December 15, 2023 • 28 mins
Ever wondered about the intricate connection between human, animal, plant, and environmental health? Join us as Dr. Shannan Rossi, an associate professor in the Department of Pathology at UTMB, illuminates this fascinating concept known as 'One Health'. Dr. Rossi enchants us with her research on developing countermeasures for mosquito-borne viruses, specifically the Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus. She makes a compelling case for the continuous research and preparedness necessary for potential future outbreaks, underscoring the cyclical nature of such occurrences and the challenges of garnering interest and funding during quieter periods.
We then deeply dive into the world of sexually transmitted viruses, particularly those transmitted by mosquitoes. Dr. Rossi shares her captivating journey into this field, shedding light on the unique challenges of working with semen samples and detecting viral infections. She stresses the importance of diversity in science, opening up about her experiences as a female scientist. Furthermore, she shares her unique experience of juggling an MBA with her scientific pursuits, revealing the oft-ignored business aspect of science. We also discuss the crucial role of science in society, particularly amid a pandemic. So, join us for a conversation filled with stories of tenacity, curiosity, and the pivotal role of effective communication in funding vital research.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
This is a podcast about one health the idea that
the health of humans, animals,plants and the environment that
we all share are intrinsicallylinked.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Coming to you from the University of Texas Medical
Branch in the Galveston NationalLaboratory.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
This is infectious science.
We're enthusiasm for science.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
This is contagious, dr Sweetenham.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Hi, good to see you again, good to see you too.
Matt.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
All right.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Now we know who we are, yeah, so it's good to see
you back in the podcast room.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah, it's been a little while.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
It has, and we are so lucky today because we are
joined by a friend, a colleague,dr Shannon Rossi.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Hello Hi.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
From our department of pathology and associate
professor and recently mintedfive six months ago MBA.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
I know right.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
PhD, MBA those are not always things we hear listed
together.
We're going to get into that.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
We're going to talk about it, but thanks for coming.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Oh, thanks for having me.
It's fun to be in the closet.
Yeah, we are excited to haveyou here.
We're excited to get to explorea little bit about your life
and your career and some of thescience that you do.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Can I just say I'm especially excited to have you
here because when I firststarted at UTMB, my very first
rotation, Shannon, was actuallya postdoc in the lab.
So some of your researchinterests and the research
interests of some of the otherpeople in the lab at that time
were really really fundamentalin me forming my own research
interest.
So I'm excited to have you heretoday.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Oh, that's really sweet to hear.
I still have your lab notebookif you want to back.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Oh, now I don't, you can keep that.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
I'm going to keep that in mind for the next few
days.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
That's going to fetch a price on the open market?
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I hope not Awesome.
Well, shannon, tell us a littlebit about you.
Know what you're doing hereright now?
What are you doing at UTMB?
What's?
Speaker 3 (02:03):
your work all about?
Yeah, so my lab has two basicprojects.
The first is we're interestedin creating countermeasures for
viruses that are transmitted bymosquitoes, so these are viruses
like traditionally.
I've studied what's not a virus.
This isn't something I do now,but I do study a cousin of her
Zika virus and alpha viruses.
Yeah, we remember that.
(02:25):
Yeah, 2016 was a fun year for alot of us, yeah.
And then there's another viruscalled Venezuelan equine
encephalitis virus and we do acouple of antiviral studies to
try to figure out how do wecombat that infection once it
sets in.
That's something you don'treally hear a lot about, but
people who grew up in the 70s,the 80s especially those people
(02:46):
that would live in Texas, up anddown the Mexico border with
Texas, especially around 1971,they would have been very
familiar with this.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Right, Because there were pretty large outbreaks of
Venezuelan equine encephalitisat that time.
Right.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Yeah, to the point where ranchers really got
concerned, and some of thevaccine work that we've done is
directly stemmed from thoseepidemics.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
It's been pretty quiet.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
We really haven't heard much from the 90s Well
correct me if I'm wrong, butit's one of the viruses I always
talk about insect-bornepathogens is causing epidemics
on a cycle like with West Nile.
It's a 10-year cycle, like8-12-year cycle, but with V,
with Venezuelan equineencephalitis, it's a longer
cycle, right?
It's like more of like the15-20-year cycle, Is that right?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Sort of more or less, and if you look at it that way,
we're certainly due for one.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Right, because the last one would have been the one
in Peru which was in the 2000sright.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Around there.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
I think there was some 2005 or 2006 or something
right.
Yeah, there was a little bit ofactivity in Mexico, I think
last year or the year before,but nothing that really took off
to an international concern.
But you're in the field, yourears perk up and say, wait,
what's going on?
