The year 2019 was a pretty turbulent year for me, but something great that came out of it was my friendship with Vira.
Vira Iefremova is a research fellow and a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of Reconstructive Neurobiology in Bonn. I have never been to Bonn, so this is not how we met. The wonders of social media brought us together and we started interacting on Twitter, where I soon learned she works for Pint of Science Germany in western Germany and I was still the Berlin city manager at the time.
In December we finally met up in Berlin for the first time, as she was in the city visiting friends and it was an immediate match. Talking to her made me feel like we have been friends forever and we shared many stories about our passion for elevating women in science and the work that we do.
Vira’s work is incredibly cool and I asked her so many questions that day, which also continued the next few times we would meet. Her research combines advances in stem cell biology, molecular biomedicine, and neuroscience for a better understanding of human brain development. As a stem cell biologist, she is reprogramming human skin or blood cells to their undefined (almost embryo-like stage) and later on using them to generate 3D cultures. Quite often, these 3D cultures are also being called “mini-brains.” And Vira is using them to study how the grey matter of the human brain develops and what might happen when some genes, involved in this process, are mutated. During our discussion, we’ll find out whether “mini-brain” in the petri dish is fiction, exaggeration, or reality.
WOW – am I right? 🤯
A while ago I published an interview I did with my good friend Dr. Femke Holwerda and it got a lot of great feedback, so I decided to continue the series. I ask women in science that I admire and work with questions about their view on the position of women in their field.
Here is Vira’s interview:
When did your interest in science begin? What is your field of study?
As long as I can remember, I was really curious about caleidoscope of all possible things: starting from the dinosaurs (still a HUGE Tyrannosaurus rex fan:) and ending up with the fascination how all the parts of our body could work altogether to enable us of doing and feeling so many different things. But once I got serious about becoming a scientist, I never gave a second thought what exactly I would like to study. The answer was crystal clear to me – I want to become a neuroscientist.
To this day, the human brain is the most exciting and complicated thing in a known universe to me, ironically enough, this very brain makes me think so. From my point of view, our brain is what makes us human, and discovering its mysteries is one of the coolest jobs I could imagine.
What was it like to be a woman studying your field? Did you feel supported and challenged in a positive way? Did you have a network of people to reach out to?
Originally, I’m from the Ukraine, so my Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees were finished in Kyiv.
To be honest, in both my BSc and MSc programs (I studied cell biology and developmental biology) there were more women in the classes. Nevertheless, there were male lecturers which thought it is appropriate to joke about how “women aren’t capable of becoming real scientists (whatever this means)” in the seminar room or lecture hall filled with female students. This always shook me to my core… I simply couldn’t comprehend how this is acceptable and, more importantly, why so many people found this, so-called “jokes”, appropriate and funny. How was this even allowed?
Luckily, I’ve had a fantastic supervisor who always taught me to think outside the box, stay curious about scientific questions that excite me and never doubt my value as a person and as a scientist. Prof. Nataliia Skrypnyk was truly my role model, and I will always be enormously thankful to her! I honestly do not know how it would have been for me, if there wouldn’t have been someone to counteract all the negative talk by certain male teachers.
So, I guess it was a combination of both positive and negative examples of how one could treat early-career scientists in the STEM field. Of course, this is extremely important to have a supportive supervisor, but (and it might sound cheesy or cliché) I still do believe that we should be the change we want to see! So, it is very inspiring to see how lately so many early-career researches do not want to cope with old, often toxic, academic environment and initiating long-overdue changes in a way we treat one another. And now, that I have become a supervisor and mentor for undergraduate students myself, I’m trying my best to be the same supportive and encouraging supervisor.
Why do you think so many girls and women are still underrepresented in our area and professional field?
I think we should tackle this problem from two different angles: first, it’s when we have to make the scientific community more inclusive and diverse, and not just on a paper or a webpage from the university or institute, but for real. We need to show a positive example and address toxic traits of modern academia. This also includes paying attention to, and calling out, something more insidious, like microaggressions. Microaggressions create a hostile, derogatory, and negative environment in the workspace and usually target a person because they belong to a stigmatised group. This includes POC and Black scientists and women in science. Additionally, battling everyday sexism in the lab, as well as, advocating for more possibilities for achieving life/work balance for those researches who would like to have a family that they do not have to choose between doing science or taking care of children, show them that they can have both. We push out so many passionate and intelligent scientists by making their path extremely difficult for them.
And the second perspective is when girls cannot pursue an academic career or even simply finish high school in some countries. In this case, I think each of us could support various organisations, foundations (e.g., “Malala Fund“) that provide help for girls to fulfil their basic and later on, more advanced degrees, by dedicating our time and energy or, if possible, some amount of money. And here I would like to quote Melinda Gates wrote that in her book “The moment of lift“: when you lift up women, you lift up humanity. And I genuinely believe in that.
Besides Pint of Science in Bonn, you are involved in many interesting science communication project. You started the Bonn 500 Women Scientists pod – What were the challenges, why did you want to organise something like this? Did you have help from someone?
I learned about 500 Women Scientists from the article in Nature, and my first thought was: how cool is that! Then I checked the webpage and found out that there wasn’t one, so I decided to start my own. I’m a now actually the German regional coordinator, which makes me extremely proud. In June 2020 we had our first anniversary of the Bonn’s pod.
Since I joined 500 Women Scientists I once again realised how strong and powerful women can be when they united. I got to know a lot of absolutely fabulous women in STEM, we organised one big climate teach-in event and a lot of getting together meetings to discuss future plans. You really get to know each other very well when you plan big chances and events together. It’s so inspiring and exciting to see how different we all are, coming from all walks in life and various backgrounds but still having so much in common.
What would you tell a little girl about the challenges and struggles (but also the positive things) in joining this path a similar path to yours?
I would tell her something similar to what my mom told me when I was little: “To do any job exceptionally good is difficult, so find yourself something which excites you, gives you goose bumps, and sparkle in the eyes. Always believe in yourself, remember you’re capable of achieving anything, and never let anyone make you think you are not good enough to reach your goals!”
_________
Thank you for taking your time to join me for the interview, Vira!
If you want to learn more about Vira and her work, join us for the next digital Kaffeeklatsch mit Wissenschaft. In order to contain the Coronavirus as effectively as possible, the MfN Berlin exhibition will be closed, with no events taking place for quite a while. With For Nature digital, the museum with its collection of 30 million objects can be experienced online in order to let you get inspired by nature and let you immerse into our research.
As part of this, we are also experimenting with new formats and expanding our digital offering. Kaffeeklatsch has also become part of this digital program and will stream Vira’s talk for the vent on Zoom and Youtube.
More about this here and here.
Read more about Vira:
1 Million Women Scientists
STEM is Fem
Stem Cell Network NRW
Follow Vira here:
Watch us here:
