Mahmoud El-Maklizi
What is your name? Mahmoud
What is your role in the department? I am a 3rd year postdoc in Clint Robbins’ Lab. I wear a lot of hats currently, but the main project I've been working on is regulatory plasma cells – how they develop, how they function, and what regulates them.
What do you wish people outside of the scientific community would understand better about your work? Almost all my friends are outside the scientific community, and whenever I talk about things, I can sense that they either over-glorify it or mistake it for “your work is fun.” It is fun to an extent, but I also work like 12-16 hours a day and the work goes home with you. I feel they don't understand that it's not a regular 9-to-5. I also feel like a lot of people have no idea what goes into a paper. I mentioned to someone I know, when they were looking at a paper, they were like “Oh, this is a nice paper and this was just published.” And I said, “Yeah, just look at the bottom. There are three lines – published, reviewed, submitted. Just see the dates,” and they were like, "Oh, that took 4 years from submission!” And that’s not counting the years before submission.
What is something surprising about you that most people in our community don’t know? I paint. I've painted mostly when I was younger, between 13 and 18 and then I stopped and focussed on studying and working. My favourite is pencil, charcoal, and ink. I don't know why, but it ironically has more life than colour. I think it's because I like it more, so it shows that I'm putting in more. In undergrad, I had invertebrate zoology and botany classes where you draw the organisms you were studying. I had a book of species that I drew and shaded myself that I still have back home somewhere. I’m trying to pick it back up, but I’m bit of a workaholic.
How have your perspectives on science and research been influenced by culture, community, and personal values? My family is very, very close. So, for me, whenever I'm in the lab, I behave in a similar way. If someone’s feeling bad, I feel bad. For me, I cannot work unless I am like that with people. Especially now as a postdoc, as you get closer to finishing, you’re in the position of mentoring grad students and working alongside them, and they rely on you for guidance and supervision. If the PI is busy writing grants and can't think of the experiments’ the students are planning at the moment, the students’ brainstorm with me and I go through all the details with them. Being in that position for the students around me has been influenced by how I was with my family. If you need anything, if you're not feeling good today, let me know, and I'll take over where I can, regardless of the circumstances.
It's definitely the family dynamic that I was in; everyone raises you. Having lived here completely by myself for 11+ years now, I understand the idea that you can easily feel alone. When I was in Cindy’s lab, the postdoc that taught me at the beginning – I still talk to him – he was a really good guidance for me. I want to be like that for someone, where if they feel like they're in a tough spot, they can talk to me. And grad school is intense. What we do is intense, but it's also supposed to be fun. It makes sense why you would sometimes forget about it being fun because it's also a job. I know, having been a student, it's really easy to focus on the negatives. I feel it's also partially the responsibility of the older people in the lab, whether that’s the PI or the postdoc, to say, “I've been through it. You didn’t find exactly what you wanted, but this worked, and this worked. You did this well. You know how to do this. Four things worked well, one thing not so much. It's objectively good.”
You also learn that PIs are human. A lot of times when you're a student at the beginning, you don’t necessarily see what the other end looks like for the PI. When you're a postdoc, it's an interesting thing where not long ago you were a student, but now you're also a lot closer with the PI. You see the grants, you start to see that they're people – they’re not perfect. As a postdoc, you get to see that. You start to learn, these are things that I would like to emulate in the future, and these are things that I would like to do better in the future.
