Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Gentry Patrick: Race & Diversity in Science (#086)

Episode Date: October 30, 2020

Race and diversity issues in STEM can no longer be ignored. Professor Gentry Patrick is a neurobiologist and the Director of Mentorship and Diversity at UC San Diego. As a kid from Compton, he didn’t have an easy road, but he is committed to making sure future generations have it easier than he did. We discussed the importance of diversity in science and academia and the unfair burden placed on people of color in those spaces. We also talk about failures, storytelling, and what Gentry looks for in a graduate student. Subscribe to my mailing list to receive show notes for this episode: https://briankeating.com/mailing_list.php 00:00:00 Introduction. 00:06:27 The importance of mentorship on Gentry’s trajectory. 00:12:22 Increasing diversity in academia. 00:21:07 Gentry’s childhood as a geeky kid in Compton. 00:32:27 Showcasing science as a part of society and culture. 00:41:25 What Gentry looks for in a graduate student. 00:48:16 Gentry explains his neurobiology research and why it fascinates him. 00:56:31 The PATHS scholars program supports diverse students. Gentry Patrick is a professor of neurobiology at UC San Diego researching the central nervous system. He has a PhD from Harvard and was a postdoctoral fellow at CalTech. Gentry is the Director of Mentorship and Diversity at UC San Diego and established the PATHways to STEM program to remove barriers for underrepresented students. Learn more about the PATHS Scholars Program https://paths.ucsd.edu Watch Gentry’s convocation speech at UC San Diego in 2019 here: https://youtu.be/yeboCHowDFM Brian Keating’s most popular Youtube Videos: Eric Weinstein: https://youtu.be/YjsPb3kBGnk?sub_confirmation=1 Jim Simons: https://youtu.be/6fr8XOtbPqM?sub_confirmation=1 Noam Chomsky: https://youtu.be/Iaz6JIxDh6Y?sub_confirmation=1 Sabine Hossenfelder: https://youtu.be/V6dMM2-X6nk?sub_confirmation=1 Sarah Scoles: https://youtu.be/apVKobWigMw Stephen Wolfram: https://youtu.be/nSAemRxzmXM Host Brian Keating: ‍♂️ Twitter at https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating Instagram at https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating Buy my book LOSING THE NOBEL PRIZE: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA Subscribe for more great content https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 ✍️Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog.php Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a kid from the streets of Compton, California, overcome poverty, racism, police brutality, inadequate access to health care resources, and go on to go to Harvard, Caltech, and then become a full professor of neurobiology at one of the top universities in the world. Overcoming all that and then going further in a mission as if that wasn't enough, today's guest, Professor Gentry Patrick is going to tell you exactly how he did it. Gentry, my friend, my relative. It's so great to have you here. It's so great to have you here into the Impossible podcast. It's always fun to have brilliant guests on the podcast, but it's even more fun when it's a dear friend and an innovative intellect like yourself.

Thank you very much. Thank you for having you. Yeah, thank you so much. I thought we'd begin as a little teaser. I kind of see you as this action superhero came out of, you know, some of the, some of the most challenging, shall we say, as a euphemism, locations of the world to become essentially the top of your game. And a lot of the things that we do on the end to the Impossible podcast

is talk to the highest achievers that have achieved the greatest heights in their professions. And you are one of them. Thank you for including. Yeah. It's true. It's like I feel like I'm the, you know, the drummers, what you call the guy who hangs out with musicians. I got to hang out with professors.

So first of all, what's your background? What the heck is neurobiology? and how did you get out of Compton, you know, which is not usually considered, you know, one of the safest places in the world to grow up, overcoming all those challenges that I mentioned. How did you get to where we are today? All right. Yeah, I mean, that's a lot there. Let me see if I can do it succinctly and give you some of the salient aspects that really drove my.

I grew up in South Central LA, as you just mentioned, Compton, California. My mom had been 16 years old. so there are definitely a lot of challenges in my life for sure but um you know I was a curious kid there were a lot of kids just like me who were very interested in doing well in school but you know there's a lot of serendipity and a lot of luck you know and so what really needed to happen for me was getting on a path where I was able to um take advantage of my interest in science I think part of myself being a kind of a nerd definitely helped me think about where I might want to go. I didn't know that I could be a scientist.

I didn't know anything about neurobiology. This was not a part of any experience, anyone in my family had had ever. So even though I had lots of challenges and we can talk about some of the details there, you know, running up in confidence definitely challenges of gangs and drugs and lack of adequate, you know, But, you know, I did have a family. I did have people who cared about me. I had teachers that saw my potential and little sparks and little moments of mentorship would push me, kind of guide me in the right direction as I, you know, went on my own path. Interestingly enough, you know, serendipity and luck played, like I said, played a lot of a pit of big role in my life.

for instance, when it was time to go to college, this is a very funny story, and I would never tell anyone to do this. Your kids are applying to college. I forgot that you had to pay for applications to go to college. It just so happened that when I was ready to apply to college, I had enough money to play for one school, which is not the way to do it. That's a sure bad way to maybe go to junior college first, which in this world today right now, that's not such a bad idea. Yeah, exactly.

But luckily I got into the one school I applied to, and that was Berkeley, they took me. And so thank you to all those people on that admissions committee. That took me in because I don't know where my life would be. I had not started on that path. Now, getting to Berkeley, it was tough. You know, it was very tough. I actually had to transition from a place

where I kind of understood how to negotiate, navigate, interact with people. I'm a people person. And so that, you know, that was going to keep developing. But, you know, I got there. It was challenging. The first two years I didn't do very well in school. But really getting access to a lab.

Here's another funny serendipitous and kind of luck story. But, you know, luck is one thing. But taking advantage of the luck that is presented to you is another thing. So I was working for the employment development development. department that probably would mean something to a lot of people right now. That's right. It's a little summer job. Relevant than ever.

