Carney Institute (CI): Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Nina Gray (NG): I was originally born in Columbia, South America and grew up in Florida. I went to college at MIT and from there I went to Brown for graduate school.
CI: What did your day-to-day look like as a graduate student at Brown?
NG: Many people are unprepared for the transition from undergraduate to graduate studies. You go from having this very rigid course structure to graduate school where it's more about getting to know that lab environment; getting to understand what types of research questions you want to answer and how your research will answer those questions in a rigorous and compelling way. At Brown, I switched from human brain imaging to studying voltage gated ion channels in cells which was about the biggest leap you could imagine because I wanted to understand biology at a very detailed level.
At Brown, I was working in (Carney Institute Director) Diane Lipscombe's lab. In terms of the types of experiments I did, I did some molecular biology, protein biochemistry and physiology on cells. And each has its own pace and structure. When you're recording activity in cells, it's very immediate. It's real time, you troubleshoot in the moment. At the end of the day, you clean up your prep, and the next day you start again. When you're working with molecular biology and protein biochemistry, it can be days before you find out that something went wrong on day one. You spend a lot of time planning out your schedule for days at a time to kind of set the stage to make sure that you're making as much progress as you can.
Throughout, I was collecting data, analyzing it, and talking with Diane and other lab members about that analysis. In that process, sometimes we would realize something interesting was going on, and to dissect it more we created new experimental designs that we hadn't seen anybody else do.
So, there is a continual process of collecting and digesting the information, talking through it with other people, and then figuring out, well how do I dig deeper on this to get a better answer than what I have right now?
CI: Tell us about the transition from the lab to your current role at NYU.
NG: After graduating from Brown, I went to Brandeis University for a postdoc focusing more on electrophysiology. I was interested in synaptic plasticity and development, and what are the processes underlying the formation of circuits early on through experience.
My husband is also a neuroscientist who also did his Ph.D. at Brown. He was doing his postdoc up in Boston and went on the job market before I did. He got a faculty position at the NYU School of Medicine and that brought me to a decision point: Do I stay in my postdoc, finish this, and then go on the job market myself, or do something else? It had been building up in my mind for many years, the idea that "It's time to find a different path." So, I decided to move with my husband to New York City without a job. And, although scary, it certainly proved to be the right decision for me.
I took a position at the New York Academy of Sciences on their scientific conferences team, and it was an amazing experience. I was surrounded by other Ph.D. scientists who were all women. We worked with academics, and people from industry, and people from nonprofit, and people in policy to put together large-scale scientific events to really try to create moments where thought leadership happened, and science communication happened.
At the same time, I was with NYAS, NYU was establishing a new neuroscience Institute at the School of Medicine. I knew the incoming director and was able to meet with him. And a few months later we had crafted a position for me to join his administrative team as a scientist with a focus on communications and education. I helped build the website, create an events calendar, and most importantly assisted on the administrative side of their graduate program. Ultimately, I assumed the position of executive director and learned quickly about finance, budgeting, HR policies and procedures, and how to work across a large, complex organization.
In 2019, I joined the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center as the associate dean and executive director of their Advanced Science Research Center, which includes environmental science, structural biology, nanoscience, and photonics, in addition to neuroscience. Then the pandemic happened.
Like many of us, I learned a lot about emergency management, leading in times of crisis, and taking care of people. My writing skills proved especially helpful to communicate what was going on, university policies, and how to stay healthy - writing with empathy and clarity. There's nothing like a pandemic to make you rise to the occasion. After two years of the pandemic, I moved back to NYU in a new role in the provost office. I had done a lot of day-to-day operations work at the School of Medicine and CUNY. Being in the provost’s office has enabled me to spend more time on the strategy and planning needed to build large research collaborations and then galvanize and support researchers around grand challenges.
CI: How has collaboration played into your work? Is it an elemental part of success?
NG: Without a doubt. In Diane's lab, for example, we each had a project that we led, but I never felt “alone.” Because we were using the same techniques, we were always comparing notes and helping each other troubleshoot. Every week, we had a two hour-long lab meeting where we’d share our data, talk about our experiments, and try to untangle what was or was not happening. That experience taught me the great value of being open about your work and your ideas, asking for feedback even when you are afraid it might be negative.
As long as you’re with a group of people who are equally intellectually stimulated by the work going on in the lab, you won’t feel isolated.
CI: Suffice to say that science is a team sport?
NG: I think it needs to be even more of a team sport, now than ever before. The things I was doing in the lab wouldn't have taken six and a half years if I had collaborated even more. And I think that's true for everybody. It's in the best interests of scientists and it's in the best interests of society for us all to work together and share because that's how we're going to make advances most quickly.