Yeah, so it's something that'salways on our radar but it
doesn't really reach thenational levels that people
(04:03):
certainly with Zika they werevery familiar about.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
A lot of times when we have things like COVID going
on, a lot of other things getmissed and things that normally
would catch national attention.
Kind of our ability to absorbthat information.
We just don't have thetolerance for it or the drive to
listen to whatever minoroutbreaks are happening, because
they're so minor in relation toCOVID.
(04:27):
But if COVID wasn't there wewould have been thinking they
were much bigger maybe.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Yeah, you can certainly hit virus fatigue
Exactly.
Remember, right after COVIDcertainly we were all tired.
We were tired For sure.
Then you started hearing aboutmonkeypox.
You go oh my God, what is this?
We can't do this again.
We just finished one.
Can we breathe a little?
Right, there's always somethingthat pops up on the radar.
You search, you'll find.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah, I had a conversation with a colleague
who works mostly in East Africawhen the Sudan virus cases were
cropping up in Uganda.
She started to get all thesequestions about it and she said
you know, guys, I have time inmy life for one pandemic.
You're right, I think there'sthat virus fatigue.
But it's really cool that yourlab is working on stuff that
(05:11):
right now is not active but weknow could become active again.
Right, how do you keep thatnarrative going?
Because I think that's one ofthose big challenges in science
is that we tend to be veryreactive.
All the money, all the funding,all the interest comes like when
there's a pandemic or there'san outbreak and we really need
to do something about it.
But in the intervening period,one of the reasons I think we've
(05:31):
, at least around here, donepretty well is because we have
experts like yourself and otherswho have been working on some
of these viruses even during thequiet times.
So how do you maintain thatenergy and keep that in the eyes
of, especially, funders?
How do you write that narrativethat this is still important?
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, and it can be a bit of a tricky balance.
Right, because you don't wantto be reactionary, you don't
want to continue to fan theflames per se just to increase
the importance of our personalresearch.
But a lot of time, unless theresearch is done before it
becomes really criticallyimportant, then we're caught
flat-footed.
So like, for example, when Zikahit in 2016,.
(06:08):
We had these viruses that weresitting around in vials, in the
freezer, but there was no realimpetus for us to need to study
it because it hadn't really doneanything of interest to people
that pay the bills and arefunders.
So then, when the epidemic hit,they said how is it possible
that you know almost nothingabout this virus?
And they said well, we know alittle bit of something, but
(06:30):
unless the funding is there andthe drive like you've identified
, matt is there, it can be verydifficult.
So oftentimes you will take avirus that you really are
interested in and you will juststudy it and the answers that
you get to questions that youhave will drive the next set of
questions and you'll just keepgoing and going until you amass
a body of knowledge that otherpeople in the field can ping
(06:52):
themselves off of, take it runwith it and you never know where
your research is going to endup, who is going to be able to
benefit from it Years and yearsdown the line.
Some of the initial studies thatwere done with Zika were done
back in the 50s.
So we, as researchers in 2016,immediately went to the research
and said, oh my God, what'salready been done.
We start pulling things up thatwere done 60, 70 years prior
(07:15):
and said, oh, this is fantastic,we don't have to start from
scratch.
So I think keeping this in mindalso can be very important.
Sometimes, also, the viruses westudy can be used as surrogates
for other viruses.
So just because you havestudied, let's say, zika in
particular, that doesn't meanthat there aren't lessons that
could be applied to otherviruses that other people are
(07:35):
interested in really studyingand understanding the diseases
that they can cause Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, before we push the record button, we were
talking and you were saying somereally interesting stuff about
places where the viruses couldhide and your interest in that,
and I found that veryinteresting because I think
people who are out there may notrealize that if you have a
respiratory virus or you have avector-borne disease virus like
a Zika or a Dengue or whateversometimes they can infect other
(08:02):
parts of the body or they canfind areas where the immune
system is not quite as robustand that can have effects on
whether the virus can actuallykeep spreading after they're no
longer symptomatic.
Can you say a few things aboutthat and maybe say whether I'm
wrong?
Speaker 2 (08:17):
about how I'm describing it because I might be
.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
No, you're absolutely right.
So the second part of what mylab does is we're interested in
understanding how viruses cancause testicular infection.
Thank you, Zika.
I didn't start off my careerwanting to go into this field in
particular but this is anexample of where the science
will take you, and you'll startto amass data and, before you
know it, this is the field ofresearch you find yourself in,
(08:44):
and it just becomes veryinteresting.
So one thing we found duringthe Zika epidemic is we noticed
that people who were travelingfrom the sites of the epidemic
back to countries where therewas no epidemic, there was
transmission occurring, which isweird If you don't have the
mosquitoes.
We thought there could be notransmission of Zika.