I had a little summer job and what happened was my job was to give summer jobs to young people for the summer. And that's been, you know, I interviewed them and match them. What happened was that a job came through dishwashing for a local company, a biotech company in Bay Area and I sent myself on that job and I got it. I knew I had to get in somewhere and that really was the beginning, having stability, having a job, a permanent job. And taking the initiative too.

I've taken the initiative to do that, literally sending myself on that interview and I got the job and from there I was able to have some stability, and gain a little bit more about myself identity in STEM. I really didn't know that I was going to go to grad school. I was very interested in medicine. Yeah. Eventually, I graduated, but got weightlisted everywhere in that school. And so what I did was this two years program at UCSF, University of California, San Francisco,

which was called the research training program at that time. It took two minority students a year, very competitive to get in, and I got in. And from there, it was really, you know, I was on a path. I was speeding down the road to where I am now with a lot of bumps still. There wasn't an unimpeded lane that I had. But some of the most important parts of my time was my advisors. So they made a big impact in my life. I had three a ton young women scientists who were powerhouses in the field.

They were in. Aaron O'Shea, who's now the president of Howard Hughes. Leeway Sai, who's a phenomenal neuroscientist. then at Harvard where I went to grad school and now was director of the Pickerel Center at MIT. And Aaron Schumann, who was at Caltech where I did my postdoc. And that's what we met. We crossed over there. We met, a mutual friend, Cameron Diba.

Yeah. And was able to, and then she moved to Frankfurt, Germany, to Max Pointe, Director. They were all H&I investigators. They all promoted me. They were not just mentors. They were amazing advocates. And so there's just this twist and turns of access and advocacy and mentorship, but also what I realize and why, you know, that statement that you started this with is really important because you have a lot of kids who have the potential. They're super smart.

They're maybe coming from underserved populations, but they have the goods to get it done. and they have an interest in their own well-being and their families well-being, but it does have to be paired with access and mentorship and advocacy. You could not go into a community and give a talk at an assembly, say in a junior middle school or high school or elementary school, and expect that a kid seeing you once. It says that one moment in time where I met Professor Keating is going to drive me all the way to become a more professor in astrophysics.

I would say you would need a few more moments. Especially with me. Not just with you, but that individual needs to be able to, you know, consistently. And so what happens, a lot of kids, they come to college, but they're, you know, they're working and, you know, we need to really kind of think about what leveling the plane go really looks like. Does it mean we're choosing someone over another?

No, we're actually making sure that the potential that is in an individual is really comes out and shines. That's all that is, right? And so that was my life. And when I got to UCSD, I was surprised that someone gave me a job, so I took it. Me too. Don't tell our boss. Don't tell our boss.

Exactly. I've been to a replacement. I've been there 16 years. I'm on my 10th PhD student. I had postdocs. Some of my, you know, they landed all different places, whether they be in faculty members. It's amazing. I can't believe now as a professor, my trajectory, and I'm very humbled.

I'm humbled by my experience. I'm humbled by the fact that individuals have wanted to spend their time with me. Grad student wants to spend five and kids with me. Well, there's a mutual. That's right. It's a mutual. A relationship. Right.

But, you know, I'm very pleased at the time that I've had here and what I've been able to do as a scientist, as a neuroscientist, a very funny story, again, serendipity. and sorry, if this is jumping all over the place. But my first, I did a master's with Aaron O'Shea. She taught me what hard work was. So,

and I'm sure she, she would agree. She taught me what hard work was. And I was working on a kinase called FO-85 in the east. What's a kinase? It's an enzyme that attaches phosphate onto other molecules,

whether taking it from, you know, typically ATP and attaching it to another molecule, which can change its structure and therefore dysfunction. And typically they're involved in cell signaling, whether that is involved in a response to stress or different metabolic states, or in the case of neurons,

a variety of activity-dependent things that are involved in things like learning and memory, as well as when synapses are dysfunctional, things like Alzheimer's and other. or genetic diseases that alter a synapse function and mental states and ability to function properly. So what's funny is that I was working on a kinase in her lab. And when I got to Harvard, I worked on another kinase called CDK5. It just so happened to be the functional homologue.

So in yeast, and then I was working on the same kinase, so to speak. It doesn't say. In mammals, right? Okay. I remember another serendip... It's funny. It's not hilarious yet, but I know you're getting there. I'm sure you're going to get to the biology point.

Stand up. I stand up for you. Yeah, to me, that was... When I string it together, when I look back, okay, so it might not be... Serendipitous again. It is serendipitous again. There's a huge role in your life. I've noticed that about you.

But the thing that's so noteworthy about you start to interrupt. No, that's right. Is that you take advantage of the serendipity. It's like, you know, they say luck is when the prepared mind. meets opportunity. And you, a lot of people might just be like, oh, okay, well, that's interesting. But you were like, let me latch on to that, like a kinase on a protein and let me take full advantage of it.

And a lot of people wouldn't. I don't know if I would. Yeah. You know, I think that was learning how to relinquish my fear and not hold myself back by giving into the fear. fear was always there, right? I didn't know I could trust people. I walked into a room and a scientist as a mirror.

But I didn't lean in with fear. I kind of came in thinking that what brought us together was a science. I knew there were a lot of challenges and issues. For instance, there's an issue when you don't see other faculty of color at an institution in neuroscience or graduate students and undergrads. And we need to change that. The only way we're going to change it is be a part of a solution. and for me, which is a good point, over the last four or five years, I've really thought a lot about that in the division of biological sciences.

I'm also the associate director of the neuroscience graduate program, but in my diversity role, and I've always had to wear two hats. I want to ask you about that. Diversity. And for me, it has to be just on the same page, right? Academic excellence and diversity cannot be in a man. Symmatica. Right. And so by being successful, I've had a platform, right?

And my success, again, I'm humble because I know that it's due to the hard work of people in my lab and we did together. But, you know, that has allowed me to lend my voice to problems that need to be solved. And that is indeed when we need to do better. That's probably the easiest way to do it. Do better and make sure that kids from the inner city are less. learning that STEM can be for them. It's all around them in their world. Right.

