Choose what fits with your personality

No such thing as a standard career path – an interview with Sara Morais da Silva

Could you talk briefly about your research experience and what you worked on?

I did my PhD in the MRC National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), Mill Hill, London, in the mid-90s with Robin Lovell-Badge, working on a protein called Sox9. I found it was involved in sex determination, acting downstream of the sex determining gene Sry, and playing a key role in the differentiation of Sertoli cells. Afterwards, I moved to regeneration research, and did a postdoc with Jeremy Brockes at University College London. I worked on the proximal distal axis during the regeneration of the newt adult limb, and found that a protein called Prod 1 was responsible for cells determining their position within this axis as the regeneration proceeded. Later, I wanted to return to embryology, and I was interested in morphogenesis. I joined Jean-Paul Vincent lab in Mill Hill, where I worked on the germ band extension of the fruit fly embryo, specifically focusing on how the cell division axis contributed to elongation during extension.

At this point, I had my first child, and living in London was becoming very expensive. My husband, who wanted to transition to the pharma industry, received a good job offer in Porto, Portugal. I planned to start building my independent research there, but there was an economic crisis in 2009, and I had the opportunity to join Claudio Sunkel’s lab at Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde (I3S), working on the spindle assembly checkpoint in fruit flies. However, the economic crisis forced my husband’s company to close its Porto site. He found another job in Aberdeen, Scotland. Aberdeen offered limited opportunities in my field, so I decided to take a break, when my children were still young. During my time in Aberdeen, I did a part-time photography degree in college, which I really enjoyed. But once again, one day, my husband came home and told me his company was relocating to the southeast, to Stevenage. We moved to live in between London and Cambridge, and we’ve been settled there since.

After a break, you received a Wellcome Trust Research Career Re-entry Fellowship. What motivated you to apply and how was the application process?

By the time we moved near Cambridge, I had been away from science for almost four years, and I really missed it. I applied and succeeded in getting a Wellcome Trust Career Re-entry Fellowship to return to the lab. My project was a follow up from the spindle assembly checkpoint project that I started in Porto. I generated quite a bit of data that I am currently tidying up.

To secure a fellowship, you need a good project with substantial previous research experience. You need lab space and someone that will support you. In my case, I was fortunate to have two excellent mentors: Sarah Bray and Peter Lawrence both at Cambridge University. To be eligible, you had to be out of research for at least two years. I ticked all these boxes but applying for this re-entry fellowship was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. Writing the project proposal on my own was challenging, and the interview involved presenting to a panel of 15 people, sat around a U-shape table. When I was awarded the fellowship, I was very happy, because it gave me the possibility to re-enter science research.

How was your experience going back to the lab after a few years’ break?

I worked in the Physiology, Development and Neuroscience department in Cambridge for seven years. The re-entry fellowship was officially for four years, but I was part-time, and it was extended because of the pandemic. Overall, I loved it, but I didn’t find it as exciting as it used to be. I think the fact that I stopped for so many years gave me a bit more perspective about other things I could do. My drive to commit 100% to research was no longer there. With family, I started thinking of the pros and the cons of continuing with a career that is very insecure. All these factors that maybe didn’t affect me when I was younger, made me think twice about a career in academia. That’s why I decided to stop when the fellowship ended.

You said you stopped when the money ran out, but were you already starting to think about other potential careers before that point?

One consistent thread throughout my career was my husband, who is a scientist and always seemed happy and fulfilled in his career. He always had opportunities to progress and move to new challenges. I wanted a job still linked to science but that offered more stability. So just before the fellowship ended, I started applying to pharmaceutical companies, and I got a job in one of them.

How was your experience in industry?

I have to stress that it was my personal experience. But I didn’t like it and I didn’t last long – resigning after six months. There were lots of reasons. I worked for a contract research organization (CRO) that supported pharma and biotech companies. The clients came with a project and when it got to my hands it was already developed and designed. All I had to do was to go to the lab and do the experiments. I had little ownership over the work, and I could be reassigned at short notice to a new project while in the middle of an existing one. I was bored and busy at the same time and after a while, I resigned. Luckily, my husband’s stable career meant we didn’t have to panic about finances and he was very supportive all the way through.