Well, the more curious you stayand the more questions you ask,
(09:08):
the more information you'regoing to amass.
And so we started going backinto the literature and turns
out there was a CDC researcherthat had kind of already been
experiencing this.
I'm not going to shout out who,but there's a very interesting
story about this too.
He was doing some research inSenegal, came down with the
disease, came back, gave it tohis wife Now there were no
(09:32):
mosquitoes in Colorado at thistime that could vector Zika, but
he hadn't been with his wifefor a while.
And so what happens when twopeople love each other?
You can see where this is goingright.
So it's transmission.
How to have occurred somehow?
So they looked at all of thepossible body fluids.
So you consider saliva, tear,sweat, semen came up and there
(09:53):
was the report and I think CNNwas talking about this for a
while too where Zika couldpossibly be sexually transmitted
.
When you think about virusesthat are transmitted by
mosquitoes, sexual transmissionis a weird one that doesn't come
up on your radar.
And then you're studying thisbecause it's very interesting.
It's not something that'ssupposed to happen, which of
(10:13):
course means, oh, we have tostudy this.
We have to figure out what'sgoing on here, you start to pull
back the curtain and yourealize wow, it's not just Zika
that does this.
So, like HIV, mumps, Marburg,Ebola a whole litany of
infectious diseases have thecapability to go to the testes.
So even though we study Zika, alot of the lessons that we're
(10:35):
learning here can be applied toother viruses as well.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Right, and from a technical standpoint.
I've heard that it's reallyhard to do any studies involving
semen because it's reallycytotoxic.
It's a really hard fluid towork with.
Is that true or am I just so?
Speaker 3 (10:50):
I haven't had very much experience working with
those types of samples.
Most of what we do is smallanimal research to understand
how does the virus get from,let's say, the side of a
mosquito bite to the testes inorder to be sexually transmitted
or cause damage.
But you bring up a veryinteresting point what is the
true burden of sexualtransmission for a virus like
(11:12):
Zika?
The answer is we don't know.
We don't know because thosesamples really don't exist.
During the epidemic and let'ssay the SARS, covid pandemic,
people kind of in survival mode.
They're not really thinkingabout these scientific questions
if it doesn't relate to theirability to just get by.
So oftentimes we don't have thesamples that are collected
(11:33):
during these periods ofepidemics and pandemics to be
able to study later that.
And oftentimes these are notlethal diseases that we're
studying, so biopsies usuallyaren't available.
So translating what we see,let's say, in a small mouse
model which is one of the bestmodels we have, to be able to
study this to something that'sclinically relevant sometimes
(11:56):
can be a challenge.
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
I've heard another investigator who was doing semen
studies and the only reason Ibrought it up is because they
said it was really hard todetect it at all in semen, just
because there's so manyproteases that will destroy the
cells that you're working with.
So you're trying to look forevidence of virus infection, but
the sample itself is killingthe cells, so it just makes it a
little bit more difficult towork with.
(12:19):
So even if you do have theclinical samples, it can still
be really challenging to get theanswer to the question you're
asking, just because it's notalways as easy as collecting
samples.
Yeah, there's technicalchallenges.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
So what do you look for in the sample that you
receive?
So normally we'll receive asample and we'll put it onto
like a Vero cell monolayer andlook for evidence of viral
infection.
This way, sometimes it might beeasier just to take that sample
and pop open everything that'sin it and look for evidence of
the nucleic acid of the virus.
Like with RT-PCR or somethinglike this.
(12:52):
They measure two very differentthings Exactly, but sometimes
it's easier to detect one thanthe other, right for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
There's probably strengths and limitations to
both approach.
There always is Yep.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
I love it.
I found that really interesting.
I think we'll get back intosome of the day-to-day and the
day-in-life type stuff.
What kind of got you into allthis, into this world of
virology, of science?
We were talking a little bitbeforehand how desperately we
need more women representationscience, especially in
leadership positions.
Now you have an MBA, so thatmeans you know everything there
(13:23):
is to know about business.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
That's exactly what that means.
But can you say a little bit?
Speaker 1 (13:28):
of.
Can you talk a little bit aboutkind of your origin story and
what kind of got you into allthis work?
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Yeah, but let me turn it around.
When I was, let's say, six,what do you think I wanted to be
when I grew up?
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Let's see, I'm going to date myself.
I was going to say, like MightyMouse, I'm not that old.
That's a good one, mighty Mouse.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
I mean you're close.
No, no guesses, Daniel.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
I think I actually know your story, so I can't
really guess.
Was it a tooth fairy?
I?
Speaker 3 (13:54):
don't want to put magic in it.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
It was a tooth fairy.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
I love it.