Right. They're naturally curious about it. You have to like work to make them uncurious about it. And they can contribute to this also, right? And take advantage of the joys of actually being involved in STEM. And there's a variety of things. And so I started a scholarship program. And how did I do that? I did that through a serendipitous walk.

Right. I got on a plane and went. across the country multiple times talking to people about my life. I share my story and then they find points where they hey maybe you might want to think about this and eventually think stuff and I realized what I wanted to do was create a program that would basically well initially I used to say I wanted to rival nepotism we can we can set that to the side for now that is provocative And then come back to that. But indeed, what if you gave kids from the inner city

undershare populations, all access, mentors, experiences, research experiences, adequate finances so that they didn't have to work, people that help work on their self-identity, can be prescriptive. It has to be something where they're buying. So I, I, I, I love sharing that passion.

And when you look at it, just want to go back to what you said before, you know, you're doing this, you know, your full professor, your running programs. And on top of that, which I barely have enough time to do what I do, it seems to me, unfairly or not, that you and other minority professors that were blessed to have as colleagues here, you know, they have an extra tax. It's basically you get called upon not only to solve the problems of your scientific field, which is what you're trained in, but also solve a larger societal problem at large, which is how do we increase representation? And, you know, to first approximation, if you want

someone to solve those problems, you know, don't come consult a cosmologist. You know, it's not in my wheelhouse, but I have friends, you know, my friend, Professor Stefan Alexander, president of National Society of Black Physicist. He's also always involved Jim Gates, president of the APS elect. It's a comment baby figured out. Yeah, it seems like, it seems like all all of you guys that are my friends, you guys are superhuman and you have this predate natural ability to do stuff. But honestly, between us and thousands of people that are going to watch this, is this a burden that African Americans especially have to shoulder that maybe is not fair?

And is there a better way for allies, for whatever other people, whatever you want to call people like me, to step up and really do a part so that you can also focus on the thing that God or whoever you want to put you on earth to do, which is your science. in addition to the mentorship that you do. Right, right. To be frank, it is, and you wonder why we do it. And when you look at the people doing it, right, the Jim Gates, your friends, Saman, myself and others,

it's like these people who are pretty significantly, you know, they've done very well in their career. But then they realize, like, I could take this and leverage it to make change. Yeah. I think, you hit on something, and I think it's important in this time right now when we think about racism and the social unrest that is happening where it's not really a moment or a movement. This is like an awakening that we're having. And hopefully more and more people have that awakening where they realize that they can contribute. Whether that's a small amount or a large amount, first thing is really acknowledging the problem.

And the problem is that there are inadequacies. There are systematic things in place that really prevent people, if we're going to say specifically in STEM, underserved and underrepresented minority students, keeps them from actually having the access and going down this path. We need to change that. I have been inundated. Thank you to all my colleagues who reached out. Sorry if I can't reply to all your emails. I really am thankful that you've reached out to me. They know where my heart is and the passion that I have to do this work while also running my lab.

So there needs to be resources. And there needs to be allies. And I'm glad that other faculty are stepping up. Faculty who aren't black and brown are stepping up in ways to really contribute and show their kind of just leaning in to to deal with the problem, right? I didn't have a, none of my mentors were black or brown, you know, whites, Asian. But they cared about me and they cared about where I could go and the possibility of what my life could be. And by doing that, they've impacted all the people that I've impacted.

So leverage, right. So that's real leveraging, right? And I think if we think about this in a simple way like that, you know, how do you affect change one person at a time? Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh, no. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity,

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Terms apply. Right. And then there's a lot of us. Yeah, right. And then the question is, yeah, how do you get that lever and get maximum mechanical advantage to move the world, literally, as our committees would say? So the question I guess next that I'm interested in

is how much of this is nature for you versus nurture for you? So you were a curious kid. What was the eight-year-old gentry like? Because I know you, if I had to say, like, what are you? In addition to like scientists. So like you and I have this income. We're scientists. Like you do something I can't comprehend.

I always say, you know, don't talk to me about what Gentry does. It's brain science. I just do rocket science, you know. But with you, I see you as another modality of your persona is mentor slash leader. And then the other one is kind of like father. but it doesn't just mean of your children. And I feel like that's how we resonate as well. We have biological children,

but we also have ideological children. And I guess my question for you is, what part of that comes from the eight-year-old gentry? You know, some kid out there watching this 12-year-old gentry. I know that age was very formative for me to become an astronomer. I was actually getting into astronomy at that age. What's your scientific world line, the path that got you here? And how much of it was nature,

just the way that whoever made you want to say or how you were, you know, programmed genetically versus how you were brought up all the way up through your schooling. Okay. So great question. No one knows an eight-year-old as an eight-year-old. They do. There's a problem. So, and even if you predicted that this person might be in the place to have the luck to do, you just don't know. No one knows that they're going to show up here and do well. So, um, It really is the experience that you have, your ability to deal with failure. Belior played a big part in my life, right?

But also, I think what was really important as a grad student was my ability just to get in the lab and just love my science. I still have the other pressures and things that have to deal with my life with regards to, you know, maybe being the only black graduate student or what happened. you. But I owned my science and it was it was something that I contributed to. And that kept me going. Yeah. But when you really think about, you know, how do you get all these steps to where you are now, you know, it's being in a place to take advantage of, you know, not being afraid to say, okay, I'll go to this place. I'll take this job. It may be really, really tough and competitive, but I'll go for it.

