Louis Noel
Welcome to Longitude Sound Bytes, where we bring innovative insights from around the world directly to you.

Hi. I’m Louis Noel, Longitude fellow and graduate of Rice University in Mechanical Engineering.

We are exploring the approaches of individuals to contemplation, experimentation, communication, and decision making.

For this episode, I spoke with Dr. Jacob Beckham. Jacob is a post-doctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A chemist by formal education, Jacob’s work also involves many other fields, like material science and biology. Join me in a conversation about his path in academia, communicating science, and leveraging creativity. Enjoy listening!

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Louis
You earned your Bachelor of Science in chemistry from the University of Georgia, and then advanced to Rice University for your PhD in chemistry as well. As of September 2023, you have been a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Could you describe what led you on a path in academia, as opposed to other scientific careers?

Jacob Beckham
Well, thank you, Louis, this is a question I get a lot, but it’s a really good one to start off with. And thank you so much for having me on, it’s real honor.

First off, I wanted to kind of set the stage for people by describing the different options people toss around when doing a PhD in the sciences. Generally, and there’s exceptions to this, there’s more options than just these three but if you want to continue doing research or scientific lab bench work, you kind of have three options: You have industry, national labs, and academia.

Industry is where the majority of graduate students in the sciences end up working. And there’s sort of a huge diversity in the jobs that people end up doing in industry, some are still in the laboratory, some are even doing a chemical synthesis. I’m from chemistry so that’s typically what I think of when people are going to these pharmaceutical companies. Some are doing product development for technology companies, some are in strategy, some are in sales. You get a really large diversity for the people going into industry. And it used to be that a lot of leading basic science research was done in the industrial sector as well back in the era of like Bell Labs in the 90s. I heard Dr. Rowland Pettit, in a previous episode actually mentioned this, some basic science still does happen in industry. But by and large, a lot of it has moved back towards academia. Really, the only sectors doing really impactful fundamental research on the industry side now are AI companies and some parts of the biotech industry. And even then a lot of companies would rather acquire a startup developing a new technology rather than develop it themselves.

Then there’s the National Lab side. So national labs are actually just this awesome middle ground between academia and industry that I feel like not enough people really appreciate. You get incredible work life balance, because everyone is working on a team. By and large, and they’re a full-blown adult, professional, they have their doctorate, they’re not a graduate student or a postdoc. Because of that, it’s a better place to keep organizational continuity, you don’t have to replace everyone, every five years. You have huge amounts of resources and money being handed around to tackle big challenges that sometimes aren’t tractable in places like academia or industry. So, I am pretty passionate about national labs, I spent about a year working at Lawrence Livermore, out in California during my undergrad. I consider that kind of the place that I fell in love with science. There’s really something wonderful about that national lab environment that I enjoyed. The tradeoff for the culture and resources, of course, is that you’re a little bit more limited as to the problems that you can work on. So, if things don’t have direct ties to national interests, or lab objectives, it’s a bit harder to justify what you would like to work on.

Then there’s academia. And frankly, when you make the pitch as to why you would want to be an academic over the other two options for logical types of people, I don’t think it makes a whole lot of sense. You make less money, especially at first, unless you start a bazillion companies off of licensed patents. The work life balance is worse. Most of the time you’ll have to move multiple times before finding a position that can be permanent. So, to be honest, when I started my PhD, I did not think I was going to end up in academia. Eventually, though, I think a few things clicked into place for me. One of my biggest strengths I consider about me as a scientist is my creativity and academia is the place where I feel like that can shine the brightest. Second, I really like being the person coming up with the ideas, the one that’s furthest upstream in the idea, you know, bog through commercialization. Third, I actually really enjoy teaching. And obviously, you get, you get to teach in multiple ways as a professor, which is what I want to do, you get to teach in a class, which I think I would really enjoy. And you also get to teach your graduate students every single day. I’ve started realizing that I really enjoyed watching my fellow graduate students encounter problems, and then find it in themselves to overcome that. I also loved like being relied on during that process. So that whole process of academically growing up and helping people to reach their full potential. I feel like I got a small taste of that at my PhD, and it made me really crave more of that. So, when I found myself like, volunteering to edit people’s papers for like, no reason I was like, Huh, okay, I think it would enjoy being a professor. Yeah, so sorry for the long-winded answer. I just wanted to make sure people understood the options, and that’s why I want to be in academia.

Louis
That was an excellent answer. I really couldn’t have thought of a better way to describe it. I mean, first of all, I didn’t even really consider national labs and it’s really interesting to learn about that middle ground.

Jacob
It is underrated as heck.

