Transcript of Career Conversation with Peter Horanyi
Career Conversation with Dr. Peter Horanyi – Transcript
Dr. Peter Horanyi: Thank you so much. Thank you for the opportunity to share my journey with you. I hope you will find something inspiring here and I can share my view and maybe that will help you also to see things maybe a little differently and gain some insight as to why you should be a scientist.
So my journey is really based on my just inherent curious nature and I always like to build things as a child. I like the sand castles. I like playing with Legos and things like that. So I really was always sort of an active child and I really like this quote from Sir Isaac Newton because I think that this is the way that I see science or I feel that this is so true: “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
So to me this really embodies how science is done—the things that people discovered in the past we use those as part of the building blocks for what we do today. And we really are standing on the shoulders of those giants who came up with those things before us. And what we do is we are laying the foundation for the scientists of tomorrow, which is you. And we need you and we need you to be scientists and we need you to participate in science and engage us, those of us who have been around for a while, because we really want to ensure that you have a good future, that we help you in every way that’s possible.
And really science is a community-based approach where we need to work together to make sure that we’re doing the right things, we’re interpreting the right things, and we get to where we need to be in our joint future.
Early Spark and Following My Strengths
So, as I mentioned, my early spark was something sort of like this. I chose this picture because I felt like I watched a lot of these nature shows. I really was fascinated with how life happens throughout the world. How nature deals with different things, with the good and the bad, and how all the things that are happening out there make up this beautiful nature that we want to learn so much about. And so I really enjoyed learning about nature, about my surroundings and about wildlife.
But I also like to sit in front of the TV and play with Legos and sort of take clocks apart and putting them back together and just really try to figure out how things work. I was always really curious. I also really like to take the Legos and make not the things that were pictured on the box, but make new things and different things and just all sorts of stuff, stuff that I liked. And I really enjoyed being similar but different and tried to find my own path.
And so as I went through school I identified that although I really wanted to be an engineer, I was just not that good at math and physics. I got decent grades. Usually I got A’s and B’s in everything. But I was just so much better in biology and in chemistry. And those were not the directions that I wanted to go early on. But I realized that that is my expertise. And basically, I learned that it’s a lot easier to make progress with the things you’re good at. And so therefore I decided by listening to my teachers to focus on biology and chemistry, to focus on my strengths and try to find a path that those fit instead of the things that I wanted to do but I was just not that good at.
So I took the initiative and I started to follow science and follow those things. And when things came up that seemed really overwhelming, I still wanted to go and engage with that and really learn about it. So really I was just as scared as everyone else when some of these new things were happening, but because I trusted myself and the people who advised me as well as my knowledge, I usually embarked on those. And so change is never easy, but it usually ends up with good things.
Education and Finding My Path
So after I finished high school where I did high school research—that was what I was alluding to, that was sort of scary at first, but really benefited me—after doing research in the Medical College of Georgia in my high school years, I received my bachelor in genetics from the University of Georgia and then I received the PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology also from the same school. So this is the arch for the University of Georgia. This is the gate that you walk through whenever you come and you graduate. I really like the university and I’ve really learned a lot.
But the reason why I took genetics as my undergraduate major is because during that research in high school, I met a geneticist who I admired. He was just a fantastic person and I just really liked all the things that he was doing and he became a role model to me. So I chose my major as genetics based on I wanted to just be like him.
And so, as I went through undergraduate and my graduate work, what I wanted to do was still not clear to me. I just wasn’t sure exactly what it was that I wanted to do. When I finished high school, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted. So, it was easier to sort of follow this person who was a role model to me. As well as when I graduated undergrad and I went to PhD, I just wasn’t really sure exactly what I wanted to do.
Choosing Crystallography
So what I focused on is to learn a technique, learn a method that I can deploy later into the things that I find that are useful and not get sort of a—I didn’t choose a field. I didn’t try to go and do certain kind of biology or choose something that I may or may not end up liking. So I focus on the technique because then I can deploy that to the future when it arrives.