Yeah, yeah. And I think we all have competitive nature and spirit. But for me, I learned to begin to have empathy for myself, and that spilled out into the realm of the interactions that I had. And for having empathy for others, and you may say, what does empathy have to do with your science trajectory, but it does have a lot to do it because I, I learned how to

really leverage that empathy to keep getting up every day or else I would have, you know, there's a lot of people with me. Just say, okay, 16 years, Gentry and they haven't hired another neuroscientist before, you know, but things will change. And things are changing. And I guess I'm always the hopeful one. I'm not, you know, there probably are others who might be a little bit more critical

of the system and I'm definitely can find the faults of where we are even at UCSD and across the country but I have hoped for a better day you know I don't look at my kids and say wow my kids are just going to have to deal with this crazy world that we live in I'm going to try to make it better for yeah right and so that's what drives me yeah I see you as this you know relentlessly curious incredibly passionate, upbeat, cheerful, and yeah, you're a realist. You're not just a pure starry-eyed optimist. You know, you're like there are problems in society or systemic problems. But then, you know, the system is also made up of individuals and you look for the good in the individuals and you work to educate them in ways that they might not be aware. They might have

blind spots. Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah. That is a good point. I was, I want to make sure I bring up something. For me, the power of partnerships and the power of storytelling will drive the innovative change that we need, not only in our science, but definitely in the realm of providing access, mentorship, and advocacy for those coming from underserved populations. That is what we need. So when you are able to tell your story, right? Some kid becomes a, uh, a, uh, a financier or Wall Street banker, not because he just walks in and they say, check these boxes.

Now, they learn. Right. They follow someone around. So our stories drive the next generation. We're helping these young kids build their own stories. And so that, for me, is if you ask anyone, that knows me well, that's what drives me. Right. I think if you could only learn from people that look exactly like you,

it's going to be hard to make a lot of progress because we can't learn all the lessons of people that lived, you know, in the Middle East, in the 1400s. You just can't like, oh, that doesn't look like me, so I can't do it. On the other hand, you do need to see that the people like you. Absolutely. And I, and I see that, you know, you see the famous president of President Obama and he's meeting with a young African-American kid. And the kid asks, can I touch your hair? And it's like one of the most iconic pictures of his presidency, because he's like, this kid is physically embodying that he could someday be president as an African-American boy. And it's just like gives me shivers. That's a very powerful.

I remember as a kid, and this is like a song, a junior, senior in high school, about to roll out with my cousins and friends. And they were like, Gentry, you can't go with this tonight because we might get into something that, you know, I mean, something had happened. And there was some tension. And tension back in Compton back then was not just, we're going to sit down and we're going to have a conversation. Chess match. Right. Exactly. Right.

And so I had, I mean, this is very salient moment in my memory for me. Gentry, you can't go with this because you're the smart one or you're the one that cares about all this science stuff. We can't have you get caught up in there. So I have cousins and friends, some of which who may be caught up in the penal system that looked out for me, spared me. catching a case, if I had caught a case, as they call in, right? I might not be. You're gonna not be. Right.

Take me back. Yeah. You're in the in the 70s, 80s in Compton. Growing up, your curious kid, nerdy? Definitely nerdy. And so you got the nerd gene genetically because your parents were on scientists, right? But, you know, what was the environment like? What was the kind of milieu that you were involved with that gave you the work ethic and the

integrity. What, who or what was that? Well, as a young child, I, you know, my mom had me at 16 and I was living with my mom for many years before I moved with my dad. And actually, my mom passed away quite young at 37, 37, 38 years old. And, but one of the things she instilled in me was just my love of education or my will to be, you know, to get great grades, to do well in school, to put myself in the best position to move forward and use education as a means to, whether you want to, in some cases, say, a way out, or to leverage it to do something better with my life. And then in this case, when you look now, I'm full circle, circling back to kind of feedback on the system.

and impact others. And so she would tell me, you know, you got to be smarter than anyone else in the room. And, you know, I love school and I worked hard and I didn't have much TV. I think I got like 30 minutes of TV a day. I had to do workbooks all the time. She pushed me.

But it's very interesting that a young mother like that would push their kid and I was her only child to this, to do something great. We both had no idea where I would go. I could have gone straight to jail 10 years later. But, you know, I didn't. And I kept pushing. And I really, you know, those are some of the fond moments when I think back what gave me my strength and my grit.

And it was the, it was that. But you have this grip. And it wasn't like a chip on your shoulder or whatever. It's like there was no resentment. It was like you're going to maximize your vector. Right. And what you're doing. And then you're going to.

pull people up with you. Right. Right. At a very early age, we talked a little bit about empathy, right? I learned that mentorship was really important, but I also learned how I actually had mentors that did not know they were my mentors, right? I was always absorbing the world around me, trying to, reading books, interacting with people, when people would tell me they're still I would jot things down and I would be listening intently because I was trying to figure out my own playbook to do something successful with my life. Again, no idea that I would be here in this capacity. But that's where I tell students now, I'm like everyone in a position, even someone that you think is probably contributing negatively to the space around you, you can still learn something from that experience, even if it's just learning about yourself and how you deal with that.

Yeah, right. So, yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah. So going back to, like, the kids and I don't want to take through kind of how you view the world as a leader, as a CEO of a lab and of a project that we'll get to as we

continue. But I want to take you on a little story that I participated in last year. I was in Washington, D.C., giving a talk at the National Philosophical Society, which which is in the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C. I had a couple hours to kill. And one of my friends is like, oh, you know, you've never been to the Holocaust Museum. Why don't you go to the National Holocaust Museum? You know what?

I've heard so many things about the African American Museum of History and Culture. Let me go there. Right. And I have, you know, perfect timing. It's free. You know, you can't beat it. Lines weren't too bad. It's beautiful.

It's beautiful. But, you know, I'm down there. I'm in the basement. I'm bawling. I'm like, I see the slave ships. I see the passage. I see these people that, you know, white people look like me, even though, you know, my relatives are in Eastern Europe, you know, at the time.

But, and then, you know, so you're going on this emotional roller coaster downstairs. It's really just brutal gut-wrenching. Then you go up and it's like there's musicians, you get everything else, little Richard up to, you know, Beyonce and then, you know, and the influence on rock and roll and the blues. That's awesome. And then you go up, you see, you know, Beyonce and whatever. And then you get up and you see comedians and you see, you see. Tuskegee Airmen, all these great, wonderful aspects of history and culture.