Louis
Yeah. And it’s open to a lot of people. I mean, as an undergraduate, like you said, that is a really good way to put your foot in the door, try things out. And as you know, the way we first met is you were trying something out. You went on the Rice Ignite Entrepreneurship track to learn more about commercialization of these research projects, and I’m really happy you landed on such an exciting journey in academia, and I know you’re going to be excellent teacher. You’re super creative, which we will discuss more in this.

Your published papers indicate a multidisciplinary approach converging the fields of chemistry, nanotechnology, material science, and biology. You have a significant emphasis on the synthesis and application of graphene-based materials, and the innovative use of nanotechnology for biological applications. Could you share two examples of your work that best illustrate the breadth of your research for lay audiences?

Jacob
I feel like your questions are so well crafted, like you can really tell that you dove into what I did. I just really appreciate that attention to detail.

Louis
I really appreciate you pointing that out. It takes a little work. So glad you recognized. Thank you.

Jacob
So, as I mentioned in my previous answer, I think I realized one of the things I really like about academia was that I can express my creativity and doing different kinds of projects. So, you covered it perfectly. It’s graphene-based materials, innovative use of nanotechnology for biological applications. So, I started with graphene, and then I sort of went into biomedical cell signaling and I sort of ended up doing a lot of neuroscience adjacent stuff, which is where I currently am in my postdoc.

The lab that I did my PhD in was the Tour lab at Rice University and Tour lab describes themselves as a carbon nanotechnology lab. That is super broad. But basically, if you can think of it, if it’s nanometer size, and it’s made of carbon, we’re interested in it. I joined that lab because I became fascinated with graphene. So, if you’re unfamiliar with it, graphene is a two-dimensional material, meaning that it’s literally a single atom thick sheet of carbon. You get some fascinating properties from these 2D materials. One of the big problems to graphene though, and the thing thus far that limited its commercial viability, it’s really difficult to make large amounts of material. So, our lab set about making new methods of making graphene, and we eventually came up with a pretty good one: joule heating. So, we found that if we took a carbon sample, and we float electrical current from a large capacitor bank through it, we generated heat. And even the direct passage of the electrical current plus that heat could drive chemical transformations. These transformations happen in milliseconds, and in carbon materials, they drove carbon to its most stable form, which was graphite. But since the material also cooled very rapidly, when the reaction was stopped, you could trap the carbon halfway through the formation of graphite, which resulted in graphene. This method was really interesting, for two reasons. One, you can make very large amounts of graphene very quickly, we were routinely making gram scale when other people in the world are struggling to make milligrams. And two, you can make it from almost any material, including waste materials, like rubber tires, plastic waste, and even food scraps. At one point, we had an undergrad literally just burn olive oil in a pan, bring it into the lab, and we made graphene out of it.

So, the second example, I promise, I’ll be shorter on this one. The second example was the use of molecular motors to control cell signaling. This was what you said about using nanotechnology and creative ways for biomedical applications. One of the earliest projects in the Tour lab sought to make molecules that work similarly to macroscale objects. Lately, we’ve been working on molecular motors. So, these are just molecules that spin when they’re exposed to light, and they exert mechanical force on their surroundings. So, there was a lot of work done in the 90s that showed that you could stimulate a signaling cascade, called a calcium wave by tapping the cell membrane with a micropipette. So, my work showed that you could do the same thing with a molecular size motor. This is really cool result because fundamentally, every drug in the field of pharmacology works by driving or inhibiting a signaling cascade using a chemical force. And here we are triggering a signaling cascade with a mechanical force. Functionally an entirely new paradigm in drug design. And this sort of added to a growing sentiment, especially in the field of what we call photo-pharmacology now, that you can do medicine with drugs that act by mechanical force, rather than chemical force.

Louis
That is just remarkable. I mean, the fact that you have the range, first of all, to go from just purely chemistry, but then go into material science with very physics heavy, and then apply that to biology and biomedical applications. It’s just, it’s really cool to see engineers and scientists like yourself, be creative about how they can maybe apply their work to several different types of fields. So that was a really good breakdown.

Jacob
I appreciate that.

Louis
It could be over a few people’s heads, but that’s great. I mean, it’s tough to distill this down any more simply. Yeah. Since 2020, you have authored nearly 40 papers published in world leading journals, which have amassed almost 500 citations in total. How do you manage involvement in multiple projects simultaneously? And what are your strategies to maintain your prolific output as a writer?