And so I chose crystallography. And the reason I’m showing you this image on the left, this is from the 1950s and this is from the diffraction pattern of the DNA. And using this image we understood how the actual DNA molecule is made up. And to me this is one of the key images that depicts crystallography. So I chose crystallography because it’s such a powerful tool that was just something that I could deploy to a number of different approaches.
And so after working on membrane protein, after working on crystallography I really learned that this is a very powerful technique. But what then I realized is that many of the structural biology or the crystallography using this technique for certain types of proteins was becoming really easy. And so at the time when I was going from graduate school to postdoc, I wanted to do something meaningful, something hard, something difficult that is basically being at the cutting edge of science. And so I worked on membrane proteins.
And so in working on membrane proteins I learned a lot and I really understood the challenges and overcoming them was really how I developed into the scientist that I am—basically again embracing change, embracing the newness of tomorrow and being at the cutting edge of science, just learning about the things that I’m seeing for the first time from any human. So, it was a really amazing experience to be part of science and to be part of a lot of the discoveries and I only could get there because I embraced the change and I embraced the challenges of new things.
The Pivot to Industry
But as I was going through my postdoc, talking to my mentor, he really made me realize that I was not cut out for academia. And so what then I realized is that industry was where I wanted to go. And so after some trepidation, I was recruited to go to industry.
But before we get there, when I was doing my postdoc, I did it at University of Virginia. And like I said, I did the membrane protein structural biology. So when I went from—and this is a picture of the rotunda from Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia—from here I went to a small company called Beryllium where I’ve further honed my skills in structural biology but I was also trained in biophysics. And so the two together was really where I laid the foundation for my career.
So after working in structural biology for over 10 years, I realized that in many of the discussions during structural biology, I was one of the biologists and not necessarily the structural workers or the people who are focused on structure because most of the difficulties that we had to overcome were we had to deal with cell lines and different sort of aspects of cellular behavior. So I always ended up answering biological questions in order to get to the structure. So because of this and because of some opportunities—again listening to mentors, listening to leadership at the company—I pivoted away from structural biology about three years ago and I started working in discovery biology.
Current Work in Discovery Biology
So what does that mean? So in discovery biology what we do is we try to target tissues. So we try to make sure that instead of the medicines that people take currently—like let’s say you take a pill and that goes all over a person’s body even to the places where it doesn’t need to work—now I’m working on medicines that target the specific tissue or are delivered to the specific tissue where disease happens. And so what we call this is we call it receptor-mediated delivery or receptor-mediated transport. And it’s also part of vesicular transport, something that I’ve been really interested in.
Because when I worked in my postdoc as well as undergrad, I often tried to stay close to the trendiest things which were—when I was in my graduate work and the postdoc work, it was a lot of the GPCRs were really popular and all the cool kids wanted to work on GPCRs. I didn’t feel that I wanted to be the trendy one. What I wanted to work on is not the things that are trendy today. What I wanted to work on the things that will become trendy tomorrow.
And so I worked on the ones that were more difficult again and embracing the difficulties and really seeking them out because oftentimes when you work on something difficult it’s a lonely place but it’s easier to get ahead. So I really understood that being part of what everyone else is doing, it’s a lot more difficult. But if you work on something that is going to be popular or cutting edge tomorrow then it’s a lot easier to get into that as well as develop yourself and achieve something cool.
Decision-Making Strategy
So as far as when I went through my life, the biggest challenges when I faced the biggest challenges, I just didn’t know what to do at first and so I often sought the advice of others. But I don’t listen to one person. What I often do is I listen to everyone and believe no one and form my own opinions. And so that’s what I can recommend to you is if you’re not sure what is happening or what you should do, it’s good to do research. That’s really what I do. I’m a scientist really at heart and I’m a researcher at heart. That’s always what I do.