But I'm like, where's the science exhibit? Where is it? Where is it in the African? And I'm like, what is that? Like if a gentry nowadays, a little eight-year-old gentry goes there or your daughters, what are they going to see as going to inspire them to do, you know, a different brand? And I'm speaking now not as, you know, black versus white. I'm just saying science and culture as a part of culture. Where do you view a science and your science as a culture, part of the human culture and civilization?

experience. I think, you know, as I mentioned, STEM is all around us. It's what allows us to exist, right? And our ability to engage it. But I think that, you know, we have to find a way to partner. Like, science can't be in a vacuum. It is not in a vacuum, as I just mentioned, but science in the arts. science and the community. I think as faculty, as institutions, academic, and both for-profit, non-profit institutions of science, biotech, what have you, we all need to be figuring out ways where we are communicating our science to the world and to our community, specifically in our own backyards, right? wherever you are you should be able to relay why what you do and this is a good mark of a great

speaker right when they can deliver a message to anyone whether they be eight years old or 85 and suffering from some from some mental lapse right you should be able to tell why you're interested in what you do, to some degree what you do, and what that means to the rest of the world, or else we're just doing it in a vacuum. Right. And so I do think that for kids of color, underserved, we need more showcase of the amazing scientists and talent pool that are black and brown scientists across this country. You know there's a lot of us.

It needs to be more. But the ones that exist, we need to also be able to step out of our labs and say, yeah, this is me and this is what I tell their story. A lot of times it's the rap race, right? You know, our community sometimes is built in a way that you're always chasing the next grant. You're always chasing the next paper. You never have a moment to just sit and exist and be with it. that you're always you get scooped or else you get screwed. And so I look for the day when science also learns where collaboration is just as important. I know in my career I've had a lot

of collaborators and it's been meaningful to my career where I've either learned something else or I've been a part of something that I thought was important as opposed to always pushing to be better than the next person. Right. That's not what drives you. I love the inquiry of science and doing science, but I love being able to share that story. And we need to be more storytellers in so that people, young people from any background. You feel like scientists have an obligation. I mean, you know, you always hear this thing like, oh, Carl Sagan, we're near the grass Tyson, or Bill Nott. You know, Bill Nott's not real son.

But nevertheless. He's got some funny things online, though. Yeah, he's very good at what he does. But do you think that we as scientists have an obligation? to, you know, take acting classes. I mean, when you just say like, oh, I'm just not good at I'm going to stay in the lab, well, the public's paying your salary, you know, at some level through their taxes or through their state salary in our case, as you see professors, you feel like we have an obligation

to up our game or at least spend some amount of our time devoting ourselves to outreach and improving ourselves in terms of the outreach to the community. Absolutely. Absolutely. If you're not, if you are getting funds from, you know, the government, NIH, NSF, and any other governmental...

Yeah, if you're not just funding your own lab exclusively. And even at that way of the case, you need to be able to communicate your findings to others and that passion that you have, we should be impacting the world and leaving something better. So, yes,

I do have a lot of colleagues who want to do that, but then there are some who could care less. Yeah, right? And, you know, I always say we're always evolving. There's an evolution that's taking place. And in time and space right now, that you're seeing that, right? When you think about what's happening with the social unrest, I think people are saying, you know, enough is enough.

And you can't silo yourself in the lab. You can't silo yourself. You can't silo yourself. Yeah. Right. You mentioned earlier you brought up a word which I don't normally associate in this context with academia, although I do in other ways, like fear of missing out, fear of lack of credit, attribution, you know, we don't make profits, right, and what we do,

but we get citations and things like that. You mentioned like fear as kind of like, you know, like I heard Jamie Fox once say like, like what's on the other side of fear? Nothing. Like, how do you approach that notion of, you know, handling a very primal biological notion rooted in the neurons, you know, right? You know, about it. What is fear? When I say fear, what does it mean to And what do you mean by it when you spoke about it earlier? Quite simply, fear is a lack of empathy for yourself. That's what fear is to me. When I can have empathy and just realize that I'm a human,

I'm a father, that I'm a professor, that I'm a mentor, that I'm a son, that I'm a community member, that I'm one to do the right thing in a moment when someone might be in need. That empathy that allows me to exist in that allows the fear of the unknown to kind of just disappear, right? No one knows what's tomorrow it's going to bring.

No one knows what the next few hours will bring. But I think when we surround ourselves, with like-minded people that care about similar things, that care about a better future. And I know this may sound a little, I don't know the word would be, but kind of looking on the sunny side of everything, right? Polyamination.

Yeah, but to be, to be honest, that's what I want to let me, my two daughters. You know, I don't want them growing up just angry and upset about existing here. You know, I want them to realize that they can take hold and have a future that they can make for themselves and exist with others. Yeah. Very good.

So you're about to hire grad students. There's two grad students. They're equally, you know, GPA, GRE. I don't even know if you guys have GRE anymore. We're trying to do away with it. We are too, yes. Whatever. But you see, one is last.

like there's two different types of chess grandmasters. One is like can think like 50 moves ahead and just like foresees the future kind of like strategically where he or she is going to get to go. And everyone's like more tactical, more broad, might know the philosophy, you know, like opening moves and just kind of like, oh, I know in general I want to recruit these tools. When you're looking at somebody to potentially hire as an employee postdoc or whatever, or lab math, are you looking for the broad, you know, kind of like I understand. I understand neuroscience. I understand. Or do you want someone who's a machine that can go deep, deep, deep, deep where no one else can go before. And you can't say both, you know, because it's very right. Both of those traits, right? The breadth and the breadth and the choose one, right? Yeah. So like what appeals to you? What do you see yourself? Are you a generalist? Are you the macro kind of person? Are you more micro and you like to drill down and focus and nerd out on the most microscopic details? How do you approach it? And what do you look for an employee? Right. So.

