Arthur Mortha
What is your name?
My name is Arthur Mortha.
What is your role in the department?
I'm an Associate Professor in the Department of Immunology at the University of Toronto and the Canada Research Chair in Mucosal Immunology. I am privileged to work in a research laboratory in the Medical Sciences Building together with trainees to explore the mysteries of the mucosal immune system in mice and in humans. I am teaching undergraduate and graduate courses covering topics related to mucosal immunology, myeloid cells development, and the biology of innate lymphoid cells. I develop courses like IMM385Y, a course dedicated to facilitating 3rd year undergraduate students to join a research laboratory for a one-year research project. I recently establish a new graduate course, IMM2300Y, the Preprint Club. Within this course, graduate students use preprint articles to practice research article reviewing at an inter-institutional level, collaborating with trainees from the University of Oxford, the Karolinska Institute, the Icahn School of Medicine, and the MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Does your scientific background have an impact on your life outside of your work and how?
As you may know, I was not born in Canada. Like many scientists, I lived in several different cities during my academic training. I believe my migratory path imposed underappreciated impact on my social life. While exploring new cultures, new cities and getting to train and conduct research at world-leading institutes is an amazing experience, it comes at a price that is rarely mentioned. To exemplify, I left my hometown to do a PhD in a city that was 5 hours away. Soon after this move, old friendships in my hometown started to fade, while new contacts at the new destination were made. After another 4.5 years of doing a PhD thesis, I moved on to a postdoc position in the United States (far more than 5 hours away from home). Yet again, friendships and contacts faded as quick as they appeared.
I think that moving to new countries, while adventurous, can make life difficult for scientists. The trajectory that I and many others follow—going to different institutions for training and education—isn’t an ideal set up to create a solid home base. Such “nomadic” lifestyle certainly had and continues to have an impact on my life outside of work. Creating and sustaining new friendships and social networks may appear a simple task during grad school, yet seeing friendships fade across different destinations may be a sacrifice one eventually has to come to terms within this profession, especially when you settle outside of your home country. I love being in Canada, but seeing so many friendships fade is certainly one aspect that still impacts my life outside of work. The move to a new place that isn’t home is a great adventure; however, every new place eventually loses its charm and what remains are the friendships and your social network to create a space of comfort.
How have your perspectives on science and research been influenced by culture, community, and personal values?
I have learned that science requires persistence. Sometimes you have to simply be stubborn, like a ram that goes with its head against the gates. I'm a big fan of skateboarding. While I'm not very good at it, I like to watch skateboarders who push the boundaries of this sport. What I admire most about these athletes—and this may be very similar to scientists—is their ability to make unexpected observations and be creative in the use of these observations. Skateboarders explore their environment, the urban architecture, the obstacle and structures that surround them every day. They see stairs, handrails, gaps or blocks and take their regular use out of context and use them to perform a new trick. They hypothesize: “This handrail is a great obstacle for a switch frontside feeble grind.” Eventually, the trick (the experiment), is attempted and the skater falls and doesn’t land the trick. They stand up and try again, and again, and again, until they eventually realize how to best approach the obstacle, perform the trick, and secure it on camera (similar to finishing the experiment and publishing it). I greatly admire their creativity using unexpected objects and pairing this creativity with persistence, stubbornness and motivation to push boundaries and be innovative. Music, as another form art, requires motivation to master an instrument, and creativity and persistence to compose a song. I think the scientific process mirrors this very well: you learn a method, you master it, you perform it on an unknown, make a new observation and create a beautiful manuscript. There are a lot of parallels between science, art and sports.
How do you hope your work, inside and outside of academia, will impact society?
It is a big aspiration of mine to conduct research that has an impact on society. Ever since my time as an undergraduate student, I wondered why professors too often maintained their focus on the fundamental mechanisms and rarely dared to move their results into application. Creating knowledge through the process of discovery is the service of a scientist to society, but it doesn’t have to stop there. Could the results of your research be a diagnostic assay or a medication? In our lab, we conduct research with such translational impact and identified a serological marker in patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). This marker predicts the severity of the disease at the time of diagnosis and actively participates in the patho-mechanism of the disease. We identified how this serum marker works and engineered a medication to bypass the negative effects of this marker. The idea is to use a serological test to identify IBD patients with this marker, and at the same time, provide them with the best possible medication.
Our obligation as scientists is to create knowledge, but we should consider making this knowledge useful for society if possible.
If you had to summarize your journey in a song title, what would you call it?
The song “Wake the Dead” -by Comeback Kid, a band from Winnipeg, Manitoba has never failed to boost my motivation throughout my entire career. I even added the lyrics of the song text to my thesis on one of the front pages because I thought it beautifully summarized this entire journey. The song basically says learn to live with the decisions you take in life, don't live in the past, don't focus on the regrets but stand up and move on.
Bonus song, I wish to recommend “The Decline” -by NOFX. This band has made the longest and possibly best punk rock song on this planet at close to 19 minutes. At some point during my postdoc, I used to listen to this song instead of setting a timer when staining leukocytes with antibodies for flow cytometry. 1x “The Decline” for surface staining, 2x “The Decline” for intranuclear staining. The perfect song for incubation times that has to be on every immunologist’s playlist.