FTG 0083 – Advancing Medicine through AI with Physician Scientist Ryan Henrici ’15

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to Fall in the Gong, a podcast for Schreyer Scholars, bringing you mentoring on demand from scholar alumni. I'm your host, Sean Goheen. And our guest today, joining us here in the studio, powered by the Peter Weiler family endowment, is physician, scientist and entrepreneur Dr. Ryan Henrisi. Ryan, thanks for joining us here. [00:00:23] Speaker B: Thanks very much, Sean. This is a great pleasure. [00:00:26] Speaker A: So Ryan, first of all, you're here today on campus to receive the prestigious Alumni Achievement Award from the Penn State Alumni Association. So congrats on that recognition. [00:00:35] Speaker B: Thank you very, very much. [00:00:37] Speaker A: So the other three scholars that are here today to receive it have all been on the podcast. So we have a nice round set of all four. So glad that you're able to be featured here. Now I want to start all the way back in high school. My was Penn State and Trier always like your number one? How did you find your way here? [00:00:56] Speaker B: No, I mean, so coming out of high school, I always dreamed of being a swimmer, that I was gonna carry my into college athletics and I was recruiting to another school and sort of already jinxed it, Bought my sweater and everything and then didn't get it. And so I had applied sort of on a wing to the honors program. My sister's, you know, then fiance was a Penn State grad. She had gone to Lafayette. My whole family's Lafayette grads. And so he said, look, you're really gonna like Penn State in the honors program. I think you should apply. Just even if you think you're going to that other place, like just, just do it. And then, so then March came around and didn't get into that other place. Big surprise. And I was like, well, I guess either I'm not going to college or I'm going to the Honors College and going to Penn State. And I'd always thought I was one of that smaller school wanted a focused sort of high caliber academic institution that was very research intense. And Penn State to me at the time was just a big state school football culture. And like I didn't know much about what Penn State in the honors program had to offer. And so came up for the accepted students day and immediately realized like how wrong like I was about what I thought Penn State was, what the campus even looked like, you know, what the honors program was going to be. And immediately was like, no, no, this is the right place for me. [00:02:16] Speaker A: So, well, clearly if you're back here to receive the AAA award, so we're gonna talk a lot of science here today, Ryan, but before we do that, you could have taken A career path that might have landed you in something like this based on what you were doing in high school? Is that something that you had considered your other still sits? [00:02:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I've done a lot of little things that are all sorts of different, you know, paths that I could have taken. I actually came into high school thinking I was going to be an architect, I wanted to be an athlete, all kinds of stuff. And it was through early experiences with my family in medicine that I gravitated increasingly towards science. And then that whole foundation really sort of turned into stone once I came here to Penn State. [00:03:09] Speaker A: So we have a lot of students who are from outside of Philly, yours truly included, as well as you. [00:03:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:15] Speaker A: Can you talk about covering a certain special event in history? [00:03:23] Speaker B: I was very involved in TV as a high school student, and so we had, like, a local TV studio, part of the high school, did morning announcements and all that jazz. And this is hilarious. Part of 2007, 2008 World Series on Phillies 1. The parade came to Broad street as the Eagles parade recently was as well. And my friend and I, we, as, you know, thinking we were bigger than we were, we chucked our name in for media passes for the Phillies World Series parade. And, you know, while all of our classmates were getting on the train to head into town, just to stand in the. In the wings, in the side streets and try to catch the buses, we got an email that morning saying, yeah, you guys qualify as, like, the media. And so we showed up into Philly, got onto the parade bus and riding down, down Broad in the actual parade. And if you actually look, there's a commemorative coffee table book that has, like, the big spread of Broad street looking south. And someone gave it to us for. For Christmas, I guess. We were looking. It was actually Conestoga Swimming and Diving. You can see, like, the varsity jacket is, like, right there on the lower left of, like, I'm immortalized forever on people's coffee tables. So, you know, science took me by the hand once I came to Penn State, and my career in broadcast journalism ended there. But. [00:04:41] Speaker A: Well, that's a pretty high point, is being able to cover a legendary moment like that. And for all the Pirates fans or Yankees fans watching. So thank you for bearing with us on that. [00:04:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:50] Speaker A: So let's talk a little bit about. So you said science took you by the hand here at Penn State. There's a lot of different paths you can go with science, engineering. How was it that you decided, like, this medical track was the way you wanted to go? [00:05:04] Speaker B: Yeah, so growing up, I was the third of three, my oldest siblings, my sister six years older. And when I was in elementary school, my mom started to get sick. I thought it was first asthma, then it was a couple of other diagnoses. And so had a sort of constellation of things going for her that was really puzzling to physicians. And at points, it's quite serious. And so we spent a lot of our childhood in hospital hospitals in ICUs and seeing misdiagnoses and severe states of disease. And as a kid, that was super frightening, not really knowing what was going to happen next, not having a context for how to interpret all of this uncertainty and the beeping and the tubes and all this stuff is very scary. And the physicians, and importantly the nurses, the staff on the floors, I think, saw that and pulled me aside and made sure that even though I was going to spend a lot of time in that context with my mom as she was healing, that I understood it wasn't a scary place, that hospitals are a place of healing and a place of compassion and care. And so the physicians and staff on the floors treated not only my mom and helped her to recuperate every time that she had one of these big setbacks, but also made sure that we were feeling a part of it as well. I thought that was pretty cool. That was pretty impactful, the ability to use science and also be in the service of others and interact with people every day. That pushed me into a medical track. Eventually, she was correctly diagnosed with something called neuromyelitis optica, which is a rare autoimmune neurological disorder, as a result of folks at the Mayo Clinic discovering a blood test that could be used to detect, you know, the. The driver of the disease and separate it from all of the many other diseases like Ms. Transverse myelitis that look like this. And so she was being treated for Ms. When actually NMO is treated very differently. And so as soon as this blood test was available, as soon as she's correctly diagnosed, correctly treated, she's never had a major exacerbation. Exacerbation of that disease since obviously, you know, significant damage has been done in the meantime. So you're seeing the power of bench research to impact, you know, patients bedside and their families, and then couple that with the sort of compassion and the care of the medical staff. It's like, you know, this is a really cool space where you can learn, you can discover new things and use that to, like, totally transform patients and their families and their quality of life. And so that's what Sort of pushed me down this track. My sister being six years older, she went into medical school, obviously ahead of me, and sort of showed me the way. I came to Penn State, thinking about science, thinking about going to med school, and we can certainly talk about this, but I joined the lab as part of the honors experience very early and realized that I was really at home at the bench. And the sort of freedom of thought and inquiry in the thesis process, which I started as a freshman, spent a couple of summers here with grants from the College of Science and the Honors College to cover the cost of living, and realized that bench lab research was a lot of fun. And then also med school is sort of ahead of me as well. And so that's sort of how I gravitated from little kid here to Penn State and then ultimately figuring out generally what I wanted to do. [00:08:36] Speaker A: So there's a lot of different avenues that you can go down to do that lab research, the bench research. So walk us through your process of, like, how you started identifying which were the ones that appealed to you and, you know, reaching out to professors, finding those opportunities because go a lot of different directions, even just within, like, biology, medical space. [00:08:55] Speaker B: And I think, you know, at a big school like Penn State, there's so much opportunity for doing different things. You know, you could. You can be a B and B student and be doing research in a totally unrelated college or department. And so you. You know, that's one of the massive strengths of this university, is that there's so many opportunities. But I think then finding what you actually want to do in the sea of opportunity can be challenging. You know, my honors advisor, Dr. Gao, who's in his 38th year of teaching now at Penn State NBME, he was super helpful in sort of providing some of that context, and this is how other people have done this. But really, I think it's about, you can work on cancers, you can work on neuroscience, you can work on all kinds of stuff, but finding techniques, finding a good opportunity for mentorship, looking at labs that have a history of training undergrads and incorporating them into the research process. I think that's where you'll find a really sort of rich environment to learn in. And then all of the specifics about exactly what you're doing, exactly what disease you're working on. You can always pick and choose, change, stop working in lab, start in another. There's plenty of time in life to figure out the specifics, but I think finding a good place for a foundation is where to start. As an undergrad for me. I started from chem 110H with Phil Bevalacqua. I think I got a good grade on the first exam and he suggested that I think about research. And so I started working in a chemistry lab actually as a first semester, first year