I would say I like to find the gaps where maybe two fields have not merged yet. So I do like detail, but I would consider myself more of a generalist. I'm a cell biologist who studies neurons and synapses and receptors, who do make receptors, and they're trafficking to and from the synapse. So, you know, just happens to be neurons, but I could be studying receptors and another cell type. but I learned to love the brain, and now I'm a full-fledged neuroscientist doing this type of work. But for me, the ability to be adaptable is really important, right?

You may, so I started using biochemistry and, you know, to some degree imaging, and then moved on to being able to use the electrophysiology and mouse models, what have you. I like bringing lots of techniques together to solve questions that may have been actually begun to be addressed in other fields or in other places and kind of usurping them and finding that overlap. So that's what I did as a graduate student leaving graduate school going into my postdoc. No one was working on protein half-life control at the level that I wanted to look at. And I just brought two ideas together. I went into a lab that it never worked on this. And I said, hey, you work on local protein synthesis.

Would you be interested in protein degradation? You're like, yeah, I didn't think. Okay, maybe I should think about that. Today, that's a full field now, right? But I think for me, the graduate students, I would hope that I'd have a mixture. I'm sorry, I'm going to have to do this, a mixture of both, right? Okay. And the reason is because you want that graduate student that can drill down and the level of rigor that actually takes you to the unknown where people may not have gone, right?

But also that breath of being able to pull away, pull back out and say, hey, you know what? This may not be where we need to be. We may need to move into this other space right here. At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV! Then I heard a voice.

Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows and they were all free. The truth is our scene. It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe Arrow, the 100 NX files may cause excitement, loss of sleep,

and sudden belief in extraterrestrials. No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. And adaptable. and definitely being able to deal with failure because they're going to fail 9% at the time. That 10% is what they're going to be putting on their walls. Speaking of failure, I've got a question for you. So when I look back in my life, I see certain things that at the time seemed catastrophic,

getting fired from Stanford University as a freshly minted postdoc being first and foremost seemingly unrecoverable. But in my case, it led to great success. In fact, you know, you and I being here and you, you know, being partners with my cousin, right? So these things would not have happened. Were it not for this failure that I experienced or what I thought was a failure? Have you had experiences like that where you, you know, stumbled, something happened, you tripped? Maybe you let yourself down. Maybe you let somebody else down.

And then, but in the end, you wouldn't be the Gentry Patrick, the professor at UC San Diego without it, potentially. I've definitely had lots of failure. And some of the things that come to mind for me are those things that, you know, if I had not picked myself up or not reached out or not figured out something in that particular time, we may not be here, right? We may not be filming this right now. my first year after undergrad, I did very poorly and I did not set myself up well enough to even have a place to stay. So I literally became homeless for a couple weeks, right? Couch surfing, getting vouchers from the county to stay in hotels. Most people would not, you know, not guessed at that is something that I experienced.

But, you know, all of these types of experiences actually were like putting one layer of thin paint at a time. Eventually, you form a brick. I don't know how long that would take. But your foundation is there, right? Your foundation is there. And so I wouldn't change any of that. But that was definitely a time when I didn't know that I could get up every day. I couldn't see the next moon.

But then I learned to persist. right and persisting didn't mean banging on the same door sometimes it means it meant standing back and listening looking and trying to integrate where I am right now and where I might want to go

and that may be novel experiences that you might a problem that we deal with with regards to underserved black and brown students in STEM a lot of times they don't trust the system right and so

there's got to be a meeting somewhere, meeting other minds. And for me, you know, being able to persist was really important. What about your research has been most fascinating, surprising, maybe even influential that you do that you would want to tell the world about? That's just something that you contributed to the corpus of human knowledge. And it's also incredibly fun and passionate. and exciting. So what's excited me most in science is the aspect of time and space. What do I mean by that? Speaking my language. What do I mean by that? Tom. You become a cosmologist. Come on. What do I mean by

that? I got fascinated by the fact that the central dogma, which dictates that DNA goes to RNA, goes to proteins. Proteins and RNA don't live forever, but proteins do a large majority of the work. These proteins that in the case of the work that I do since I studied protein half-life control and protein homeostasis, proteins have to get to a place where they're function, and they're only there for a certain period of time. And I got fascinated by the fact that the half-life of persistence, population of a protein, basically half-life is the amount of protein that's left 50% and how much time it takes to get to that point.

But when you think about a neuron, about different cell types that have wildly different structures, a neuron has a cell body in these processes, dendrites, and axons, and then specialized contact points like synapses, both pre and post-synaptically. Proteins have to get there. They exist for a period of time, and then they have turned over. And I got really excited about the rules, the genetic rules that would be in play, the actual. activity and experience dependent rules, experience that that neuron has, the actual information that it receives, that controls the persistence of those proteins.

And from there, I saw why that was so important even to not only synapse function and neuronal function, but it was also important for disease and disease pathology. the progression of disease. You may not know, but most diseases of the brain, neurodigenic diseases, are diseases of altered protein homeostasis. Something goes awry. The amount of protein that's being made or the amount of protein that's being degraded.

Sometimes you degrade proteins because, like in Alzheimer's, you know, you have toxic proteins built up, as in also in Huntington's disease. And so I got very interested in time and space And actually what we used to do, and we still do to this day, is monitor proteins in living cells and where they are, how they move, and how long they persist. And then you take that, and it's almost like an end gate where you overlay the activity-dependent rules which control their persistence in those places. We're still pushing on that front, but that, to me, excites me because it's a level of cell biology. It's a level of just the central dogma, you know, protein being made because of a sequence of events that, you know, in some cases you might have a transcription factor, which drives gene expression that might be out in distal dendrites of a neuron.

But it gets a signal of traffic translocate back to the cell body, into the nucleus, activate something that then goes back and tags that set of specific synapses. It's all amazing that, you know, six billion nucleotides. is dictating a variety of specialized machines. So when I teach Build 1, I get excited about teaching about biology one. It's the cell. Sorry. But I'm always talking about 3D structure,

making sure that the kids realize that protein X is not just a word on a page. It is a living, living, great, you can turn around and look at. And then for me to have that, And then also know that it has to get to place X. It's only going to be there for a certain period of time. And so. On the brevity of life, right?

