Lily He
My dad studies vision. And so initially I thought, Oh, it'd be really interesting to actually become an optometrist. But then I think over time and especially and during my time at Brandeis and in Eve's lab, I realized that like the amount of impact I could make through research was actually potentially much bigger I heard from a I think it was a friend who was like three years older than me who was at Brandeis, but also graduated from my high school.
Lily He
And he had told me that just he had had just an amazing experience doing undergrad research. I was like, whoa, undergrads can do research. That's really cool. And so when my friend had like sort of recommended, like, oh, like he's doing really cool research, like, you should reach out to her. I was like, OK, I could do that.
Lily He
Ultimately, I really didn't know what I was signing up for, and I really didn't understand, like, who I was emailing either. If I had known, I probably would not have done it So I think it's really nice in hindsight to have not known anything. I was in this lab where I was like, Oh my gosh, I don't know what's going on.
Lily He
I can't even find her office. It's very scary. She's seemed very busy. I had to like, wait like an extra, like 20 minutes to meet her or something. But I think once I, like, started talking with her, it was a little like formal at first. But then I think just like over time, I realized, like, OK, she's actually interested in, like, getting to know a bit more about me.
Lily He
I think there is so much that people miss out on if you don't get to know Eve that well. I think people sort of miss out a bit on sort of Eve when the cogs are really turning and a lot more of they get a lot more of Eve when she's already thought very deeply about certain things. They get sort of those very well formed thoughts and it's really, really nice to like actually like just literally just in Eve's office and just chat with her about some like kind of sort of not completely formed thoughts. It sometimes really like humbles me and I think maybe even her to like to realize that we can, like, make mistakes about things all the time. But importantly, I think we can all learn from each other. And I think she's really, really open to just even learning from her students. Which is incredible. Eve has given me much more of sort of like not being afraid to take risks, kind of like attitude, where I don't know, just sort of seeing how she approaches science.
Lily He
I've definitely become much more open to like, things that most people would consider difficult. Maybe even impossible. My interactions with Eve sort of this mentorship relationship has really taught me a lot about how to think and then also in turn, it affects how I live my life, what I really appreciate about Eve is no matter how busy she is, she just has time or she'll take that time out of her schedule to meet with these undergrads and to just yeah, just like talk to you about really anything like absolutely anything.
Eve Marder
What do you got?
Lily He
I have this puzzle here for you.
Eve Marder
Oh, wow. Well, thank you so much. And then you're adding to our lab problem. So would you ever dreamt when you started that you'd end up a specialist in abstruse marine species? Oh.
Lily He
I I think the only thing I thought of was when I saw your research, I was like, oh, cool. Somebody studying crabs, not like the classic, like, mouse or fruit fly I was like, This is cool. I want to do cool things. And that's why I contacted you. But yeah, I never thought I'd never thought of making this a career.
Lily He
What's your favorite part of? Just working with undergrads through primary teaching and also, like in the lab over these few years.
Eve Marder
So there's several favorite parts What's wonderful about undergraduates is when you first meet them, there are these ill formed masses of protoplasm Some of whom have brains attached and some who have prototypic brains attached. And then over some number of years, you watch people mature and come into their own and become really active creative intellects. I think that's the joy of education when you're starting with people who basically don't know very much or they don't know very much about what you're teaching them is that you can watch the little light bulbs go on and and it's and it's palpable.
Eve Marder
I mean, you can see it. And, you know, it's very interesting. Our present, we have a lot of undergraduates in the lab now. We have eight.
Lily He
That's a lot.
Eve Marder
Yeah. Which is more than we used to have. But I think there's this there seems to be a lot of self-selection. I think I seem to be attracting some of the better students who are a little quirky or a little interested in different things. So, you know, when you said that you were looking, you said crab's not mice.
Eve Marder
I've seen a lot of the crabs. Not mice. Yeah. Students now.
Lily He
Like, what was your first impression of me?
Eve Marder
Well, I so, you know, I broke one of my rules with you, which is I almost never answered or told prospective students who contacted me when they were still in high school. Um, so you remember you wrote to me when you were before you arrived on campus. Yeah. And I wrote back, and I told you to come by and say hello, right?