I was convinced when I wasreally young Because I had a
great imagination that I wasgoing to be the tooth fairy when
I grew up and it was becauseyou thought there could be viral
reservoirs and teeth.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Oh yeah, I had that for thought.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Obviously.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Now she was magical and she got to fly and I just
really wanted to fly when I wasyoung, which makes zero sense.
I think it makes perfect sense.
I know it's still a lot of fun.
But I kind of fell into scienceby attrition.
I always just like science andI knew I was going to end up
somewhere in the sciences.
It was a school teacher that Ihad.
She pushed us really hard.
(14:31):
It was an AP biology class andI think we were in the 10th
grade, 10th or 11th, one of thetwo and it was just really
interesting the things that wewould talk about in class.
I remember thinking for thefirst time about the immune
response and the things that animmune response has to do to
keep you healthy.
Yeah, I'm thinking how the helldoes the cell know how to do
this?
It has no brain.
(14:52):
This is really interesting.
Oh my God, wait, wait, wait.
There's more than one kind ofimmune cell and my teenage mind
was absolutely blown.
So I thought I was going to dosomething with this and it
wasn't until I took aninternship over the summer I
think it was between my freshmanand junior year of college.
I did an internship at WyethErst, which was in my hometown
(15:14):
of Pearl River, new York, and itwas for a vaccine branch of
their pharmaceutical company.
We were working on Venezuelanequine encephalitis virus
vectors.
That's kind of where that wholething started.
Yeah, and it just was reallyinteresting.
The virus work.
Yeah, well, I guess I can dothis.
So I tried it on for a coupleof months and it just stuck.
(15:38):
So I've been here ever sinceand it's been a fun ride.
I tried out genetics for alittle while microbiology, like
I flirted with doing bacterialwork, but now a virus is.
They got my bum apart, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
I'm stuck.
That's so funny because I wentinto science because of my AP
biology teacher, so it's sofunny how these early influences
yeah.
Do teachers really know thatthey have such a big impact?
I don't know.
I hope so.
I hope they do?
Speaker 3 (16:04):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Why don't you tell us , Dr Sweetenham?
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Professor, yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Do you're having an impact?
Speaker 2 (16:10):
With great power.
With great power, it becomesgreat responsibility, it's true.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I mean, I think you don't always know when you're
impacting someone, but sometimesit's just showing up and being
interested yourself.
Do you think you bring that now?
You have young learners in yourlab, you have people coming in
and doing internships with you.
Is that kind of something thatyou try to bring?
Speaker 3 (16:27):
I try to.
You would have to ask them ifI'm successful.
I don't want to.
That's the next episode.
I rise them right and staytuned.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
And we've got some of them right behind the curtain.
I try.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
I think to instill on wonder in someone is really
important, especially if you'regoing to stay in this career for
the long haul.
Right, because it can be veryarduous.
I have so many notebooks in myoffice that are full of data,
most of which are null data.
Some of the greatestcharacteristics you can be as a
scientist include curious andpersistent, because a lot of
(17:02):
what we do doesn't work and youhave to continue to think about
things, try things out, andfailure is a great teacher.
So if you're really not biginto failing, you either get
used to it or you maybe go dosomething else.
So I try to.
When I talk to, young studentssay it is one of the coolest
things in the entire world tosee something for the first time
(17:25):
as a person that no one else inthe world has ever seen.
Right, that is really amazing.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah, and I love what you said about cultivating awe
in students, because there'sthis really interesting.
She said was it a physicist oran astronomer?
But her name was Rebecca Elsonand she passed away kind of
recently, but she was also apoet and she wrote about exactly
all the things you're talkingabout is the scientist's
responsibility to honor awe andabout the significance of
(17:50):
failure in our lives asscientists and how it's a place
of inspiration and notdiscouragement.
Yeah, that's an incredible wayof looking at it.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
I think you have to be in that right ecosystem where
people appreciate that actuallyfailure is part of the process,
and we're going to just kind oflet you keep doing it, work
hard, you're on the right path,you're doing the right kind of
question.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yeah, try not to fail the same way twice.
Maybe you didn't learn what youwere supposed to do the first
time.
But failure is such an integralpart of the learning process
that if it wasn't for failure,it wouldn't teach you what you
are not doing correctly or whatyou're not looking at in the
right way, or maybe it isexactly where you're supposed to
be.
You're just looking at it fromthe wrong angle, right?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Yeah, if you decide you're going to do science,
you're now doing all this reallyreally cool work, so your day
to day not necessarily like well.
First I respond to emails.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
It does.
It starts at 5 am.
Yeah, starts with emails.
It starts with emails.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
But can you say a little bit about some of the
maybe active work that you have,maybe some recent experience
you've had, either with successor failure?