Yeah, yeah. That's really amazing. Now you got me geeky now. Yeah, yeah. Now the inner gig is coming out. I'm going to ask you some pop questions. Because again, I don't have too many deep thoughts in this realm of the brain. True or false, you can take supplements to prolong your cognitive function,

prohibit your cognitive decline. And you can say pass if you're not. I'm going to pass on that. What about training your brain, cross-training your brain? Can you do cross-word puzzles? Can you do Sudoku? Do you do any? First of all, do you take any supplements?

Let me say it. This is not medical advice. I take vitamins, yes. Yeah. And what about exercise? Because you're very fit. You love to hike. You love to fish.

Yeah. You love to do all those things. But you do stuff that, notes between the, you know, taking care of your physical body, improves your mental body, your mental body, so much. Luckily, your cousin and my partner is helping me find that connection to mindfulness. Ah, okay. So mindfulness is really important.

What's your routine? Tell me your day. We live stressful lives, you and I. Of course. Yeah. Oh, you know, your tenure, forget it. Your life is, your worries are over. We live in life.

Our kids are always trying to, you know, put it, lock us in a dungeon. Right. And then, you know, between writing grants and running programs, I do so many different things, you have to be able to find that calm and all of the sea of chaos. We exist. We love the chaos. Yeah. Right. We thrive.

Right. We thrive right in it. Type type. Um, but I've learned that I need to be able to bring myself back down and find a place of mindfulness that allows me to, I always try to go high level, but. Sometimes it's either not high enough, high level enough with regards to, okay, putting things in perspective, but also just knowing that we're human. Our physiology is linked in many cases to the stress and the response that we're engaging in how we're engaging in the world. It's so interesting you say that because I was thinking back to what you said earlier about fear and like self-love, self-love meditation, mindless, like self-care. I've had on some mindfulness experts like Dr. Judson Brewer,

MD, PhD at Brown University. I've had on people that are opposed to him like, Noam Chomsky, he's like, I don't meditate. I'm like, don't you have this voice that never stops in your head going. But to hear you say that in connecting like calming meditative thoughts are another tool to use against that foe, which is fear in academics. We face so much fear, fear of rejection, fear of not getting promotion, tenure, not being cited. and people think it's just the easiest, you know, three hour a week job in the world.

It's not. It's not. No, definitely not. Yeah, yeah. These are things. So what we haven't talked about is the scholarship program. Yeah, I want to talk about that next year. But these are some of the things that we implement there.

Yeah, because it's not just about like, it's a meta skills, networking, collaboration. But let's get into it. Let's talk about it. So you run this past program, which you started in your 2019 convocation speech at UC San Diego, which is kind of like the analog of a graduation speech, but at the beginning of a year, welcoming everybody. It's so funny how few people know what a convocation speech is, but how many people know what a graduation speech is,

which I assume you'll do many of those if you haven't already. But in your convocation speech, you speak about these three different themes, and you talk about, you know, kind of the access, the mentorship, the collaboration, the PATH program, first of all, it's co-sponsored, sponsored in part, UCSD, Chan Zuckerberg initiative. Right.

Talk about that. How did you not only, We start the beginning of the podcast talking a little bit about your vision and your mission in life. I see this as like a part of being a salesmanship or saleswoman. You have to do this as a scientist. It's not enough that you think you're brilliant. You have some great idea. It's never going to scale.

It's never going to get out into the world. How do you convince people to buy into your vision not only with their hearts? Because you're a very inspirational person. You know that. And people really feel a, a. force of gravity towards you. And I'm a physicist, so I can say that. But on the other hand, it's not enough because you have to get people open their

wallets. And how do you, how did you do that? How does it work with, with Chan and Chan Zuckerberg? Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg, founders of Facebook and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Dr. Right, right, right. So to be honest, it all started really with people buying into my story and me selling them that I can make new stories out there and give me a kid and I can help build that story. I've had donors who told me straight out, Gentry, we're supporting you and your vision. We hope you do it.

We hope you don't fail. We hope you impact the lives of these young people. But we're buying into you. So I evaluated my life in such a way and found the nuances. the salient, important, impactful things. I said, what did it take for me to be successful? And that's why it comes down to access mentorship and advocacy. And that's where I said, I want to build a scholarship program that puts all of that in there at an Uber level that allows for these kids to really thrive.

And that's what it's doing. We're in a third cohort right now. How many kids go through it? We took the first two years, 12 a year, and now we took 15. Interestingly enough, you know, it's really gaining traction, right? So we had 50, 70 applicants first couple years. This past year, we had over 500 applications for 15 spots. Did not realize that.

And these are some of the most impressive. I was honored to be with the first speakers in the first cohort. Thank you very much. And I just loved it. I wanted to stay with them for hours. They were finally like, they got to go. We've got a Facebook check in now. We've got a day.

Thanks, Professor Gu. But let me come back to what you said. So the students are doing absolutely great, and I'll give you some of the details of what's in the program. Yeah, we'll put links in the notes and everything, too. What is it that allows someone to see that they can partner with you? Why would a venture philanthropist say, I see it? And you say, well, Gentry is inspirational. Little note, I didn't tell you this.

of my father and all of his brothers were and are ministers. Right? So speaking in front of large crowds, we're good with that. That's one thing. You have the word of God, you know, is your material that's up to the delivery. Yeah, exactly. I think I knew that about your dad. I didn't know that about your office.

Yeah, exactly. No, my uncle has a big church, like, almost like a little mega church in Houston. Oh, that's awesome. I got to check you know. So I think I lean in with such transparency, and I crystallized what exactly needs to happen. I'm like, there are many nonprofits, there are many programs, and they all kind of siloed themselves. They don't all silo themselves. Let me reframe that.