freshman here in the honors college. And after a quarter or two quarters worth of working in the springtime of my first year, I was saying, I'm not sure I'm going to be a chemist. I'm not sure this is my thing. And so then I applied back into the honors BMB 496H research extra classwork thing and interviewed with a bunch of different labs and then picked the one that I settled into for the next three years. [00:10:46] Speaker A: Awesome. Which lab was that? [00:10:47] Speaker B: Dr. Song Tan. Song Tan's lab was focused on protein science, on understanding the structural biology, which is basically molecular photography. Increasingly actually molecular photography, given advances in how we do some of these experiments. But basically looking at how we. How proteins interact with our DNA to drive how cells do their thing, how they turn genes on, turn genes off, become cancerous, or revert back from a cancerous state to a normal one. And so understanding exactly how these proteins interact with our DNA gives us insight into, into how we might design drugs to control that process, to make it do something that it doesn't normally do, or to reverse a state of disease. So that basic biology taught me a whole bunch of foundational skills about how to conduct yourself in a lab, how to talk about science, how to be independent when you need help and when to ask for help and when to just buckle down and try to solve the problem yourself. So that sort of foundational skill came from Song's lab, and he started coming to my Thanksgiving as a junior and he's been a part of my family for the last 10 years. Awesome. [00:12:00] Speaker A: So I think you raised a good point there about, like, and this is for a lot of careers, but specifically for your area of expertise, when do you ask for help and when, like when do you, you know, you kind of try and solve it yourself, but at some point, sometimes the better option is to raise your hand and ask for help. What was the best piece of advice that you got from a mentor in [00:12:20] Speaker B: that lab around that concept and how I run my lab today. Asking for help is never the wrong choice. I don't always want it to be the first choice, but it is never a wrong choice. And so I think developing that sense of safety mentally, that you can always ask for help at anything in life. Reaching out to a friend A colleague, someone that you met once, whoever it is, you should always ask for help if you're not sure. I think there's opportunities for growth where you don't immediately ask someone to solve a problem for you or tell you the answer. Um, and again, finding yourself with that safety net where you convince yourself, like, I know that I can find help if I need it, and then having a little bit of, like, a stopping function built in, like, I'm going to work on this for a week, or I'm going to work on this for five hours, and if I don't have any kind of insight and I'm totally lost, then I'm going to, like, you know, ask for help or, you know, look at a book or ask, chat GPT or whatever it is, right? To, like, get a leg up. So, you know, first developing that. That sense of, like, psychological safety that I always have an outcome, and then knowing that I'm always safe and like, I always have an out, there's someone out there that I can reach out to. Then, you know, let's. Let's see if we can push through this. Because I think there's like, the creativity and that trial and error process is so important to development and learning. And so we shouldn't always, like, look for an out. But. Yeah. And Song's lab, I always knew he was there, and I always knew that he wanted me to try first. Just try. And if it's, you know, if you're about to spend a million dollars and you're not sure if you know how to do it right, then, like, let's talk about that. Right. But if it's like a couple hours or a day or two of effort and you're not sure if it's going to work out or not, like, it's. That's not such a valuable. You know, there's no. There's no consequence to failure there. So, yeah, that's how I approach it. [00:14:04] Speaker A: Awesome. So speaking of learning and development, let's step out of the lab for a minute. What were some of the things that you were involved with outside of classes here at Penn State and how have those experiences influenced your career? [00:14:18] Speaker B: You know, so I was super involved with THON as a hospital hospitality committee member for several years. It started off, I think, my first year of the honors college, I was a part of Atlas thon, then Springfield Thon, and then transitioned into the hospitality committees to actually be a part of the operations of thon, which was just a ton of fun. And that, I think, gave me a Ton of purpose. And again seeing just more examples of how medicine, how philanthropy, how mission and intention can really impact patients and their families. And it's not always that going to succeed in our mission. There are still patients and families who don't succeed in their ultimate battle against cancer. But understanding that acts of service can create joy, can create levity, can create just moments of distraction for others and help them get through their day. Those sort of core experiences of thought are ones that I carry forward elsewhere on campus. I think my first year I was involved in swimming. I was injured my third week on campus, spent some time in Mount Nittany and then that actually drove me closer the lab and deeper into the science because I knew that I had to find a life outside of swimming. I was on the triathlon club team for like maybe a semester and just tried that for a minute. But as I went through, I think my involvement in research and THON were my cornerstones of my involvement in campus. And then my junior and senior year engaged with the President's Council under former president Eric Barron to find ways to find, continue and deepen this experience that I had and make sure it was more accessible to other students. So it was a little bit before it's time, but we were working on setting up like a peer to peer mentoring program within the College of Science to sort of set up new students with like an older buddy so that they can again sort of set up this organic way to find opportunities, get your questions answered like closest to the source and you know, make sure this opportunity for engaged scholarship really could be more available not just within the Colleges of Science and the Honors College, but more broadly across the campus. Awesome. [00:16:17] Speaker A: So you're doing lab work, you have your classes and then you're also involved in THON and all these other efforts which there's probably a lot of meetings. So what strategies did you use to balance all of this and achieve at the level that you did that our current scholars watching or listening could maybe draw from? [00:16:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I think looking back on it now and like telling some of these stories, I want people who are listening to this to understand that when you read bios of people who you find to be examples of success for you, people who wrote those bios are, there's a little bit of self dealing involved. It always sounds more impressive, more polished and more effortless than it ever was. My day to day was I carried a normal class burden, maybe a little bit a little heavier at times. But you know, I, I found friends that I could study with. And that was my learning style. I think, you know, one of the things that has helped me in medical school and my PhD is just, like, knowing how you learn. You know, if you're a. If you're like a flashcards kind of kid, like, like, then invest in that time to do that. If you're, like, rewriting your notes, like, that was me. I was always rewriting my notes and highlighting on, you know, printouts of slides. So finding ways in which you learn to, like, try to smoothen that process out as much as possible because, you know, the content's always new, but in terms of, like, balancing with extracurriculars, I mean, like, there's always more stuff to memorize, right? And so finding what brings you joy, what you know is a source of happiness and, like, fulfillment for you, and make sure that you invest in that because, you know, life after college, medical school, like, there are always more to learn, there's always more work to do, and making sure that you, like, continue to carve out time for yourself with your friends. If you're going out, if you're involved in Greek life, if you're involved in club sports or thon or whatever it is just like, you know, you can always not do that or ask for an extension or whatever it is to make sure that you're well, like, you're happy, you're having a good time, and you're getting everything out of this. You don't need to always be, like, grinding on the books. [00:18:23] Speaker A: And, you know, your time here at Penn State is so short, so, like, being able to say yes to those, right? [00:18:27] Speaker B: Totally. You know, it's. It's easy to get sucked in, especially in the hard sciences. I think it's easy to get sucked into the books and the notes, prepping for, you know, the next thing, and always thinking, what am I going to do for my, like, application to med school? How is this going to help that? And just take a. Take a beat, right? Like, you're. You're only this. This age once, and. And there's so much fun to be had here, you know, Penn State. And I think just like, leaning into that and yeah, if that means, like, you don't get that experiment done in the lab, then, you know, you don't get that experiment done in the lab this way week. And maybe that can wait till next week. [00:18:58] Speaker A: So, you know, you. You go through your last thon on hospitality, and I'm sure the word meal probably is always encompassing for you. It's time to buckle down, finish writing your Thesis. Talk about your topic for the hardcore science folks, but more importantly, talk about how the skills that you developed doing that process and as an extension of all those research lab hours. [00:19:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:21] Speaker A: Fed into your PhD and med school experiences. [00:19:25] Speaker B: Totally. So my, my thesis topic as a, as a Schreier scholar was solving a crystal structure. So a molecular image of how a particular set of proteins that are involved in cancers and some developmental disorders, how do they interact with DNA? And it's a very sort of simple question. It's just like, what does this look like when it's bound to its target? Like that complex? What does it look like? And so my thesis process began as a, as a sophomore, really. I mean I, it was a long term research experience that we built from the ground up. We had an idea, we had a question, and it was just a lot of trial and error to get there. And so by the time senior year rolled around like I had, I had a lot of the data, there were still experiments to be