NEXT GENERATION OF SCIENTISTS
BENJAMIN GARFINKEL, PhD Postdoctoral Fellow
Q. What
brought you to the knowledge that a career in research is something you wanted to pursue?
This is a great question. In fact, a scientist was the one thing I knew as a child that I did not want to be when I grew up. My father was a scientist, and I wanted to rebel. However, when the time came to choose a major in school, I somehow found myself naturally pulled into life sciences. My initial exposure to scientific research was as an undergraduate student in the lab of Professor Joseph Orly at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, and as is often the case, my original project rapidly evolved into new and exciting directions. By the time I graduated, I was hooked.
Q. Did
you have particular hurdles, barriers, or challenges along the way?
The first major hurdle that I encountered on my scientific journey was my father’s diagnosis with pancreatic cancer and his passing a few months later. This occurred during my first year as an undergraduate student, just as I was preparing to start work in a lab. This was a significant blow, as my mother had also died of cancer eight years earlier. I think that this personal close encounter with untreatable illness acted to further solidify my resolve to work in biomedical research. On a more day-to-day level, I believe that a scientist’s career is fraught with challenges simply by virtue of the unpredictable nature of working with experiments. More than once I have found myself having to accept that a hypothesis I was excited about proved to be utterly wrong. However, this means that when I get things right, it’s extra sweet!
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Q. What
attracted you to join the Hotamışlıgil Lab at the Sabri Ülker Center?
I had heard great things about the Hotamışlıgil Lab from colleagues in Israel when I was looking for a top-notch lab doing metabolic research for my postdoc. It was recommended to me as an excellent place to perform cutting-edge research at the interface between metabolism and immunology, a field in which I was interested in developing. I interviewed at a number of leading labs in the Boston area, but thankfully I had no difficulty in choosing. The research being performed in all of these labs was unique and fascinating, but in none of them did I encounter the lab culture that permeated the Hotamışlıgil Lab. Even as a candidate, I felt so welcomed that I wanted to return as soon as possible. Q. Are
there particular scientific questions that motivate you?
There are many, and they are constantly changing. Throughout my career so far, I’ve allowed myself to be led by my experimental results from question to question. I approach scientific research like a scavenger hunt— each time I solve a riddle, my reward is another riddle, another challenge. This is exhausting, but never boring! At the moment, I am driven by the question of how the pancreas copes with the immense burden of producing large amounts of digestive enzymes every morning when we wake up. Paradoxically, making so much protein can be harmful for the pancreatic cells, and I am trying to elucidate the defense mechanisms utilized by these cells to allow us to continue eating and digesting peacefully.
