the World Cup, I’m glad they can get excited about it together. Who knows what new scientific insights might emerge from this sports-induced bonding?