done, but I understood, you know, the historical lens, like writing that, the lit review, the intro, like that was all. I wasn't sort of just getting on board with the material then trying to collect all my data and then write it all up in a crunch. So it was a much longer term, spread out experience. And I think one thing that really helped was I actually spent my junior summer into senior year on campus here. And so that's when I had like, heads down, time to like work in the lab and collect the sort of final big pieces of my data. And the writing process, I just carved out time. I think the honors college actually like set up in the life sciences building. There was like thesis writing hours where they like brought in bagels and coffee or whatever. And so everyone's just sitting there like writing together. It was sort of a surreal experience of we've all done this independent research. Like in that moment, like you are the only person on the, on this earth that like knows that fact. And as soon as you commit it to papers, somebody else can read it. There's that like little secret joy. Right. And that like, I know something that like no one else knows. And so it was a really fulfilling process. I mean, it was daunting at times, like the writing and the writer's block and edits and drafts, like all of that. So, you know, my advice is start as early as you can and, and don't put it off. You know, one of them, two of my friends, like really put it off until the last moment. And, and they were paying for it, yeah, it's tough. But yeah, the writing process was super fulfilling. I think is, is a little bit like cathartic, is like you did all the work, like you, you owe it to yourself to just like write it down and like celebrate it. And having done that, you know, my thesis was long. It was like 150, 40something pages. But writing my doctoral thesis was like, I had been there, I've done it, I know how this goes. It was obviously much more data in my PhD thesis than in my undergrad thesis, but it was all old hat at that point. So I didn't have to stress about the timelines and coming up with a writing schedule and so forth. Just that process was super helpful and I think also the organization of what you've done into the written word. And then ultimately was able to give some, some research talks on campus, posters and so forth. And learning how to communicate really complicated science in simple terms and distill it into writing that someone can actually read and hope to understand was like a really valuable process that in medicine, very complicated patient stories and all the data and so forth. And being able to tell a good story is I think a really fundamental trait for scientists, doctors, anyone in the sciences. [00:22:30] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I think that might have been one of the most beautiful answers I've ever heard about the thesis in terms of the emotional piece of like, yeah, I, I found something new. Like this is, I, you know, nobody knows this till once it's published and other people start citing it for your agents. [00:22:45] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. [00:22:46] Speaker A: Just learned that term the other day. So, Ryan, you were a, in addition to being a Schreier Scholar, you were also a Marshall Scholar. Can you explain what that program is for those of us who don't know? And walk us through, because there's these big scholarships, fellowships. You see the Penn State news articles every year. Usually a lot of them are Shire scholars. So walk us through not only what it is, but how you learned about it, how you applied for it, and then ended up going to the United Kingdom for graduate school. [00:23:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So the Marshall Scholarship is a, is a scholarship set up by the Houses of Parliament in the uk. Every year it's funded by British taxpayers to bring a fixed number of students to the UK for graduate school. And it can be any school in the uk, any program that you want. Folks in my class did like royal dramatic acting, like Shakespearean acting all the way through, like war studies, nuclear policy, you know, infectious diseases, in my case, literature. It's literally anything that you are passionate about. And so my year I think it was like 30 or 32 scholars. It's expanded in recent years which is extraordinary. And so it's any American within three years of graduating their undergrad. So it's not even straight out of college. I think that's an important distinction is, can be up to three years from when you graduate and it's any plan of study at any school in the UK. So there's 30 odd students, hundreds thousand people apply or something like this. Crazy. And there's a regional selection process so your school will nominate a few candidates into different regions throughout the US and then the regional selection committee is made up of alumni of those programs will review the applications and then invite you for a formal interview if your competitive school candidate and then you're ultimately awarded the award to go. And it's anywhere from one year to three years of funding. So one year master's degree, typically it's a two year award. So you can do two one year master's or an extended program. And then there's a limited number of doctoral slots available for a third year of funding or fourth year. So that was, that was the program. It's sort of a companion to the Rhodes Scholarship program. The Rhodes is only to Oxford, whereas the Marshall can go anywhere in the uk. They really lean into students not just wanting to go to Oxford or Cambridge or lse, but trying to find really what is the best school for what you want to do in the uk. For me I was studying or proposing to study malaria research and global health. Really the place in the world to study tropical diseases is the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. I describe this as the who's University. So there's a couple thousand faculty on the books at lshtm. It's in London, not far from King's Cross. But they're mostly living in tropical countries. And so this school is super unique. It's only post grads and you have access to just anywhere in the world, any disease you want to study. And there's usually like a dozen plus people who are deep, deep experts in that. And so it's this really cool opportunity in global public health. Thinking about applying. I mean this was never ever, ever on my radar. As I said I was coming into undergrad and think I was going to med school. Joining the lab was at the start like purely instrumental. I thought I was padding my resume to be in the lab and there was just a stepping stone and I found that I really enjoyed lab work and I was coming up for my junior sort of fall and Junior Spring, I was song. My professor tan in the B and B. My advisor for my thesis research, he was a Marshall Scholar, actually 30 years before. Before me in 1985. And he was like, you really need to apply for this. And I was like, yeah, I'm going to med school. I'm not. I'm not doing this. Like, I've never been out. Out of the US this is. Why would I want to go and live in the uk? And he kept sort of putting the bug in my head, like, you got to apply. You got to apply. The undergraduate fellowships office started sort of, you know, working on me as well. And former Dean Dean Brady was instrumental in sort of pushing me over the edge. And so I threw my hat into the ring. There's an internal selection process here at the Honors College, where they screen applicants and advance competitive students. And yeah, I just want to say that I think when you again, when you read, like, the bios of kids who are accepted into this program, it all sounds like, really, I could never be that. I could never, you know, I could never win such an award to be competitive. My first interview internally to Penn State for the selection process was atrocious. It was so unbelievably, apocalyptically bad. I was embarrassed. It was pouring rain outside here in Atherton. It was upstairs in one of the front rooms of the first floor of Atherton. And I walk in in my suit and tie. I feel very out of place dressed like this. And there's like, four or five faculty members, including the dean of the college. Song was there as part of the selection committee. And they're asking me, like, basic questions. And it got sort of, like, into, like, a moral, ethical thing about a biomedical scenario that I was involved in. And I was so out of my depth, I walked out of there. I was like, I'm a moron. I'm worthless. Like, there's no way, right? And. And after that, like, had one on ones with Dean Brady. Had one on ones. All of the panel members coaching me through, like, the way that, like, you've had these experiences and you just need time to, like, think about them. Like, think about the ethical implications of doing research on human subjects. And so wrote a really compelling personal statement, I think, on the basis of my mom's experience with me as a kid and mission driven, the Honors College experience. And then ultimately threw my hat into the ring for the national contest. And just as I was interviewing for med schools as a senior, I got the interview and then got the award. And so all of a sudden, My plan to go to med school right after undergrad was, I'm going to the uk Again, I don't know anything about life in England. And so this is all going to be a huge adventure. [00:28:42] Speaker A: So I want to ask, because obviously building a global perspective is part of our mission here at Schreier. I think you're the first guest I've had that's done a PhD abroad. So what is it like being a graduate student in another country? Especially probably talking with some of your colleagues or friends who've done degrees here in the States. Any noticeable differences that have arisen? [00:29:05] Speaker B: Yeah, so the British PhD is faster. That's the first thing. The British PhD is no more than four years and it does not contain any classwork, it doesn't contain any rotations. And so the American PhD is longer, but it has that sort of training environment built into it where you come into a biochemistry program, you take classes, you help to figure out what you want to do, you rotate through a couple of potential labs, then you pick your doctoral lab for the end of your second year. The British PhD does not have that. So when you apply in, you are going to start in your lab on your project on day one. And so then it runs for a shorter period of time. But really the sort of full timeline of training is actually quite similar when you get into the lab. So that's like major difference number one. And I think because of that difference in time, for folks who don't have, I think, a deep appreciation of what the differences are, they just see the difference in the time. There's a little bit of a stereotype that the British PhD is less rigorous in some way, that it's shorter, it's faster. Therefore, how