I always try to understand even in personal life, what are the things—the pros and cons of a decision—and try to make sure that when I make this decision I am ready to take the negatives as well as the positives. So the strategy that I kept is I wanted to keep doors open. I didn’t want to close the doors on myself. That’s why I chose a technique in graduate school, the crystallography, the structural biology, rather than picking a field of a certain biology or certain biochemistry or something like that.
And I always listen to others. I always—when someone is willing to spend time, of their precious time, the times you can’t get back, and they spend it on me and they give me advice—I always listen carefully and evaluate what they say and try to make it my own and implement it in a way that helps me. Because if I don’t watch out for myself then no one will. But when these people are telling me something and they’re trying to help, they are really trying to watch out for me. So, I usually take them on for their kindness.
What I Do Now
So, what we’re doing, so what I do now is I developed tissue targeting technologies. The reason why we have a picture of a brain here is because I focus on the brain first, as I mentioned here, in the biologics where we try to deliver across the blood-brain barrier. But we also try to work to target medicines to the relevant tissue just like I mentioned to you earlier where we’re not trying to deliver to the entire body of a human being but we try to just address the parts that have the disease so we can cure them faster with less side effects and basically it makes a better patient experience. And that’s really what I want to do is to transform the treatment of the brain and other diseases that attack other tissues.
The Importance of Publishing
So one thing in science is really important is your impact and the way that you share your work is by publishing it. So I highly recommend you focus on publications wherever you go. I had someone tell me during my career and I find this very true that if a work that was never published, it’s like it never happened. And so it’s very important for you to publish your work and it’s also important where you publish your work.
So I feel that I’ve been making some good progress in my life. I was able to publish in the journals that I list here throughout my career and have been able to publish constantly which has enabled me to be sharing my knowledge as well as receiving feedback from others and getting to where we need to be. So I think it’s very important to have a sort of a steady, reproducible and just always perform the same way and be consistent. That’s the right word I was looking for. That word is consistency.
So, it’s important to be consistent and constantly produce the same level of work so that people know who you are and what it is that you do and what they can count on from you. And so, I highly recommend the consistency. Often people say to do your best. That’s good. But I feel that consistency is really the most important thing and that’s what I would focus on or that’s what I focus on and that’s what I recommend you do too.
Skills That Matter
So what are the skills that matter? So I think it’s important to be diverse. It’s important for you to be able to look at a scientific problem and be able to interpret it from a number of different perspectives. And if you can’t find the perspective on your own then seek that perspective from someone else. So build a diverse skill set because you don’t know what you will need in the future and the more things you learn, just like languages, the more perspectives or the more approaches that you can deploy to that problem.
Stay curious and keep learning. So what I try to do and what my mantra is, is I always try to be better tomorrow than I was today and I tried to be better today than I was yesterday. We’re not talking about great changes every day but just 1%, just an incremental change but just a constant trying to better yourself is something that I highly recommend.
Stay focused. It’s very important to stay focused and to try to get to where you want to be. Set goals that you can’t possibly achieve today, but then set incremental steps to get you there so that over time you can arrive at the goal that today seems so far and so unachievable. But if you just have a good plan and you listen to people and you take advice and you’re able to not only devise the step but consistently make progress towards it, then you can definitely get there.
Ask lots of questions. Question yourself, question others. Ask good questions and be productive. Basically, ask questions that are important questions. The gotcha questions are not so nice, but focus on trying to help, focus on working on understanding better the environment that you’re in as well as the question or the problems that you’re trying to address.
Adapt across disciplines. Make sure that you’re looking at different kinds of disciplines, different kinds of approaches, different kind of methods so that you can address the problems or any kind of issues that may come up to get you where you want to be.
My Advice to You
So, my advice to you is never give up. As I mentioned, keep consistent, steady progress, incremental progress. It’s very important to stay on task and do what you need to do.
Ask great questions and make sure that you are curious and you try to understand the underlying problem that people are trying to understand or trying to overcome. Look at their assumptions. Look at the things that are important to you and you think could be important and have an opinion about most of the things is important. I’m not suggesting to share your opinion every time but having an opinion for yourself on really every aspect of your life and especially scientific problems I think is very, very good.