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Well, huge success is just finishing up the MBA.
Congrats, by the way, thank you.
Speaking of tenacity, I thinkit's important going back to the
curiosity, keep remainingcurious, but then realize that
you're never going to stoplearning Right, and with
learning does come a lot ofthose failures, but sometimes a
good success and a good win willkeep you sustained for a long
(19:15):
time.
It's been a while since I'vedone an actual experiment in the
lab.
This is something that I reallywant to get back into doing,
because I do miss for lack of abetter way to put it moving
pipettes around and being ableto design an experiment, see it
all the way through and thengather the results and the data
at the end of it.
Now I have a very active programand the people that work
(19:36):
alongside with me in my lab.
They are able to do this, soI'm living vicariously through
them.
Yeah, and it is one of the mostsatisfying things again when
they come up and say, oh my God,look what I found.
Right, that's amazing.
But I think when the successhas come, you take a hold of
them, because sometimes theydon't come as often as you want
them to.
Yeah for sure.
(19:57):
So celebrate it whenever you doget a chance.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
You and I were talking at some point when you
were in your MBA and oh yeah,exactly those dark days Was I
tired and surly.
You were just tired, yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
You were never, surly .
Speaker 1 (20:13):
But one of the things you were mentioning was how
stimulating it was to belearning alongside different
people.
Yeah, you were always kind ofincubated in the science
environment and then now you'rewith some business people or
people who had worked inmarketing or they worked, you
know, they're just in a verydifferent sector.
Their way of looking at theworld was very different.
And can you say a little bitabout what the process of
(20:33):
studying this MBA because again,this was your curiosity, right
you can maybe tell us a littleabout what made you want to do
that and then what some of yourobservations were about being
part of that learningenvironment?
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Yeah, and if I don't hit all of the answers to your
questions, just remind me ofthem.
But my parents when I wasyounger really instilled in me
this love of learning, thisdeep-seated curiosity and the
expectation that if you have it,you're going to seek it out.
So they were always veryencouraging of go ahead and take
all those AP classes and if youget a, b, it's okay because you
(21:06):
tried.
You didn't settle for the thingthat was the easier A.
You were striving, you wereconstantly pushing yourself and
you're always trying to makeyourself in that realm of being
a little bit uncomfortablebecause that's where the growth
occurs?
Yeah, absolutely.
It can be very easy for us,especially when we start to get
older, to sit back on the thingsthat we're very comfortable
(21:27):
with, like, oh, I've done plaqueassays, I don't need to learn
this new technique.
A plaque assay will workcompletely fine and I'm just
going to do this until I retireor whatever.
And so part of that was thereason I decided to get the MBA
to challenge myself, to makesure that I still had the
capacity to want the drive tolearn something completely
(21:47):
different.
But also, the more I started tothink about it, the more I
realized science is a business.
When I was younger like gradschool days back in the day I
thought this was very altruistic.
If you had a really goodquestion, of course you were
going to be able to get fundingfor it.
Of course somebody was going tobe interested in it, because
it's science, it's the pursuitof this knowledge that has
(22:10):
nothing to do with our thoughtsor feelings.
So it was noble and it was pureand you should be able to study
it for studying its sake.
Well, the real world isn'tquite like that, and someone's
going to have to pay the billsat the end of the day.
I think the first lesson Ireally learned about this was
when I was a graduate studentstudying how to make a vaccine
against West Nile virus, and atthat point it was maybe 2006,
(22:35):
2007.
So we were kind of right offthe heels of it emerging in
North America in 1999.
And we were still tracking itevery year.
It was, first and foremost, ona lot of people's minds.
You go up to an average personon the street and said I study
West Nile.
They were, oh, I know what thatis.
That's important.
Why don't we have a vaccine?
Great question why don't wehave a vaccine?
Well, because maybe themarket's not quite there for it.
(22:56):
So once you start to thenunderstand that science isn't
necessarily as noble of pursuitas I thought it was and that
there's going to be moneyinvolved, then that brings the
business aspect into it.
So how is it that you cancommunicate your idea to be able
to get money to study the otherthings that we need to study
because they are of great humanimportance?
(23:17):
I thought was something that Ineeded to augment my learning
about, and I did get to meet alot of really interesting people
as part of my MBA class,because some of them were MDs,
some of them were marketers.
There were a couple of CPAs anda lot of them were from oil and
gas, because we are situatedright next to Houston, texas.
So it was very good to remindmyself that I don't have to sit
(23:39):
in my little micro chasm ofscience all the time.
There's an entire world ofpeople out there that have
different ways of thinking,different interactions with
science.
I'm sure that we had somepeople and I went through during
COVID.