could you have been as well trained as an American doctoral student? And it's just totally bogus. And I think coming out of the honors program here, the deep expertise and research that you develop, the thesis writing process prepares you in a way that you are ready to take that ownership on a day one of your of your PhD. It really benefits students, I think, who know what they want to work on, who have a clear vision and who have, you know, met with, at least digitally, in my case, their potential advisor to make sure there's a good fit there. So, you know, you have to do a little bit more legwork up front to make sure you're setting yourself up for success. But then showing up, I mean, like, again, my honors research experience meant that on day one, like, I know how to do an experiment, I know how to Think about science. Do the scientific method like all that stuff from day one. So that's a core difference. There's again, a little bit of a stereotype that the British PhD in particular is more hands off. So you get less active mentorship. There's less support for you as a graduate student that's very laboratory dependent. Some folks start in a small lab with a new PI who's going to be very in the science with you. Other folks are in a huge lab with a whole bunch of postdocs. Maybe you are going to have less face time with the boss. Right. You'll be paired up with a postdoc. But the same situations exist in the U.S. so, yeah, I think the key difference is the ownership, the fact that you apply directly into that lab. And so it's on to you to make sure you're setting yourself up in a place that you really want to work for the next couple years. [00:31:34] Speaker A: So you raise an interesting point. I'm going off script here. So you've kind of referenced this both with your labs here at University park and, and your labs in London. There's this, like, balance of, like, prioritizing the subject matter and the people that you're gonna be working with. How do you find the right. [00:31:55] Speaker B: I think that's balance there. [00:31:57] Speaker A: Or prioritize which one's most important to you. And I'm sure this extends to graduate degrees and outside the sciences, too, for anybody watching, but particularly in those hard sciences. [00:32:07] Speaker B: That is a. That's a really, really good question. So for me, again, I had to write an application essay about, like, why I wanted to study this in this place, with this person, with this program, be very specific to be funded, and it has to be credible. And so coming out of the honors Program, I don't know what I want to study. Like, do I want to continue to work on cancer and structural biology for rest of my life? Like, I. I've been successful there, but that doesn't mean that's where my heart's going to be. And I'm not sure I want to do, you know, a PhD in a domain that then I switch out of. Right. So that was a really stressful part of the application process. And talking with, you know, again, multiple folks here at the Honors College and Professor Tan saying, well, if you don't know what you want to study, which, like, you almost shouldn't. Right. You're too young to, like, commit like that for the next 40 years of your scientific career. What techniques do you want to learn? What do you not know how to do that. You want to learn how to do. So that with what you know now from your thesis process and research, you're going to combine that with the new techniques you're going to learn. And even if you don't know what problem you want to solve, you'll be armed with all of the tools to tackle it. So that was a totally different frame of mind. I was like, now that's a question I can answer. And for me I learned a lot about protein expression and characterization, crystallography. I really want to learn about cell biology. I want to learn microscopy, I want to learn how drug resistance is studied and in particular CRISPR and genome editing. I just coming online as like a technology that was accessible in like the average lab. I want to learn how to do that. And so if I'm not going to work on cancer as like a big umbrella and I do want to learn these techniques at the time, one of my favorite classes as an undergrad was the history of madness. And it was a sort of medical history class in the history department. Super interesting learning about like how from the Hippocrates was thinking about mental health and madness to now, how Nazism arose and ultimately now like modern era. I was taking some classes in school of International Studies and I got the chance to work with some folks in the intelligence community, which is very cool. Or like biosecurity. I have all these interests in history, diplomacy and then like hard skills. I want to learn in science and I'm not going to work on cancer. Infectious diseases is a pretty good other space that actually has all that content and history and richness. Then what bug are you going to work on? Well, bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites. There's a whole universe that you could choose from in terms of where the big historical funding and medical history really is and the greatest human impact infections wise, malaria, TB and hiv. And I don't want to work in a bubble suit for the next four years. My PhD, therefore TB and HIV are out the window. So I was working on malaria. And so for me if I'm going to work on malaria now like the essay is coming together. As a, as a, as a Shrier student, I got the chance to go to Ecuador for like a week or two weeks on a like medical mission. Trip was like the hearts for Ecuador trip or something that we used to do. It was in the fall actually it was November, so it was in Guayaquil. And so we got a sort of flavor of global health and like practice of medicine abroad. Now I'm Going to work on malaria, I'm going to work on these techniques. Where in the world should I do it? And the only place in the world that does all that stuff is the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Looking at their faculty, there's like 12 people that are in that discipline. And there's one professor, Colin Sutherland, who has deep research ties to East Africa. A number of the folks in his lab are trainees from East African countries. And so I was the only American on my floor of the entire building. And so this opportunity to, like, steep yourself and, you know, you're learning the techniques that, you know, that you want to learn. You don't know anything about the space, you don't know about, you know, the cultures of the people who are affected by malaria. And yet you're going to be surrounded by trainees with you or staff scientists or postdocs from those countries. And, you know, what transpired was just this, like, really beautiful research process for a couple years. [00:36:11] Speaker A: That is really, really cool. [00:36:12] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's like, really hard, I think, for students to say, like, I'm going to do this and my doctorate, and like, this is what I want to study, this is what I work on. Like, you're way too young to be making those, like, major decisions. And almost certainly you're wrong. Like, so many people come into med school and like, I'm going to be a surgeon and like, they come out doing psychiatry and like, you just don't know. And so just getting yourself into an environment that allows you to try stuff and learn techniques if you don't know what you want, and then you'll buy yourself time, you'll learn things, stuff will happen in the world. You'll see the news cycles, and then they'll formulate those questions that I really want to solve. And I'm actually now in my career, I'm back into cancer. Right. I really want to study drug resistance, how it evolves and how we can design therapeutics to overcome that. And so it's sort of like really nice. U turn back to where we started. [00:36:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And I imagine that could be applicable to any of the things you were naming in addition to cancer. [00:36:59] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. [00:37:01] Speaker A: So, Ryan, can you explain kind of the flow and function of at least here in the States, and we have this great connection with the College of Medicine at Hershey where you can do kind of a dual MD, PhD, and I know there's kind of, you know, you stop one, start one the way they work there, but you did like a PhD and then you Came back here to the states and went to a great program with our friends at the University of Pennsylvania. So walk us through that experience relative to say, past guest Kristen Lambert. You should go watch that one after this. Who did the program at Hershey where it's like you know, seven years all, all done at the same time. [00:37:40] Speaker B: You know, for my. I would love to say that there was like a plan that I like intentionally did a PhD and then MD and like that's again just kind of like how circumstance led me that, you know, the Marshall scholarship being what it was. And then I deferred and just came back to med school. I actually did not apply into MD PhDs outright in the US and the reason for that, just personally and again, everyone's totally different in their motivations and what works. But for me, I didn't want to spend seven or eight years at a single institution. There's strengths to do that. You develop a deep institutional knowledge, just networking connections, a presence in the department. And there are great advantages to the MD PhD programs. For me, I probably wouldn't have done a PhD if not for the Marshall. I was again very interested in clinical practice. And there are some MD programs as well that have a five year Master's MD hybrid. And so Penn was a school that has a Master's of Translational research. It's a one year dedicated research time plus your md. So I was thinking about that kind of thing because of my research foundations from the Honors College. Honestly I was like so well trained coming out of Penn State that I wasn't sure I needed multiple additional years given my primary goals at the time were in patient care. So you know, the MD PhD dual degree programs in the US are great for a number of reasons including just like the constancy at one place, the ability to really sink your teeth in, develop those rich contacts with department faculty. But also if you're not totally sure what you want, like you're not sure what you want to do, ultimately the questions you want to solve, like it might be better to like do one than do the other. I probably wouldn't do like an American PhD and then an American MD because American PhDs are long and like that could be like 10 years or something. I don't know about that. The MD PhD I think is great if you know, you want like a research intense career and you know, it has to involve clinical medicine. But you know, I do see folks who like actually at Penn, in my class there were a number of folks in the MD