Rethink the problems that seem binary. This middle one I think is very important and I just recently realized this. So if you see a problem in front of you and you say there’s either this solution or this other solution and I don’t see more than two solutions here and you say either/or, that means that there’s a framing problem there. So what I recommend is if you find yourself looking at a problem that’s either/or then try to step back and make sure that the perspective that you have is not focused on the actual work that you’re doing. Basically, step away from the perspective that you had initially so that you can have the framework so that you can find alternates than just the two that you initially set up for.
Be fully present in your work. What I mean by that is science usually takes months if not years for you to actually get to a scientific answer in many of the projects that you work on as you progress in your science. So it usually takes days, weeks, months, it could be a long time for you to get to the final answer. And if you go to work or you go to the lab and do science whenever you are not fully there, you can make a mistake and really set yourself back. So I recommend to always evaluate whether you’re ready to do science, whether you are able to pay attention and basically just don’t set yourself back by going at a time when you’re just not ready to be fully there.
Embrace confusion at the frontier. And then something that I think as you learn, as you’ll go through school, you’ll realize, but I wanted to point out right now for you is that at the frontier, at the cutting edge of science, when you’re discovering things that no one has ever seen before, you’re in a new spot. This can be very confusing. But this confusion is something that you need to get used to as a scientist. This sort of being puzzled is what really is the good place for a scientist. And this is where asking questions—always ask questions—because this asking questions as well as the confusion at the frontier, these two are very much related and the way to get to the next step and the way to understand what is happening is by asking the questions and then rethinking the problem and then getting back to the cutting edge and this is an iterative process that will get you to the success that you’ll definitely want.
My Future Vision
So as it’s my future vision, what I want to do is let you know that I want to help you just like I am here today and I have been with BioBuilder for a number of years. I want to support and inspire the next generation of scientists. I want to help you. So please feel free to engage, reach out. My goal is to ensure that the scientists of tomorrow, the young scientists from many of you who you are, that they get to learn from us, we can give you what we learned. And to say it a way that I like to say it is to make new mistakes. Don’t make the mistakes we made. You find new things and make those mistakes. Don’t make the same mistakes that we’ve made.
I want to be approachable. In the past many times I felt that PhDs were often regarded as people who were difficult to approach. I don’t want to be one of those people. I want to make sure that we scientists are approachable. We’re nice people who are easy to engage by the general public so that we can share our knowledge and our love for science because really this is what the foundation is—fact-based decision-making is something that is essential in science and I think that we can all benefit from that or I guess society in general could benefit from more of that today.
And then this is where it really gets to the help reshape public perception of scientists. So in the past many times the scientists are depicted of these sort of introverted stuffy people that you can’t talk to and I really don’t like that. I really wish that we as scientists were at least viewed as people who are easy to talk to and we can address some of the questions that others have because I think everybody has some level of curiosity. It’s just some of the experiences that others may have had that have not been as good from the scientists.
And I also want to make sure that we use science to benefit humanity. It’s our joint future going forward. So it’s very important for all of us to work together and to get to where we need to be so that we can have a better life together as humanity on this planet.
So thank you for your time. I wish you good luck and like I said, if there’s anything I can do to share what I know, please don’t hesitate to reach out and I look forward to speaking to you.
Q&A Session
Moderator: Awesome. Thank you so much. That was some really great insight, especially not just the parts about your own journey, but just kind of general advice about developing yourself as a scientist and a person. So, that was great. Any of the students, do you guys have any questions? Put them in the chat or just unmute if you’re comfortable with that.
Student: Can you guys hear me?
Moderator: Yeah.
Student: So you talked about how you really like physics and stuff and then kind of just decided to do like the life sciences because you were better at it. Were you like blatantly better at biology and stuff and is that why you went that route or were you kind of like—I don’t know.