They were like, oh, covidvaccine, I don't know about that
, and I'm over here like, oh,okay, now we're in the realm of
(24:00):
like science and policy andeverything that I'd never
thought I was going to have tobecome involved in.
But I'm happy for theseconversations because science
can't be performed in a vacuum.
Only some of the science we dois tax funded, so we are
beholden to the people thatultimately pay the bills, right.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
That's such a great answer.
What an adventure.
What a very cool person you are.
We're really lucky that you'rehere and that you're doing the
work that you're doing and thatyou are maintaining an energy
and a dedication to this fieldwhich I think everybody in the
world now knows what a virus is,no matter what.
They know what a vaccine is,and now we need folks like
(24:39):
yourself more than ever.
So I think that's really great.
I've really enjoyed getting totalk to you.
Do you have any final thoughts,like for anybody who might be
on the fence about their career,out there, thinking about what
they want to do in their lifeand what they might want to
bring into the world, any adviceor guidance from Dr Shannon
Rossi?
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Oh, I don't know if I'm the best person to give any
life advice, but I think if youfind what you're good at, what
the world needs and what yourpassion is, you can probably
make a really good, fulfillingliving from it.
If science is something thatyou are interested in, then
there are a couple of thingsthat you can do to set yourself
up for future success.
(25:17):
When I was younger, I thoughtscientists.
They stayed at the bench, theywore pretty lab coats, they
worked in the dark and theymoved beakers of colorful liquid
back and forth, because this iskind of what popular media
shows us scientists do.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
That sounds exactly right.
That's accurate right.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Yeah yeah, yeah, with the mood lighting and
everything else all the time,our labs are very well lit.
One thing I didn't appreciatewas how much communication there
would be in science.
Right, because the stereotypeof a scientist is this loner,
geeky person that just kind ofis by themselves doing science.
Yeah, but yet here we are inthe podcast closet, talking
(25:53):
about how I got to where I am.
You guys have been doing thisfor how many episodes now?
Many, much.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
A lot.
Ten.
Our producer has said ten.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
So you're seasoned pros at this point.
Why did you start off doingthis Me, I mean in general
because communication isimportant, right, right, right,
right yeah.
So the ability to articulateyour thoughts both in written
word but also in speech isreally important.
One of the most critical thingsI think I did and now looking
(26:22):
back in retrospect I'm surprised.
I had the forethought to do it,but it sounds really good when
I tell it in the story Is incollege I decided each semester
I was going to do something thatsucked and something that was
fun.
So for fun, I took beekeepingand I love it and I hope to
eventually get back a high onbees one day.
The thing that sucked was oralspeech and debate.
(26:43):
Oh my god, it was sonerve-wracking.
But the return on being able todo that back when I had the
ability to make a bunch ofmistakes and it didn't really
impact my career so I couldscrew up as much as I could and
got the comfort to sit in frontof a crowd and just say words it
was really, really valuable.
(27:05):
There's a lot of writing,there's a lot of talking and the
better you can be at this earlyon, the easier it's going to be
for you later.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Yeah, definitely.
I think that's great advice.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Yeah, that, and travel.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
A lot of travel, a lot of travel, yeah it is all
about the teams.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
It's all about the communication.
That was great messages andsometimes my house.
We've had a recurrent beeinfestation, so next time we
have to bring the guys over toexcavate the bees, then I'm just
going to call them and say, hey, I got a place, you can bring
them.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Yeah, shannon's house , shannon's house, the cats are
going to be thrilled Awesome.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Well, this has been great.
Any thoughts from you?
Like the sweet them.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I think we're good to go Say thank you so much for
being here.
Well, thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
This has been fun.
Shannon, thank you so much forspending some time with us.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Thank you both, bye.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
So we'll see you next time for a new episode, and in
the meantime, stay happy stayhealthy, stay interested.
This is a podcast about one health the idea that
the health of humans, animals,plants and the environment that
we all share are intrinsicallylinked.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Coming to you from the University of Texas Medical
Branch in the Galveston NationalLaboratory.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
This is infectious science.
We're enthusiasm for science.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
This is contagious, dr Sweetenham.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Hi, good to see you again, good to see you too.
Matt.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
All right.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Now we know who we are, yeah, so it's good to see
you back in the podcast room.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah, it's been a little while.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
It has, and we are so lucky today because we are
joined by a friend, a colleague,dr Shannon Rossi.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Hello Hi.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
From our department of pathology and associate
professor and recently mintedfive six months ago MBA.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
I know right.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
PhD, MBA those are not always things we hear listed
together.
We're going to get into that.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
We're going to talk about it, but thanks for coming.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Oh, thanks for having me.
It's fun to be in the closet.
Yeah, we are excited to haveyou here.