program who joined the MD, PhD. So that's always a possibility. You don't have to apply directly into it. Then I know a bunch of colleagues and continue to advise folks who started in the MD, PhD, got into their PhD portion of their degree, finished that and decided not to return to medical school. So that's another very common pathway. Again, it seems very polished and very structured from the outside, but it's very much a choose your own adventure. [00:40:07] Speaker A: So one of the things when I was looking at your LinkedIn to do my research in advance of this was that you got through med school in three years. So you did the, you fast tracked the PhD, you fast tracked med school and you also received like a quarter of a million dollar award for that. So walk us through this very unique experience that you had down at Penn. [00:40:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So Penn, like a number of other medical schools, are increasingly offering merit based aid, which is a tremendous thing. It's all driven by extraordinary gift giving from alumni. And so the Gamble family have endowed a number of years ago now and they continue to contribute to it. But a scholarship fund that offers merit based aid to students, there's a backstory that you can look up about how that scholarship fund came to be, but they believe very strongly in eliminating student debt. And about 25% of the incoming class every year of Penn Medicine gets a full ride, which is super awesome. The selection process is very cool as I understand it, as it involves not only like a faculty review board for like academic excellence in the candidates, but also community members to actually see like, are these folks who are likely to give back and be a part of the Penn community and not just, you know, come in, be like our academic rock star, heads down and like peace out. So, you know, they, they have a careful selection process there. You know, nyu, I believe all the students now are fully paid for their tuition. So it's a, it's, it's still uncommon across the us but there are a growing number of schools that are recognizing, I think like the financial cost of medical education and trying to do something about it. So that's where the, that's where the grant came from for it seems like [00:41:49] Speaker A: a great option for a lot of our Shire scholars to explore. [00:41:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:52] Speaker A: In addition to our College of Medicine down in Hershey. Because what you said describes a lot of our students. [00:41:57] Speaker B: Totally. So there's, there, there are a growing number of opportunities there. You know, regarding graduating three years, that was a much less generalizable approach, I guess. So the fourth year of medical school, I guess for folks who don't have A family member or someone you know in their orbit who has recently gone through the first fourth year medical school is, I think I'm not representing the views of Penn or Penn State, I think is a bit of a sham. The reason being that you spend very little of that time actually in clinical training. Your fourth year is designed to give you plenty of time to apply to residencies, to travel for interviews, although a lot of it's still happening virtually and just like, have a little bit of fun. Like, a lot of people travel, they go abroad, they go on big vacations and hang out or they'll do some research or whatever, but it's really a you time. And so just like your fourth year of undergrad, your fourth year of, of high school, you're going to be applying to residencies in the summer leading into that year. And so actually very little of that time is, is, is, is, is filled with stuff that will directly contribute to your residency competitiveness or your application, right? And so for me, I had decided that I wasn't going to pursue a residency. I was going to work, continue working with the company that I had joined up with and focused on research and teaching. And so I was like, you know, this fourth year means I don't have my degree. It's a whole lot of time. And if I actually look at my calendar, like the requirements between the middle of your third year and the end of my fourth year, there's like six months of stuff that you actually have to do. And then people just spread it out and it's like, I'm pretty sure I could just like do this all in the third year, right? And if I just go like back to back to back to back, as we've always been doing, like, I can do all of my board exams, I can get all that done and graduate in the summer matriculation, the summer graduation, which was August of 2021. And the student conduct committee and the standards board didn't totally agree. They didn't, like, it was a weird precedent there. There were one or two students who had done this before for various reasons, and I think they ultimately gave me some credit due to the fact that I had a PhD. So there was some, like, class stuff that MD PhDs don't have to do because you've already done all the independent study. So the MD program gave me a few credits there from having a Ph.D. and then just all the clinical stuff just like bashed it all together. So, you know, it was, it was a stressful couple months, but it, it did Mean that I got out with my degree early and, you know, I still did, you know, still full md, did everything that everyone in my class did. I just like, did it all in massive C. Yeah, yeah, nice. [00:44:39] Speaker A: So you mentioned that you had joined a company. [00:44:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:44:42] Speaker A: While you're in med school. Talk about that. Just, I think for most of our students, they can only imagine being in med school, do the residency and stuff, and you're like, ah, I'm going to take this different. [00:44:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So again, like, it, it sounds, I think, like a lot more structured and intentional than it was. So I in the uk made some of the best friends of my life and folks well outside of science, as I said. And so one of those friends went on to work at Google and he met through like a Bay Area thing, another gentleman who is also on the same scholarship scheme many years before us, named Mark DePristo. And Mark DePristo is a former principal in the Google AI and Google Brain divisions. And so I was just chatting my first year of medical school when, you know, actually I was a terrible medical student. So I really struggled coming back from a PhD into like, basic classroom, sitting in the class, like, reading notes and taking tests, that was very hard. And so I was like, am I depressed? Like, do I hate med school? Like, what is going on? Because this, I've never experienced this, like, discontent in my life. And so it was reaching out to just understand. I know what academic science is like, I'm learning what clinical medicine is like, but there's this whole other thing called, like, industry. And, and I don't know anyone. I don't have any role models in that industry I could, like, learn from. And so I was talking to Gavin, just like lamenting my situation, and he was like, I think you should meet Mark. And so he put us in contact. And this is the spring of my first year of medical school. And Mark was like, look, don't come and do basic science or don't try to do science like Google, right? Google's an ads company and a search company. Right. But they do some science, but you know, that's not their core mission. You should, if you're going to do industrial science, like, go to an organization whose core mission is that science and just like, hang in there. I was like, okay, all right. So I stuck it out. And then in like September, October of my second year of medical school, I get a call out of the blue from, from Mark, saying that he had left Google and he had started with Peyton Greenside, his co founder, a little Company called Big Hat Biosciences. And Big Hat Biosciences mission was going to be to use AI machine learning technologies to. To design therapeutic antibodies. But Mark and Peyton were principally, like, machine learning AI. [00:46:57] Speaker A: And what year was this? [00:46:57] Speaker B: This is in 2019. So October of 19. Then signed the incorporation papers in, like, August, September. And so right off the bat, they basically said, we need help to think about how we would apply this platform that doesn't exist to solve real problems in medicine, real problems for patients. And we need to write some grants. And so I had work to. To teach the sat. When I was in the UK with the scholarship of Penn, I wasn't paying for tuition, but I was paying for cost of living in Philly. And so I was just burning whatever I had saved. And I was down to my last, like, 500 bucks in my bank account. Looking at the end of 2019, I'm gonna have to go take loans, beg from family, like mop floors, like, what? I will do anything. I really don't want to take on significant, you know, debt because I think I'm gonna pursue a career in global health or in medicine and don't want to be saddled with that. And so Mark just called me at the right time and said, like, do you want to be a part of this? I was like, I don't really know anything about therapeutic antibodies, but I'm happy to try. And so, you know, I was writing grants, making $12 an hour, or something, and, like, that was enough to keep the lights on. [00:48:01] Speaker A: Were you using some of the lessons you learned from the Marshall. [00:48:04] Speaker B: Totally, yeah. I mean, totally. In terms of writing about, thinking about problems, Absolutely. And then, you know, that was sort of a couple hours a week just to, like, again, make money to make rent every. Every month. And. And then in February, February of 2020, med students were sent home, was Covid. And so all of a sudden, we're, like, sitting at home, got nothing to do. And this little company in California was deemed, like, a critical company because we had, like, biological wet lab stuff going on that was related to Covid at the time. And so Mark and Peyton are like, do you want to work a little harder? Like, five or eight hours a week? Do you want to do, like, 30, 40 hours a week? Sure. And so I'm sitting at home, not doing medical school and just working really hard for this little biotech startup. And so it was like the four or five of us that were part of this group from the early days and just continue to push and push and push. Design some antibodies that turned out to be quite effective. For Covid, we were looking at a phase one and then continue to invest in cancer therapeutics. And so then, you know, the third year of medical school comes around. We're back in this, back in school, back in hospital and trying to kind of like moonlight doing this biotech stuff while, while continuing to finish medical education and how to fork in the road. Like, do you want to do a residency, do you want to do clinical practice or do you want to work at this company