Your stint in industry didn’t work out, what other careers did you consider?

I thought about where else I could use my experience and apply my knowledge. I considered teaching and found a retraining programme designed for people like me to go into teaching. I shadowed teachers in several secondary schools, and I saw everything – from the ideal class to a class where the teacher was screaming at the children, and the children were screaming back. From these experiences, my admiration for teachers grew. They lack adequate support, have a heavy workload and low pay. Teaching requires a calling and a talent that not everyone has and I decided it wasn’t for me. I also tried something completely different – I explored a career in the police force but while I was physically capable, I couldn’t see myself fitting into that role either.

Throughout your career, you’re very quick at deciding that something is not right for you. How did you manage to do that?

I think that comes with age and experience. Over time, I’ve learned what I like and don’t like. It’s also part of my personality – I don’t like doing things halfway. I like to have decisions made quickly. I need to feel happy and fulfilled in my job. If I’m stressed, it affects the people close to me. And life is short. If you dwell too much doing something you don’t enjoy, you’re just wasting time and postponing the inevitable.

You’re currently the Reviews Editor at Journal of Cell Science. What does your role entail?

As a Reviews Editor, I commission reviews on topics relevant to the journal’s readership. I attend conferences to stay updated on emerging fields and identify knowledge gaps. I also edit commissioned articles, ensuring they are of the highest quality, and write Research Highlights, which are one paragraph summaries of recently accepted papers in the journal. Additionally, I interview early career research scientists for JCS.

What attracted you to the world of publishing?

I have a few friends who work in publishing and once, whilst having dinner with a friend and laughing with her about all my career experiences, she said, “I don’t understand why you haven’t applied to be an editor yet! With your background, the amount of people you know and the number of scientific subjects you studied, it’s a no brainer!” So, I decided to give it a try. And luckily enough, the first advert I came across was the position that I have now!

In this role, I engage with science every day. It’s like being in a sweet shop – one day, I can be working on an article about mitochondria; the next day, I can be working on microtubules. I’m never bored. I meet a lot of people as well, which is something that I really like. I think my current role as an editor at JCS is the joining of all the experiences I had before – talking to scientists independent of the level of seniority, knowing the topics that could be interesting for the journal. This is the ideal position to consolidate all my past knowledge and experience.

Career breaks and two-body problem are challenges that many scientists face. How did you navigate these challenges, and do you have any advice to those who are going through them?

This is a really hard question because it’s a very personal experience. For every decision I make, I consider all the possible outcomes. My advice is to have a very, very thorough consideration about what can happen once you make a decision. Think hard about your priorities and the consequences of your choices.

If I may dig a bit deeper, I think the main reason underlying challenges like the two-body problem and career breaks in science is because the academic career structure is very poor. If there were more career opportunities and support, especially for postdocs, then maybe fewer people would leave academia.

Any advice you would give for people thinking of going into a new career?

For me, it has to be something that fits with my personality. Your job takes the largest part of your day, so you should be doing something you enjoy. It’s also important to find something that fits your experience and abilities. You need to find out which aspect of your scientific career you like the most – do you like interacting with other scientists or do you like pipetting in a lab? There are so many possible careers out there, so just choose according to your personality, and don’t be afraid of changes and getting out of your comfort zone.

I get approached a lot at conferences as a journal editor, and I volunteer to go to ‘meet the editor’ or career events at conferences. I think talking to people is very important when finding a new career. If I can offer my experience, then people can pick and take whatever they find useful.

Where do you find out more about different careers that you don’t know much about?

A good thing is to find people who are in jobs you are interested in and talk to them. I also went to a few career fairs to see what I could do. That was where I found the teaching retraining programme. And I researched loads of websites. As soon as I saw an interesting advert, I would do some research on that area and tried to talk to someone with a similar role.

Finally, what do you like to do in your spare time?

I spend most of my time with my family. I am also training to run the London Marathon, which takes up a lot of time! I love photography and painting – they are my escape. My home is like a private gallery, with my paintings and photographs everywhere. I also love going to the theatre and music gigs. I hope I’ll still be going to gigs in my 90s, listening to my favourite bands!

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