Dr. Horanyi: No, that’s a good question. I see where you’re going with it. So I would say that in my class I was usually one of the best in biology and chemistry and I was usually sort of middle of the field. I had good ideas in physics and math but I was just never as good at it. And so when I sat down to study either of those subject I just wasn’t as good and I didn’t like them as much. I didn’t feel as much joy from some of the studying and it was as I was getting into more higher level classes, it was getting more and more difficult. And so I felt like biology and chemistry were just easier.
So I would say that I wasn’t blatantly better necessarily in biology and chemistry than I was in physics and math, but it just came easier. And as I went through undergrad and then grad school, I never found a limit with biochem and biology and chemistry in my view and me. But I definitely hit the limit in undergrad with math and physics.
Student: Thank you.
Dr. Horanyi: Of course, thank you for asking the question.
Dr. Natalie Kuldell: Peter, I have a sort of related question. You had mentioned that at some point somebody told you that you would probably not be cut out for academia and that you might be better suited for industry. I’m just interested in that conversation a little bit because I think that along the way a lot of people get input from people they respect and sometimes it can be heard as honest support to send you in the right direction and other times it can be heard as it’s too hard for you, you’re not good enough, why would you do that? So I’m just curious about how that conversation went so well for you and that you interpreted as you know these are two options, which one should I go towards, as opposed to oh don’t shoot for that, go this other direction.
Dr. Horanyi: Sure. So I mean I’m going to be honest with you—when I heard that it hurt, right? And so it wasn’t something because for so many years I’ve wanted to do it. When I heard what my mentor said, I thought it was some harsh words, but then I thought about it and I thought about what he said. What the actual thing that he said to me was: “If you don’t get woken up in the middle of the night about a biological problem, then academia, being a professor is probably not your thing.”
And I realized that the words that he used and the actual context that he put it in really is saying that the work-life balance of a professor is very different than someone who isn’t in academics. As well as if you’re going to embark on that career, all the people who you’re competing with are really going to be those kind of people. And so I think that’s something that I’m just now realizing maybe I should have pointed out during my discussion is that you’re competing with people. So in your career, you’re actually competing with your peers. And the way to make sure that you achieve the most that you can is by following your own path and not taking someone else’s.
And so you have to be humble enough to realize exactly what are your strengths and use those and not go after the stuff or the things that your best friend is doing or others are doing just because they’re cool.
Dr. Natalie Kuldell: Yeah.
Dr. Horanyi: So I felt that then I realized that he’s really trying to help me here because if I were to go and pursue academics I could probably have become a professor somewhere but could I have actually excelled at it? Probably not as well as I do today in my current role. And so I feel that like I said if he spends time or someone spends their precious time to give it to me and give me advice I always listen. I’m always thankful that someone who was kind enough and generous enough for them to share that with me.
Dr. Natalie Kuldell: Yeah, that’s lovely. Thank you. Thank you Peter. I do think that when people give you time, it is precious and it is worth considering whether you act on it or not is separate. But you have given your time to us. So I just want to mention that we’re also very grateful for that.
Dr. Horanyi: Well, so I think that you do a great thing. The scientists of tomorrow are essential and I love that I get to work with you and your team and ensuring that the scientists of tomorrow get to hear our voice. And if I could do more I would because this is so important to me that we continue to have scientists in the world where fact-based decision-making is not always visible to actually share that there are fields that cannot go forward without fact-based decision-making. So I think that it’s very important for us to spread the message and touch as many people as possible. So thank you for the opportunity.
Dr. Natalie Kuldell: It is an impact, very positive. So thank you. Thank you.
Moderator: Any other questions from the students? If not then I have one more to close it out. Unless anybody else has anything.
[pause]
Okay. So one thing that you mentioned, it seemed to be kind of a recurring theme in your talk is the importance of mentorship. I mean you just talked about it now, taking advice from people. Do you have any advice for the students or for younger people just kind of coming into their journey about how to seek out and foster these relationships with good mentors?