or do you want to go and be a postdoc or a junior faculty member somewhere? And so for me, I was with MD, PhD. I was always going to be one of these like 80, 20 in the lab. Like I don't know anybody in this day and age in the last two decades who's entered as an MD, PhD and has really struck the like 50% clinic, seeing patients, 50% like grant funded lab, like having a family and a life, like it's idyllic. I just don't know anyone who's really done it. Maybe there are some folks who have been on this show and I would love to talk to them, but I was always going to be like mostly research, mostly teaching and a little bit of that clinical experience. And so, you know, for me and my wife just got married and decided that do I really want to do seven more years of residency and fellowship for 10 or 20% of my career. And although, you know, medicine was some of the greatest fulfillment I ever got, the greatest privilege was treating patients and meeting them where they were, I decided that I would try this biotech thing. And you know, now we've raised $150 million and have 103 employees and phase one programs that will begin in less than a year. [00:50:28] Speaker A: So what is the type of, you mentioned AI or doing that before anybody had heard the words chatgpt? [00:50:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:50:36] Speaker A: So what is like your company's, you know, what's your elevator pitch that you give like when you're spending to a family member? Like this is what my company does. [00:50:44] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, so I think with the proliferation of these AI tools like it, it's, we know that we can in some web form you can type in like make me a picture of a cat on the moon, like, you know, sipping a Guinness. Right. And like you can get an image like that or you can get 100 images like that. We have very similar technologies that we use to design drugs. And so it's, we have, you know, 50 plus years of really rigorous cell Biology telling us about how cancer works and how inflammatory disorders evolve and a whole bunch of untapped biology. If only we could design a drug fit for purpose. Drug development, particularly antibodies, very challenging. Typically it takes like six or seven weeks to make one antibody and test it in the lab. And you can only do that at the scale of a couple hundred designs in the best case. Right. And so when we do experiments as a scientist, we often don't learn from the negative results. If you've designed an antibody, you thought it was going to do something and it just like doesn't work or doesn't, you can't even make it, like, how can you, like, what do you take from that to do the next cycle? Right. And given that time and the scale that you can do this at, it's very hard to like train a machine learning model to learn your failures and predict better molecules. So the fundamental principle of what Big Hat does is we use and for the scientist folks, cell free protein synthesis tools. So we basically, you know, ribosomal extracts from cells and we can then express very small quantities of antibodies overnight. So taking a six or seven week process, you can do it overnight, small scale. With robotics, you can scale that. So now we're making two to three thousand antibodies every week. In that kind of data scale, we're making 100,000 plus 150,000 plus antibodies every year. You can train machine learning models to learn the relationship between your design and then all of the outcomes across how it works, how it's safe, how it's unsafe, how it manufactures, how stable it is, all of those key attributes. You can then learn that with a machine learning model. And instead of then like having to be an expert in drug design, the machine learning tools can then help you predict and design iteratively better drugs. [00:52:49] Speaker A: So if I can use an analogy here. [00:52:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:52:52] Speaker A: So obviously Penn State, we have a great athletics program and you see things on ESPN or similar where it's like the playoff predictive index and it runs 10,000 simulations to say, you know, who's going to win the national championship or the conference or make the playoff. Is this kind of the equivalent for that of like, which of these layouts of the protein or antibody is going to be the most likely that you should actually invest your time to physically do? [00:53:21] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. I mean, so, yeah, to use like the same analogy, right. If we had like a new sport that evolved tomorrow, like if football weren't a thing, right, and we wanted to run one, we had one season of game data and then we trained an AI model to say who's going to win the national championship next year. Right. Our predictive accuracy is going to be really low. All we've seen is one, one set of plays. Like, maybe a whole bunch of people got hurt and like, we didn't know how that was going to impact the roster. It's not representative, but then we like, feed in. If we can then like, compress a football season to like 12 hours and we can then like, collect a lot more data about how these teams perform and full seasons of, of, of competition, then we can actually start to predict these things, you know, doesn't account for the fact that the roster turns over every couple of years and like. But yeah, that's pretty much it. [00:54:08] Speaker A: It's the roster turnover and the evolution and mutations of, of a bacteria. [00:54:13] Speaker B: Exactly similar. Yeah. And like the impact of like, new technologies, maybe like the footballs get lighter, like, I don't know, get better cleats. Like. Yeah, yeah, totally awesome. [00:54:22] Speaker A: So is like I had in my notes here, literally, like, this was a chance for you to just kind of like geek out on, on everything. Because I was like getting a whole science class on your questionnaire. [00:54:34] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. [00:54:35] Speaker A: Is there anything else that's like, you want to share that's like, really cool that you're doing for all the science folks that are watching? That might go over my head. [00:54:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, you know, we. I think that what AI and machine learning tools allow us to do is exploit what we know more efficiently. I don't think people are increasingly really excited by David Baker's group at the Institute of Protein Design in Seattle and Washington, you won the Nobel Prize this year around AI tools for protein design. That team is incredibly prolific. But I think what we continue to find is that the designs that come out of those models are not yet ready to be injected into a patient. So there's still always going to be this need to optimize, to improve drugs, to solve all of their potential problems and get them ready. But it's also interesting that I think this puts the onus back into labs like those here at Penn State, that at some point we will have stripped all of the fruit that are low and medium hanging. Then we need to go back and ask some more questions of the biology to use the therapeutics to ask questions that we can only answer in humans and try to better figure out what's going on, what is the biology of these actual diseases. AI is not going to ultimately replace a lot of that basic inquiry. We're still going to have to do experiments, we're still going to have to run clinical trials, get things wrong, and making sure this isn't a political statement, but making sure that we have access to high quality, sustained funding and initiative and drive to continue to be, you know, a dominant force globally and the like. Scientific leadership is, is, you know, absolutely a priority that I think everyone should be getting behind. You know, there's a lot of uncertainty around, you know, what AI tools are doing and if it's trustworthy or not. And, you know, there's great debates to be had there. But ultimately these are all tools in the way that, like, the car was a more efficient means of transportation and, you know, like the ballpoint pattern pen was massively improved over the quill and ink. So it's just another tool. And I think basic sort of foundational inquiry is still going to be incredibly important. [00:56:43] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. It almost reminds me, it sounds like it's helping you fast track things in the same way you fast tracked your own MD experience because you kind of saw the gap in the system. [00:56:53] Speaker B: Totally. But at some point we need more knowledge, we need to put in. Yeah, I still had to study. Yeah. Awesome. [00:57:00] Speaker A: So you said you've raised all this money on the, on the business side, so you have this hard science background. You've spent a lot of time in the bench. [00:57:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:57:09] Speaker A: A lot of time in the clinic, presumably in med school, getting that training. What was surprising to you about the business side of the science? And how did you, like, give yourself a crash course to match wits with the VC investors and the MBAs that you're coming up with, coming up to try and back your, your efforts? [00:57:30] Speaker B: You know, I think there's, there's some stuff that I wish I knew in academics. I mean, I was, I was a little bit too early in my career, I guess, for it to have made a massive difference. But like storytelling, right? It's incredibly important. It's actually more important than your data. If you can't convince people of what you're doing and why it's important, or even what you're doing and can't explain it, then no one's going to understand it, no one's going to invest in. In it. And frankly, doesn't matter how impactful it could be, it's not going to go anywhere. So storytelling, like bringing people along for the ride is paramount. Organizationally. I could have never predicted that people would tell me that you will have growing pains of various sizes in your team. We started off as three people. Everyone knew everything. Everyone was at every Meeting together and we didn't have to have like, good, you know, organizational hygiene, like delegation, because we're all doing the same thing. There's so few people, so much to [00:58:23] Speaker A: do, Everybody chips in. [00:58:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Just like, you know, someone had to be responsible for the fuse box on third floor. Right. And then like, right around 20 to 30 people. Everyone can't be in everything together. You have to have some teams. You have to like, trust teams and build that sort of structure in your, in your organization and then the same thing. So we like, got over that and. All right, you know, we've seen that, like, we're going to see this coming off from a long ways off and we're going to like, you know, be ready for it. And the reality is again, around like 50 to 70 employees, again the same