Jacob
Well, first off, I was, I was really lucky and really blessed to be in a productive group and surrounded by very talented peers. So, I do write a lot but I think I was only first author on maybe seven or eight of these papers. So, I mainly helped the other ones. I was just editing them or gathering data or coming up with ideas or experiments, or otherwise contributing to, you know, the novelty of the projects and making an intellectual contribution. So, a lot of that is because I had talented friends. And I do think that it’s important to manage collaborations well to invest in the people around you. So typically, I try to manage my involvement in that I have two to three projects of my own, and then a few deliverables for different projects going on all at once. So, kind of that’s really useful, because when I hit a roadblock on one, I can just work on the other and kind of keep the other one in the back of my mind, eventually, I’ll figure something out and come back to it. But both my ability to complete my own projects, and my ability to help others with their own work is fueled just by my ability to connect with my peers and coworkers. I consider it a core value for me to care about people intrinsically. And I hope I continue to be helpful, even if I didn’t benefit professionally from it. But as it turns out, I have benefited massively from it. So, in talking with people about the problems they encounter with their projects, I will very often see a way that I can contribute and take something off their plate, which will land me on their paper. And in talking to people about my own problems sometimes they do the same for me, which takes something off my plate makes me faster. So, this collaborative spirit, I think, was one of the key ingredients fueling my productivity and the productivity of the Tour lab as a whole. We talked about our work, maybe a little too much but that much dialogue and knowledge transfer overall into a really efficient group when it came to overcoming problems, there wasn’t a whole lot of waste, where we tried to reinvent the wheel. And there was a lot of helping. And I also think the last piece of that puzzle, honestly, was Dr. Tour, which was my advisor. I always like to tell this story. I was working on my thesis, and I was kind of trying to get Dr. Tour off my back, for like one of my last projects. So, I finished the draft thinking, Okay, this will buy me a few weeks. I emailed it to him at 9pm. He had it back to me fully read through and commented at 9am the next morning! I was just exasperated. So, I once thanked him for this efficiency actually. I was like, this is awesome, and thanked him and he said, don’t thank me, it’s my job. You would think it’s really easy to stay this focused and just keep your eye on the ball this hard, but it’s really not. There’s a lot of things that you have to keep track of doing science as a career. And it’s very easy to get lost in all the complexity of each project and funding. Everyone else just feels like they don’t have enough time in the day. Dr. Tour never makes you feel like that. I think it’s because of his ability to just keep his eye on the dang ball.

Louis
That’s so cool. It sounds like an incredible man. And you had a lot of great points in there. And I appreciate your perspective on collaboration. I think that’s really powerful for us for a lot of fields. And having that insight into how it works in academia is great. Do you ever experience difficulty in putting your ideas into words? Is there a structured or creative process you follow to break through writer’s block?

Jacob
I definitely do. I do experience difficulty putting my ideas into words. But I don’t think I really have a structured process. I think there’s a simple rule that I’ve told a lot of my friends: if you have writing to do, it won’t get done until you make it the only thing that you have to do. So, if I have like a big grant or a fellowship coming, I will just lock myself in a room until I have at least made progress with it. I’ll still try to do maybe like one or two simple experiments in a week. But complex things like learning new techniques where I feel like I have to use my whole brain, expend a bunch of willpower, I typically table them until I’ve at least made progress on the writing. And when I really have to do writing, I will make sure to set just a few days aside where I do nothing but lock myself in a room and write. And this probably doesn’t work for everyone. I know, career writers often describe like, Oh, I need to take a walk, I need to go do something else and then come back to it. That honestly, I think it’s kind of a reaction to a common mistake I feel like PhD students make. They just put off writing as long as possible because they stay in lab doing experiments. And like generating data is like a comfort thing for them. And I totally understand that. But you’re doing yourself a disservice if you’re not like trying to plan and structure your work because it has to go somewhere eventually. And I think this is gonna often lead to a lot of waste. So, I think it’s better to begin with the end in mind, which sometimes means writing before you’ve even begun, like doing certain experiments, just identifying goals. And I also think this process sharpens the link between your thinking and writing brain and it makes it easier to write a paper when it actually comes down to it.

Louis
Yeah, I like that analogy. And I can see that you have a lot of discipline, and some people may lean on some of their other characteristics to you know, get through that wall of writing. It can be difficult and It’s really interesting learning about how each person deals with that.

Jacob
Yeah, I think it’s important to know yourself for sure.

Louis
Speaking of writing, in January of 2019, you posted your first blog on a website you created, named Distilling Science. Since then, you and several other contributors have also posted blogs aligned with its mission statement, which is to, quote, “improve communication between scientists and the public. To highlight exciting new frontiers and technology, and to empower non-scientists with information on problems of great societal importance.” At Longitude dot Site, we share a similar mission with this podcast. I’m eager to learn about the inception of Distilling Science and your philosophy regarding the importance of science education and communication.

Jacob
Man this just brings a smile to my face seeing you’d like quote, my, the website, really the mission statement. I love it. 21-year-old Jacob was so cool. I miss him.