Lily He
Yeah. Yeah.
Eve Marder
And usually I would just, you know, put people off at that point. But there was must have been something about the way you framed it. And then when you came, I says, Okay, this one looks like she's probably worth the trouble.
Lily He
Worth the trouble.
Eve Marder
Worth the trouble. You must have sent me some signal that said, OK, we'll give this one a shot. And I don't know what it was.
Lily He
Yeah.
Eve Marder
You know, I make I make sort of snap decisions all the time, and I'm probably right only half of the time.
Lily He
That's a much better rate than mine.
Eve Marder
So, you know, umm it is unusual to have someone go as far as fast as you did as an undergraduate. Yeah. Do you realize, looking back now that you've now that you've been on the other side, you've worked with undergraduates yourself, do you realize how quickly you moved on to scientific independence?
Lily He
I think so, yeah.
Eve Marder
Because you you started as a freshman. You worked. And then by the time summer came around, you were doing experiments on your own and you were coming up with hypotheses and you were designing experiments and you did the work that became the guts of the paper that you ended up publishing. I mean, it was the beginning, right?
Lily He
Yeah.
Eve Marder
You need a lot of work to finish it, but you're one of only a few undergraduates who's made that kind of progress that fast, that early.
Lily He
I think definitely the most I think valuable part of the learning experience was just like thinking about the science right and like, sort of like you're saying, yeah, this sort of like independence as a scientist, like through the years, but also I think played out in so many ways.
Eve Marder
So I don't know if I that we had this conversation about the difference between consumers of knowledge and creators of knowledge.
Lily He
Not as much.
Eve Marder
OK, so early students, high school students, most college students are consumers of knowledge. They read books, they go to class and they learn received wisdom. Right. And if they're very good and they're very good at it, they they process it and they think about it, but they're still learning received wisdom. And if you want to train a scientist and there's a real difference, you have to teach someone to make the transition from being a consumer knowledge, being creator of knowledge.
Eve Marder
There is a very painful transition for some people. Some people love reading about science. And, you know, you can spend an hour or two and read a paper that might have taken ten people five years to do and you get it all in an hour. And there are people who are fabulous consumers of knowledge and fabulous readers But to have the patience and energy and will and curiosity to push back the boundaries of knowledge and to say my time and effort is worth, to discover something that nobody else in the world has ever seen or done or understood before.
Eve Marder
That's what real scientist is And sometimes when you when you see a young person, you can recognize when they're 18 or 19 or 20 years old, that they are real scientists. They've already made that transition. It's rare to have someone make that transition as an undergraduate, but you were one of the people who did and that's that first summer when you came in and said, I want to do this or I did this.
Eve Marder
And I said, OK, this is a real scientist and now I just have to not wreck her. Right. I mean, that's the challenge with really with really young scientists is to make sure that you don't destroy their love of discovery and the fact that they find it really fascinating to push back at the boundaries of knowledge. So I think that one of the things that makes me so happy about you is you have in you that that drive to be creator of knowledge.
Eve Marder
You've always had it. And you keep you keep finding ways to look someplace that no one's ever seen before. And that's that's very precious. And it makes me very, very happy to know that you have the chance to do that for the rest of your life.
Producer
What's your fondest memory?
Lily He
That's a good question. This was after my sort of thesis defense as an undergrad. There was sort of a bit of a celebration, like all of the labs sort of joined in for a little bit of a party My mom definitely came and I just remember like Eve, like pulled her aside and they had just a very long conversation.
Lily He
I was getting nervous. I was like, oh, no, it's going to happen. And they both came out and like, I don't know, they were both just like very happy to have, I guess just like both seen how much I had grown and then, I don't know, it was like a lot of emotions at once. I was like super happy to, like, have been with Eve.
Lily He
I was really happy with how much I learned. I was really sad to leave. Yeah, I think that was one of the times where I was like, Oh my gosh, like, about to cry. And even thinking back on it, like, I got really like, I don't know, like, nervous about it again, but I think it was that was really, I think one of my, my fondest memories for sure.