problem of, like, now we need sub teams and like, so collaboration, I guess in an industry or in any kind of, like, larger organization means something very different at different scales of the team size. And we've all been in group projects where, like, you can just like, muscle through on your own and, you know, carry someone's dead weight or like, whatever. Like, that's a common experience that people have growing up. You can't do that in a company environment. And so you really have to, like, choose the teams correctly, structure dynamically to give people agency and like, autonomy in what they do. And also realize that, like, you know, I'm. I'm someone who's super type A and like, I believe very strongly in like, how I do things. And for me, like, coming into management, responsibility is really hard. Like, I have to let so and so just like, do it their way and like, trust that we're going to get there at some point and it's going to be a similar outcome to if I had just like, manhandled the situation. So, yeah, like storytelling, you know, trust, teamwork just means something, I think, like, different in the context of, of a startup and yeah, finding like, you just great people to support you along the way because, you know, biotech is fickle and the whole thing can blow up at a minute's notice. [01:00:03] Speaker A: So metaphorically or literally. [01:00:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Yes. [01:00:08] Speaker A: Depending on the lab you're working. [01:00:09] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:00:12] Speaker A: So, you know, like I said, I got this like crazy science lesson reading because I think you were the most thorough questionnaire I've ever had. So the type A true on brand there and I really appreciated that. I was like, I'm learning something just from this part, from the homework here. This is awesome. You also somehow found time to be a teacher back at Penn on top of this multifaceted day job that you have with Big Cat. How did that happen? [01:00:40] Speaker B: And again, like super circumstantially that my first year I was taught by a tremendous infectious diseases sort of microbiologist and that. So medical school is interesting. And at least at Pennsylvania, most of the courses are in such a way that each lecture is delivered by somebody else. And so there's not a ton of continuity. And that's not uncommon because physicians are super busy and they can only get people to commit for two lectures, which makes the student experience interesting. But at Penn, the microbiology course for first year students was one of the last courses that was all mostly taught by one individual. That person retired or transitioned out of university sort of abruptly over the summer leading into the second year. And that sort of threw the course into flux. And it's a major course, runs for like 16 weeks or something and it's in the beginning of your first semester. Super important. Right. And so the school is sort of in a pinch. And I had developed for my first year like a reasonable network with some of the ID physicians at Children's Hospital Philadelphia and then the main adult hospital at hup and heard that, you know, there was sort of this, this kerfuffle. And I jokingly was like, well, I have a PhD in paristology. Like I, I could teach the Paristology part. And they're like, really? Do you want to do that? I was like, do you want me to do that? Like that seems like a little reckless to put like an active, you know, second year student in, you know, a teaching capacity. And the school like, no, it's fine. [01:02:14] Speaker A: Like this is why you are mid school student and you're teaching in medical school. [01:02:19] Speaker B: Yeah. So this is. And again, like putting all the dates together, like I just started to write grants for that for Big Hat and you know, Big Hat was just founded. You're trying to keep the lights on. I would add that the school did not pay me for several years and so it was pro bono. You know, Penn's done me very well. So no, it's nothing, nothing against the department. But we. Yeah, so. So I was teaching vector borne diseases and parasitology, um, and I was super self conscious that it was going to go poorly. Like why do first year students want to be paying like hundreds of thousands of dollars to be taught by a classmate? Um, and it went really well and I think the students really appreciated like someone who's just gone through this knows what's important. Knows what's on the exam and, like, someone who has an actual, like, degree in this space. So, yeah, that. That became. So two lectures, became three lectures, became, like, seven lectures. And so now I, you know, teach mostly in the fall term. It's, you know, a little bit sporadic between cell biology, embryology and. And infectious diseases. [01:03:21] Speaker A: That is hilarious. And a total Schreier Scholar move. [01:03:24] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, it's just. I just threw myself out there, just like, I offered it. [01:03:28] Speaker A: Teaching students here that Schreyer Scholars helped establish at Penn State. And you're leading the way in med school. [01:03:34] Speaker B: I think my. My philosophy historically is been, like, I've been given a lot from. With respect to training opportunities, great educators, great mentors, and like, to the extent that I can, like, help deliver that back for. For the next, you know, cohort of students, like, let's do it. So, you know, if anyone's listening to this and, you know, any of this resonates, like, please, just reach out. We'll talk. [01:03:54] Speaker A: Well, in that same vein you've mentioned, you know, there's fundraising for your vc, but there's also the philanthropy that impacted you as a scholar. [01:04:02] Speaker B: Totally. [01:04:03] Speaker A: There's the marshal with the taxpayers of the United Kingdom and with your. Your funding to go to med school at Penn. [01:04:12] Speaker B: So. [01:04:13] Speaker A: And you were involved in thon as a student. So what does philanthropy mean to you? [01:04:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:04:17] Speaker A: Knowing the impact it's had on you. [01:04:20] Speaker B: I mean, philanthropy is fundamentally advocacy. You know, it's the deployment of. Of money principally for advancing specific, like, mission and aim. And, you know, I think there's. There's incumbent upon all of us to be generous with our time. I guess I should walk back what I just said. It's not specifically money. It can be effort. It can be in kind donations. It can be all kinds of just, like, intention and services, but, you know, principally, like dedicating your capabilities, your resources, whatever it is, for a specific set of aims. You know, I think, you know, I been chatting with students over the last day or so here on campus as part of this really tremendous weekend. And one of the messages that I want to share to students is that there's a lot of problems in this world, and there's a lot of worthy problems. And so people think about, what should I work on, what should I study, what should I do next? And there's so many opportunities in this world to give of yourself, to drive whatever that cost is, and you should work on whatever matters to you. People deploy their resources for philanthropic means in a variety. It could be thawing it could be donating for bed nets in Africa for preventing vector borne disease. It could be just volunteering in your local community to pick up trash in the park. And so I think it's finding opportunities where it's something you really care about, something that means something to you on a spiritual level. And then being able to just like give what you have wherever you are in life, whether it's money, if it's time, if it's connections to other people who have those things at that moment to be able to drive that mission forward. [01:06:03] Speaker A: Awesome. So Ryan, we've talked about a lot of heavy topics. [01:06:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:06:08] Speaker A: Bench work, your day job, all this, this educational story as an alum. So our students, it's, you know, it's maybe four years here at triple, but it's for life as an alum. So what do you do as an alum like in terms of hobbies or your life outside of work, if there is time for that, Knowing if I [01:06:27] Speaker B: have such a thing, you have such [01:06:28] Speaker A: a thing, which is a typical move. But what does life look for you [01:06:32] Speaker B: just in that space? You know, I live with my wife and four year old golden retriever Stella in old City Philadelphia. We have, you know, we, we love to immerse ourselves in things in which we are not good at. And so, you know, we picked up woodworking, you know, a couple years ago and we've built some very cool things in our house. We used to have a little condo up near the Dartmouth campus. My wife and her whole family are Dartmouth alum alumni and we fell in love with glassware. [01:07:05] Speaker A: Penrad. [01:07:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we fell in love with glassblowing through Simon Pierce. And so there's a little public access glassworks in Manihunk, Philly that we've taken some lessons and like learned how to handle hot glass, which is super cool. And in the summer like we try. I think we're both like high performance individuals, like work really hard. We go hard on whatever it is that we devote ourselves to. And over the last several years and just after we got married, just realizing like, we need to like create space, create time for ourselves to just like turn it all off and just relax. You know, we still get several hours of good sleep every night and on the weekends we like try to really like protect ourselves from. There's always more work to be done. So in the summertime we, we have a place in Long Beach Island, New Jersey which we absolutely adore. Have an amazing community there and you know, surf in the mornings and make lattes and after that and so yeah, that's, that's what we do. You know, just try to like find total like non work, non desk based, you know, projects, fun activities. [01:08:09] Speaker A: So I really like that. So when you were here at Penn State, you know, you were involved in thon, you found things that you enjoyed here, tried to be involved in swimming. Now, you know, you get the opportunity as an alum to choose again. But those kind of things that you want to do. [01:08:24] Speaker B: Totally. So, yeah, and keep that in mind. [01:08:26] Speaker A: Students. [01:08:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, watch our football games in the fall and try to find opportunities, come back to campus and you know, stay involved. Campus life. So. Awesome. [01:08:35] Speaker A: Well, we're glad you're here on campus. [01:08:37] Speaker B: Thanks very much. [01:08:38] Speaker A: I am not an expert on literally anything you talked about today. I just. The one