We're excited to get to explorea little bit about your life
and your career and some of thescience that you do.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Can I just say I'm especially excited to have you
here because when I firststarted at UTMB, my very first
rotation, Shannon, was actuallya postdoc in the lab.
So some of your researchinterests and the research
interests of some of the otherpeople in the lab at that time
were really really fundamentalin me forming my own research
interest.
So I'm excited to have you heretoday.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Oh, that's really sweet to hear.
I still have your lab notebookif you want to back.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Oh, now I don't, you can keep that.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
I'm going to keep that in mind for the next few
days.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
That's going to fetch a price on the open market?
Speaker 1 (01:57):
I hope not Awesome.
Well, shannon, tell us a littlebit about you.
Know what you're doing hereright now?
What are you doing at UTMB?
What's?
Speaker 3 (02:03):
your work all about?
Yeah, so my lab has two basicprojects.
The first is we're interestedin creating countermeasures for
viruses that are transmitted bymosquitoes, so these are viruses
like traditionally.
I've studied what's not a virus.
This isn't something I do now,but I do study a cousin of her
Zika virus and alpha viruses.
Yeah, we remember that.
(02:25):
Yeah, 2016 was a fun year for alot of us, yeah.
And then there's another viruscalled Venezuelan equine
encephalitis virus and we do acouple of antiviral studies to
try to figure out how do wecombat that infection once it
sets in.
That's something you don'treally hear a lot about, but
people who grew up in the 70s,the 80s especially those people
(02:46):
that would live in Texas, up anddown the Mexico border with
Texas, especially around 1971,they would have been very
familiar with this.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Right, Because there were pretty large outbreaks of
Venezuelan equine encephalitisat that time.
Right.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Yeah, to the point where ranchers really got
concerned, and some of thevaccine work that we've done is
directly stemmed from thoseepidemics.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
It's been pretty quiet.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
We really haven't heard much from the 90s Well
correct me if I'm wrong, butit's one of the viruses I always
talk about insect-bornepathogens is causing epidemics
on a cycle like with West Nile.
It's a 10-year cycle, like8-12-year cycle, but with V,
with Venezuelan equineencephalitis, it's a longer
cycle, right?
It's like more of like the15-20-year cycle, Is that right?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Sort of more or less, and if you look at it that way,
we're certainly due for one.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Right, because the last one would have been the one
in Peru which was in the 2000sright.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Around there.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
I think there was some 2005 or 2006 or something
right.
Yeah, there was a little bit ofactivity in Mexico, I think
last year or the year before,but nothing that really took off
to an international concern.
But you're in the field, yourears perk up and say, wait,
what's going on?
Yeah, so it's something that'salways on our radar but it
doesn't really reach thenational levels that people
(04:03):
certainly with Zika they werevery familiar about.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
A lot of times when we have things like COVID going
on, a lot of other things getmissed and things that normally
would catch national attention.
Kind of our ability to absorbthat information.
We just don't have thetolerance for it or the drive to
listen to whatever minoroutbreaks are happening, because
they're so minor in relation toCOVID.
(04:27):
But if COVID wasn't there wewould have been thinking they
were much bigger maybe.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Yeah, you can certainly hit virus fatigue
Exactly.
Remember, right after COVIDcertainly we were all tired.
We were tired For sure.
Then you started hearing aboutmonkeypox.
You go oh my God, what is this?
We can't do this again.
We just finished one.
Can we breathe a little?
Right, there's always somethingthat pops up on the radar.
You search, you'll find.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah, I had a conversation with a colleague
who works mostly in East Africawhen the Sudan virus cases were
cropping up in Uganda.
She started to get all thesequestions about it and she said
you know, guys, I have time inmy life for one pandemic.
You're right, I think there'sthat virus fatigue.
But it's really cool that yourlab is working on stuff that
(05:11):
right now is not active but weknow could become active again.
Right, how do you keep thatnarrative going?
Because I think that's one ofthose big challenges in science
is that we tend to be veryreactive.
All the money, all the funding,all the interest comes like when
there's a pandemic or there'san outbreak and we really need
to do something about it.
But in the intervening period,one of the reasons I think we've
(05:31):
, at least around here, donepretty well is because we have
experts like yourself and otherswho have been working on some
of these viruses even during thequiet times.
So how do you maintain thatenergy and keep that in the eyes
of, especially, funders?
How do you write that narrativethat this is still important?
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, and it can be a bit of a tricky balance.
Right, because you don't wantto be reactionary, you don't
want to continue to fan theflames per se just to increase
the importance of our personalresearch.
But a lot of time, unless theresearch is done before it
becomes really criticallyimportant, then we're caught
flat-footed.