Dr. Horanyi: Sure. So I think that what’s important is that everybody who’s willing to talk to you is a mentor, right? So to me, the fact that you have a teacher or someone who gives you advice, I’d say it’s good to listen to everyone. Just like I said, that’s what I do is I listen to everyone and I try to form my own opinion from that. So I would say that it’s important for—what I’m suggesting is important to listen to everyone and form your own opinion. Right? So that’s really what I’m saying.
But as far as—so I’m not answering your question. So let me answer your question. So what I think that is important is that it’s a relationship and you shared some of these previous talks from this kind of event that you and Evan shared. And there was one someone who said that it was a warm relationship and so I think that’s really what it is is that you sort of get a relationship with people who are in your field and ask them for advice, ask them for insight. It’s very important to network. And I’m not saying network like find the impactful people and make friends with them and see how you can get there. What I mean is engage with your entire peer group as well as the people around you. There’s something to be learned from everyone.
And then over time as you engage with these people, you will find the people who talk to you more. You will find the people who are the true mentors. And then asking them for questions and trying to understand what they mean and how to get to where they are suggesting is a way—to me that warm relationship is to show them that you are listening to them and that you’re trying to benefit from what they say.
But I think that I would not encourage for you to find a mentor or someone who’s a single person because I don’t think that that single perspective is enough. I think that what I do for example about news is I listen to news from both ends of it from three or four different places if not five and I form my own opinion based on the five different opinions that I heard.
So I think that in science if you hear something from a single person and no one else is saying it, I’m not sure if I would listen. I would definitely listen to it and I would take notes but I would not want to be making a decision on a single data point. To me that is not the scientific approach. A single data point is an observation. A set of data points with a statistically significant data set—that’s the actual data set. That’s your data set that enables you to make a decision. But a single opinion, a single data point is just an observation. And I would treat it as such.
Now if there is someone who has always—like the person who was my role model. So I definitely watched him and I watched his actions and I watched the way that he talked about what he did and then what he did and then I made my decisions based on what I saw him do. But I still wouldn’t want to be just listening to them. I would want to see them talk about their action and then watch them act it out.
So this is your life you’re talking about. I mean we can’t just let some other person make a decision on that. I mean your parents always want the best for you but they may not have the full picture either. So I recommend to gather diverse insights, get a data set. Don’t make decisions based on observation.
Moderator: Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. So kind of being open to a lot of different perspectives, taking in as much advice as you can, and then from there kind of formulating your own viewpoint and your own idea of how things are.
Dr. Horanyi: Exactly. Exactly. And then maybe find someone that you can bounce it off of. Find someone, your friend. Find someone who likes to disagree with you. Always find the opposing opinion. Don’t find people who agree. In science, agreement is not productive. If we all agree on the same thing, we would never go anywhere. So, we want to have at least just a little bit that I agree with 99% of what you’re saying, but I think that this is slightly different. Even that’s good enough. Just something so you’re not just copying someone because that’s I don’t like that. To me, that’s not the scientific approach. To me, your own journey is you and you have to figure out what it is that you want. And then as you progress in that I think you’ll learn that okay these are the things that are working and these are the things that are not working and always be observant on what is working and what isn’t.
Moderator: Awesome. Thank you so much. All right, unless anybody else has any questions I think it is about time to wrap it up and move on with the rest of class. Anybody have any last minute questions, thoughts, concerns?
All right. Well, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate the insight and all of the advice that you’ve given. This is really awesome career talk and I’m glad that you were able to join us and yeah, we I believe have your email. Would you be comfortable if the students wanted to reach out for anything?
Dr. Horanyi: Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you. And if any of the students want to reach out, definitely don’t be shy. This is the reason why we have these career talks that you guys can have people who are in the field who are experts, you guys can connect with and ask questions to. So, definitely don’t be a stranger. And yeah, thank you so much, Peter, for your time. We really appreciate it.
Dr. Horanyi: Thanks so much. Thanks for the opportunity. Have a wonderful day. Look forward to all the scientists. Thanks so much. See you soon. Thank you.
Moderator: All right.