thing, there's still words you use that went over my head. So what are the kind of questions that I should have asked or like the kind that you get from your mentees, you know, your interns at your company or your med students, or even some of the students you've talked to here at University park that would be good to address. That just didn't come up in the questions that I already asked. [01:09:02] Speaker B: I mean, this was super thorough. Sean. I don't know that I have, you know, there's much more that I have to offer. But I mean, I think people often worry that they're like not doing enough or you know, like not, not sure [01:09:15] Speaker A: there's college, no way. [01:09:19] Speaker B: And you know, there's just, there's time for it, you know. And I often get, at least at work, I often get folks who come to me, my team and research project. What do you think? Here's this day, like, what do you think we should do? Or like, you know, I have this like decision ahead of me and like, what do you think we should do? And my always my question is, what do you think we should do? Like just what do you. Like, what do you think? And then why, you know, what's. What could go wrong and we'll just talk about it. So like, you know, that's my advice is, is, is, you know, there's time. You don't always have to have the right answer. And usually, almost always outside of like very specific scenarios, the stage stakes are always lower than they seem. Like it's so easy to get wrapped up. Like, this is so consequential. If I don't get this done or I miss the dead, like something bad's gonna happen, like almost never. Is that the case? [01:10:04] Speaker A: Maybe if you're dealing with some pathogens. [01:10:06] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Like, you know, again, some acute cases, like, managing, you know, I see a patient. Right. Like, we should probably get it right the first time. But, you know, usually. And in those situations, there's always a safety net. Like, you're never going to be the one that's, like, the whole world is turning on you for a moment. So, yeah, you know, my advice, I guess, people have asked for in the last couple of days and my advice around, you know, we talked about, like, working on problems that matter to you. And my other piece of advice is, is that strong and wrong has always been the way that I've gone in life. I think there's a corollary to that, which is originally a Stanford professor of economics, but Marc Andreessen has put forward strong opinions weekly held. So it's always better to have an opinion, to have a con, an idea, like, have a choice that you're ready to make. And the second that you get, you know, data to the contrary or someone suggests that there's an alternative, you're okay to just, like, admit you're wrong, move on, do the other thing. Like, that's the best organizations, the best leaders have ever seen have been that phenotype of, like, always have a plan, don't know if it's right, happy to be completely inflagrant, flagrantly wrong. And just like, we're gonna go that way now because you told me that's right and I believe you. And so, like, you know, that. That sort of strong and wrong or, you know, strong opinions weekly adults has always, I think, been something that I've carried with me in medicine. Always, you know, attendings, like, what do you want to do here? Always have an idea. And it could be completely bonkers, totally insane. But at least you had an idea that you were, you know, had conviction around. So. [01:11:43] Speaker A: Good use of phenotype, by the way. Yeah, way to sneak at it there. So we're gonna do our kind of lightning round here to wrap things up, Ryan. [01:11:52] Speaker B: All right, let's do it. [01:11:53] Speaker A: What would you say is your biggest success to date? [01:11:55] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. Biggest success to date. This award get, you know, getting married and building a life like in Philly. Yeah, for sure. [01:12:06] Speaker A: Awesome. Go, birds. Biggest transformational learning moment and what you learned from that experience. I think you had a really good answer on your questionnaire. [01:12:15] Speaker B: You might want to remind me what it was. [01:12:16] Speaker A: I don't remember, but I remember it was good. [01:12:18] Speaker B: A transformational learning moment. I mean, you know, certainly around my experience with my mom and, and realizing as a kid that, you know, the world can be very scary, but there's a lot of folks out there who just really want you to succeed and be happy, be fulfilled. You know, the, the practice of medicine and, and that involving like caring for people as well as their diseases. Awesome. [01:12:39] Speaker A: You've talked about a lot of your mentors, especially here at Penn State in the Eberly College of Science. How do you approach mentorship as both a mentor and a mentee where you're at in your career? [01:12:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think being, being available first and foremost talked about philanthropy, like extending yourself to be available to help other people at wherever they are, but also making sure that like as a mentor that you're extending yourself when you have something to give. So there are times in my life where people reach out and want to chat or want to pick my brain about stuff like I'm not in a space to be able to like give you what you need in this moment and like, I'm going to tell you like, come back to me in a little while unless it's like really important. So, you know, that's how I approach. You know, I try to, try to not just tell people what I've done. I feel like it's not, not totally helpful for me to just like tell you how I found success. But I want to understand like what's important to you, what are your goals, what are your values? And then, yeah, make sure that I'm like in a position to be helpful. [01:13:32] Speaker A: Excellent. You've mentioned a few, but are there any professors and friends from your days here at University park that you want to give a shout out to? [01:13:39] Speaker B: Totally in no particular order, Professor Song Tan. Absolutely amazingly impactful in terms of giving me my scientific start, teaching me how to think. Ruth Mendham was a former director of the Fellowship's office here for a number of years. She made the application process for the Rhodes and the Marshall Astronaut Gates, Cambridge, Goldwater, all that stuff super painless, despite how complex and scary it felt at times. Former Dean Brady of the Honors College, massively helpful in terms of just telling me that I was good enough, giving me a second chance after that absolutely atrocious interview and know, making sure that, you know, I had someone advocating for me from the top. You know, Professor Darrell Farber, he's the School of Engineering. He taught me how to write. He gave me, I think, a global insight into how science connects to bigger things. Taewe Gao is my honors advisor. I'm sure I can continue on but [01:14:41] Speaker A: yeah, so some really great faculty. [01:14:43] Speaker B: Totally. Excellent. [01:14:46] Speaker A: So as we're wrapping up our time, leave us with a quick hit of advice that we can use for an Instagram reel. [01:14:52] Speaker B: Oh, my God. Wait, repeat that question. I heard Instagram reel and I blacked out. [01:14:56] Speaker A: Yeah, like, what's, like, final piece of advice that's like, short and sweet that [01:15:00] Speaker B: we can use to promote this. Four years at Penn State is gonna fly by really fast. So, you know, have fun, work hard, and no one asks for help. You know, reach out to alumni. We'd love to help you. [01:15:13] Speaker A: Amen to that. So you talked about reaching out and connecting. What's the best way for scholars to pick up the threads from this conversation if they are really interested in what you had to say? [01:15:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I check my LinkedIn all the time. So, you know, just. Ryan henry on LinkedIn, drop me a line. I would love to connect there. And you know, I think that the alumni association has, like, my email address, so, you know, I'm always responsive that way as well. [01:15:36] Speaker A: It's Penn State. We sure do. And finally, the toughest question you'll have ever been asked in an interview, and that includes your Marshall. If you were a flavor Berkey Creamery ice cream, Ryan, which would you be? And why would you be that flavor? [01:15:50] Speaker B: Oh, my God. I saw this one coming. And I did not prepare an answer, and I'm regretting it. [01:15:56] Speaker A: For the record, the menu's online. [01:15:58] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. You know, I. I have become increasingly a fan of. Of cookies and cream. I think it's not. Not too sweet. It's like, got a little, like something extra for you. I used to be like a big vanilla and. And mint guy. And, you know, I think cookies and cream is always good all weather. If it's cold, the dead of winter, it's just, you know, that's for me. [01:16:21] Speaker A: So that's why. Why is that why you'd be that one? You're like. [01:16:24] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, it's just all around. I, you know, I. Not to say I'm good in every. Every context, but. Yeah, I think it's. [01:16:31] Speaker A: It's always trying. [01:16:32] Speaker B: It's a man of the people. [01:16:33] Speaker A: Excellent. I appreciate that. That's why we don't get too much selected here. So I like seeing some fresh flavors. [01:16:39] Speaker B: What's the most common? [01:16:41] Speaker A: The most common is wpsu. Coffee break and Alumni swirl are two most common answers I get here. [01:16:47] Speaker B: Interesting. [01:16:47] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. All right. [01:16:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:16:49] Speaker A: And the rationales are usually someone in the same family, so I don't want to knock those guests. Yeah, I like hearing some fresh ones that aren't those two so great flavors. I enjoy both of them, but cookies and cream. [01:17:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:17:04] Speaker A: Well, Ryan, thank you for joining us here as part of your Alumni Achievement Award weekend at Penn State. Before I let you have the last word, scholars, if you are watching this on YouTube, be sure to like, subscribe, comment all the good things that every YouTuber tells you to do. And if you're listening on an audio platform, make sure you like, follow, subscribe, whatever the verb of choice on your podcast app uses so that you can be apprised of new episodes when they drop. And with that, Brian, I'm going to let you close this out. The floor is yours. [01:17:35] Speaker B: Thanks very much, Sean. Thanks to the Honors College for having me and the Alumni association for this incredible award. It's great to be back on campus. It's awesome to be back in Atherton. Go Simmons.