So, first of, this podcast is a really, really cool idea. I really enjoyed the episode with Rowland obviously, because I love Rowland. You guys have some really interesting guests coming in and dropping like a lot of valuable knowledge. I really like to tell the story about Nathan Zohner, when it comes to like, describing what led me to start Distilling Science.

Nathan Zohner was, I think like 18-year-old kid in 1997, who was doing a science project. And he walked around telling people, have you heard about the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide? And they were like, No, what’s that? And he would say things like it’s been found in the body of every single dead person ever. And the Nazis used in their camps. And if you know anything about chemical nomenclature, you’ll know that dihydrogen monoxide means H2O, which is water. And Nathan Zohner just walked around telling people true facts about water and got them to sign off on a petition banning water. Just the fact that like this kid could walk around telling people truths, and dangerously mislead them made me think a lot about what about people with an agenda? What about people who aren’t being truthful? What about people who will just flat out lie to your face? What can they do? And the internet does not help because false information spreads faster, more prolifically than truth, true information online. So, all of this led me to think that in an era of growing mistrust, scientists need to talk directly to people. So Distilling Science is built on the idea that the best people to share and talk about scientific discoveries with scientists themselves. It never quite became a viral hit. And it’s been kind of dormant. But I think it peaked at the right time, I think we were able to actually do some really good work, and communicating first, some essential truths about Coronavirus and second, diving into the actual data behind both the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines. So, I think, at first, it was just a cool way to talk about my research and things that I wanted to study in grad school. And then it really became sort of a tool for combating misinformation. I think that the best people to communicate with the public are scientists. And I think that that link is almost maybe weaker than it has ever been. I think that social trust in general is still very low. And I think that scientists need to be asking themselves, what can we do to help this? What can we do to change this?

Louis
Well, I think you’re an excellent mouthpiece for the scientific community, because your curiosity is just overflowing seems like and you’ve had this drive to just figure things out, and the fact that you took matters into your own hands, and then shared with everyone, it’s not easy and doesn’t, you know, happen in the blink of an eye, it takes time.

Jacob
Oh, yeah. 100%. I’ve thought about various ways to bring it back eventually, but I think that Longitude Sound Bytes might take the space for me. You guys keep bringing experts on just to talk directly to the people.

Louis
Yeah, we can fill that. We can help build up. Some things, they run their course and, you know, they have their time to shine and then it’s time to shelve them, you know, hang them up a good note, and that’s totally okay too.

Jumping to question number six. Some might think fields like science, technology, engineering, and math, lack of creativity due to the black and white nature of their governing laws. However, creativity often drives breakthrough innovations in those fields. What are modern methods of incorporating creativity into research? And could you share an example?

Jacob
Absolutely. So, Louis, have you ever heard of a guy named Dan Pink?

Louis
I have not.

Jacob
So this was actually the first ever research project that I did. I watched this YouTube video in high school, called The Theory of Motivation. It was a TED Talk by Dan Pink, who has a book called The Theory of Motivation. And he basically set out to make the case that modern incentive theory so the idea that if you pay people more, they’ll do better work does not work for what he called 21st century problems. And 21st century problems encapsulate everything that you put in this question, science, technology, engineering, math, also, literally just anything that requires above base level thinking. And to make this case, he talks about some science that was done in the 1950s called the Candle Problem. You’re presented with a box of tacks and a candle. And you’re told that you have to adhere the candle to the wall. So, people will try various things. They’ll try to melt the side of the candle and stick it to the wall, it doesn’t work. And they’ll try to tack the candle to the wall, it doesn’t work. The solution is to overcome a cognitive bias called functional fixedness. And see the box not just as a receptacle for the tacks, but an actual holder for the candles. You put the candle in the box, you tack the box to the wall. That’s how you solve the candle problem. So basically, the idea is to solve this problem, you have to think about it in a little bit out of the box way you have to think creatively, to overcome a cognitive bias.

Every problem in science, technology, engineering, and math could be encapsulated as a candle problem. You need creativity to overcome it. You need to think out of the box. Science is not this like straightforward thing. You are literally trying to discover something that no one has ever done. So, you need to think a little bit out of the box. So, in science, this can be looked at as who has the intellectual fearlessness to try something new, try something creative, and approach things in ways that like they’re intrinsically motivated to approach. That fuels creativity and I think that fuels great advances. I honestly think that most 21st century jobs require creativity. Otherwise, we’re all gonna get replaced by AI pretty soon anyway.

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Louis
We hope you enjoyed our episode. What stood out for me from this conversation was how passionate Jacob is about his work. The novelty of his research, and his encouragement to be intellectually fearless.

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