{"id":3790,"date":"2015-04-29T15:00:17","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T13:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.embl.de\/?p=3790"},"modified":"2020-03-25T12:47:19","modified_gmt":"2020-03-25T11:47:19","slug":"1504-sasaki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.embl.org\/news\/lab-matters\/1504-sasaki\/","title":{"rendered":"Pathways: In the prime of life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"p1\">Dentistry was Karin Sasaki\u2019s familial calling: \u201cMy mother, my grandmother, even my aunt are dentists,\u201d she reveals. But Sasaki chose not to take the path most trodden, and instead turned to mathematics: \u201cAt school I didn\u2019t think I was clever \u2013 maths was one of the hardest subjects, and studying it was a personal challenge.\u201d Although mathematics became her tool, biology was her passion, and the fates collided when Sasaki was invited to take an undergraduate mathematical biology project forward with a PhD at Imperial College, London. She continued her research into mathematical modelling of DNA with a postdoc at the Institut des Hautes \u00c9tudes Scientifiques (IHES), Paris. For anyone hoping to follow in her footsteps, Sasaki advises: \u201cBe enchanted by biology, but have mathematics as your secret weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"p1\">Now, Sasaki is putting her \u201csecret weapon\u201d to work within <a href=\"http:\/\/www.embl.de\/research\/interdisciplinary_research\/centres\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">EMBL\u2019s Centre for Biological Modelling<\/a>, one of four internal centres that provide expertise, advice and training for scientists across the Laboratory to promote and facilitate interdisciplinary research. \u201cMy job \u2013 under the guidance of Fran\u00e7ois N\u00e9d\u00e9lec, Kiran Patil, and Julio Saez-Rodriguez \u2013 is to direct the integration and widespread adoption of mathematical and physical modelling into everyday research at EMBL,\u201d she explains. Day-to-day, her tasks can vary from consultancy to community building, and everything in between: performing collaborative modelling tasks, training EMBL staff in relevant programming languages and software tools, and fostering interactions between EMBL researchers through seminars, journal clubs and interdisciplinary retreats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"vf-blockquote\"><p class=\"p1\">Be enchanted by biology, but have mathematics as your secret weapon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"p1\">Sasaki\u2019s priority is to enable EMBL scientists to adopt more theoretical approaches as part of their research. \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to collaborate with everyone,\u201d she says, \u201cSo it\u2019s better if I support them in gaining the skills and understanding they need to apply these approaches themselves.\u201d Finding and guiding researchers in the right mathematical method for their topic keeps Sasaki\u2019s days varied: \u201cOne day I will be helping to model the morphogenesis of developing embryos, and the next to study the cytoskeleton: completely different projects requiring different approaches. I rely on the experts, on the people in the labs, to advance my understanding more quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"p1\">Sasaki wields her \u201csecret weapon\u201d with an infectious enthusiasm and honesty: \u201cAsk questions, no matter how stupid you think you look \u2013 being red for five minutes, avoids you being green for days,\u201d she says. \u201cApplied theoreticians are in a middle ground,\u201d she concludes, \u201cYou are not proving new ground by breaking theorems in mathematics, and you are also not an expert in biology. Learn to feel comfortable in that situation, and know that \u2018translation\u2019 is key to interdisciplinary research.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Karin Sasaki is helping bridge the gap between quantitative and life science at EMBL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3792,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,43,49,76],"embl_taxonomy":[],"class_list":["post-3790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lab-matters","tag-careers","tag-heidelberg","tag-interdisciplinary","tag-service"],"acf":{"article_intro":"<p>Karin Sasaki is not your average mathematician, but then hers is not your average job \u2013 she is helping to bridge the gap between the quantitative and life sciences at EMBL.<\/p>\n","related_links":[{"link_description":"EMBL Centres, promoting and facilitating interdisciplinary research at EMBL","link_url":"http:\/\/www.embl.de\/research\/interdisciplinary_research\/centres\/index.html"}],"article_sources":false,"vf_locked":false,"featured":false,"color":"#007B53"},"embl_taxonomy_terms":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.2 - 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