They can be siloed. And so I knew that the genius or the innovation would be to, if you're going to be. going to create another scholarship program. There exists a little bit of the client. You need to do something that doesn't facilitate siloing of your scholars, the program, and actually

thrives and is driven by true partnership. Really, this came about pathways to STEM to enhance access and mentorship, otherwise known as the Path Scholars Program, really came about because

and I'll get into some of the details of what it does, it came about because of my commitment to science. And you may say, what do you mean by that? The fact that I had a platform, I was a leader in my field. You know, I was a tenured professor, now a full professor, with advancement, you know, now.

And the fact that I had just bought into this idea of science is my community, giving talks all over the place every year and had meetings like Gordon Conference and passive meetings. Even if I was the only black person, right, I was there. And I knew in many cases I was like, I better get a give a good talk. Right. That's another form of tact, right? Outperform. When it was time to like do something like this, people didn't say, oh yeah he has a great idea they were like he clearly has connected you know if he was able to trans

going a trajectory from starting in inner city south central l a compton californ going through all the way he did and if he wants to pull out those salient parts of what helped him be successful i'll buy into that right and you know obviously i can communicate that well to them um but that's how it started. I really, I went to with regards to Chan Zuckerberg, Corey Bargman, who I think she was voted like most influential

or most important scientists in some year, a couple years ago. I think right when she became the CZI president of science, Corey Bargman, she's known me since my days at UCSF and she's followed my career

and in some case she's been there to have can mentor me. And I said, hey, I'm going to start this new program. She said, hold on. We were just talking with Dr. Freeman Havowski, who's the president of University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who's now a friend. And I look up to him very much so. He's a passionate speaker and author.

You should definitely get him on your... No, I met a little bit of convocation for that, right? So, no, he was not at the conversation. convocation. Freeman Havoski is the president of UMBC and started the Meyerhop scholarship. The Meyer, right. Yeah, yeah. I thought that he was, he didn't come out. Oh, okay. He's come out once. Yeah. He's like Gentry, you guys work on it for five years and then I'll come up. We'll get out here in January. Yeah. You know, Baltimore's nice in the winter. Right, right, right. And so again, serendipity, of course, because that's how my life works. But because I had a science footprint and a good one,

I was able to leverage that to talk about how we can do more. And people were like, okay, I like this. And then you get other people involved. And so what's great about this partnership is it's between Berkeley and UCSD, as well as UNBC and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is funding all three. To basically model what Meyerhoff had done. They are phenomenal in what they've done. And I've learned so much, 33 years now, I believe.

for instance, the Surgeon General is a Meyerhoff scholar. They basically make a community. And this is what I was talking about. You know, you have these scholars that come from these places where they show up on UCST and it's quite different than their home, right, in their community. And they don't see, you know, they're not normally around people with opulent wealth or what have you. And so they're thrown out of into this context where they have to persist.

and not have imposter syndrome. You know, imposter syndrome never really goes away when you really think of a form of fear, right? Yeah. It's a form of fear. And they have to persist. And so, and trust the system. And so this is some of the things that we really want to do in our, we model after this program. And it's allowed us to be very successful.

So we lean in with the transparency and allow our students to really allow us to go ahead on their path and clear the way. There's accountability, a great amount of accountability, community service, there's graduate advocates. We have a full staff, three pro staff, full-time people who run the program. We have what's called graduate advocates who help take care of not only checking in with the students weekly, but they're talking, they're, you know, mindfulness. How are you doing? How's your health?

How's your mental health? Self care. And it's from networking for them too. Networking. Meeting faculty like yourself. And it's been great. You can get a faculty member, over lunch,

we'll talk about themselves for an hour. That's like the signing up. That's like the opening act for me, man. Only an hour. Right, right. And so this program is, it's really been special. to see evolve, I've been fortunate to have, you know, major funding come through. I think it's

helping the, it's a model program. So it's helping the campus to evolve and grow because, especially when you think about the time that we're in right now, we have to really consider what are the best ways that we can do this and how are the partnerships driving a better outcome for our Black and Brown students that are coming from these environments that are here on campus and dealing with, quite frankly, in many cases, racism and microaggressions

and not being able to deal with that or in some cases understand it, but how do we own our own community so that we can say, you know what, we can do better? And that starts with leadership. That starts with valuing, the faculty that we have that starts with bringing more students in through the pipeline, right,

and supporting them. It starts with innovative ideas to build within divisions, hubs and success centers that will allow, I think, physical science has a success center now, right? I think biology, we're about to do something very similar with our own secret sauce, just to say. Throw down. Division versus division. Right. So again, you know, Adam bomb, you guys have the bio weapon. Yes, exactly.

So I'm really hopeful. Someone asked me, you know, do you have hope for the future? I mean, you can say all this fear, depending on what happens in the near and short term or long term. But I think, I think when we own our own existence. in our own community and we have empathy for the people around us, we can do something very special. And that's whether you're astrophysicist, cosmologists, whether you're a doctor, whether you're a neuroscientist, whether you're a kid from Compton, California, who, and by the way, I love, I love, you know, being here at UCSD. I do know that one day,

the things that I do here serve as a model to impact that world. I want to be able to go back to Compton one day and start something special and partner with great people, whether it be in the entertainment, you know, industry as well as the science. And there's a lot of innovation to be had to really do something special in that community. I can't wait to do that. There's nobody better suited than you, my friend. I cannot wait to see where you go next on the pathway to greatness, not only for yourself, but for all these students that you serve,

I just want to thank you. So grateful not only to be a friend, but to have you as a colleague, you're really a treasure. And I want to thank you for spending time with the Into the Impossible podcast. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable and magic. If you enjoyed this episode of Into the Impossible, please subscribe, comment, share, rate, and review. For a chance to win a free copy of our most recent guest's newest, book. Send a screenshot of your review to info at imagine.ucsd.edu. We appreciate hearing from you and are always open to your suggestions for future episodes.

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