So like, for example, when Zikahit in 2016,.
(06:08):
We had these viruses that weresitting around in vials, in the
freezer, but there was no realimpetus for us to need to study
it because it hadn't really doneanything of interest to people
that pay the bills and arefunders.
So then, when the epidemic hit,they said how is it possible
that you know almost nothingabout this virus?
And they said well, we know alittle bit of something, but
(06:30):
unless the funding is there andthe drive like you've identified
, matt is there, it can be verydifficult.
So oftentimes you will take avirus that you really are
interested in and you will juststudy it and the answers that
you get to questions that youhave will drive the next set of
questions and you'll just keepgoing and going until you amass
a body of knowledge that otherpeople in the field can ping
(06:52):
themselves off of, take it runwith it and you never know where
your research is going to endup, who is going to be able to
benefit from it Years and yearsdown the line.
Some of the initial studies thatwere done with Zika were done
back in the 50s.
So we, as researchers in 2016,immediately went to the research
and said, oh my God, what'salready been done.
We start pulling things up thatwere done 60, 70 years prior
(07:15):
and said, oh, this is fantastic,we don't have to start from
scratch.
So I think keeping this in mindalso can be very important.
Sometimes, also, the viruses westudy can be used as surrogates
for other viruses.
So just because you havestudied, let's say, zika in
particular, that doesn't meanthat there aren't lessons that
could be applied to otherviruses that other people are
(07:35):
interested in really studyingand understanding the diseases
that they can cause Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, before we push the record button, we were
talking and you were saying somereally interesting stuff about
places where the viruses couldhide and your interest in that,
and I found that veryinteresting because I think
people who are out there may notrealize that if you have a
respiratory virus or you have avector-borne disease virus like
a Zika or a Dengue or whateversometimes they can infect other
(08:02):
parts of the body or they canfind areas where the immune
system is not quite as robustand that can have effects on
whether the virus can actuallykeep spreading after they're no
longer symptomatic.
Can you say a few things aboutthat and maybe say whether I'm
wrong?
Speaker 2 (08:17):
about how I'm describing it because I might be
.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
No, you're absolutely right.
So the second part of what mylab does is we're interested in
understanding how viruses cancause testicular infection.
Thank you, Zika.
I didn't start off my careerwanting to go into this field in
particular but this is anexample of where the science
will take you, and you'll startto amass data and, before you
know it, this is the field ofresearch you find yourself in,
(08:44):
and it just becomes veryinteresting.
So one thing we found duringthe Zika epidemic is we noticed
that people who were travelingfrom the sites of the epidemic
back to countries where therewas no epidemic, there was
transmission occurring, which isweird If you don't have the
mosquitoes.
We thought there could be notransmission of Zika.
Well, the more curious you stayand the more questions you ask,
(09:08):
the more information you'regoing to amass.
And so we started going backinto the literature and turns
out there was a CDC researcherthat had kind of already been
experiencing this.
I'm not going to shout out who,but there's a very interesting
story about this too.
He was doing some research inSenegal, came down with the
disease, came back, gave it tohis wife Now there were no
(09:32):
mosquitoes in Colorado at thistime that could vector Zika, but
he hadn't been with his wifefor a while.
And so what happens when twopeople love each other?
You can see where this is goingright.
So it's transmission.
How to have occurred somehow?
So they looked at all of thepossible body fluids.
So you consider saliva, tear,sweat, semen came up and there
(09:53):
was the report and I think CNNwas talking about this for a
while too where Zika couldpossibly be sexually transmitted
.
When you think about virusesthat are transmitted by
mosquitoes, sexual transmissionis a weird one that doesn't come
up on your radar.
And then you're studying thisbecause it's very interesting.
It's not something that'ssupposed to happen, which of
(10:13):
course means, oh, we have tostudy this.
We have to figure out what'sgoing on here, you start to pull
back the curtain and yourealize wow, it's not just Zika
that does this.
So, like HIV, mumps, Marburg,Ebola a whole litany of
infectious diseases have thecapability to go to the testes.
So even though we study Zika, alot of the lessons that we're
(10:35):
learning here can be applied toother viruses as well.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Right, and from a technical standpoint.
I've heard that it's reallyhard to do any studies involving
semen because it's reallycytotoxic.
It's a really hard fluid towork with.
Is that true or am I just so?
Speaker 3 (10:50):
I haven't had very much experience working with
those types of samples.
Most of what we do is smallanimal research to understand
how does the virus get from,let's say, the side of a
mosquito bite to the testes inorder to be sexually transmitted
or cause damage.
But you bring up a veryinteresting point what is the
true burden of sexualtransmission for a virus like
(11:12):
Zika?
The answer is we don't know.
We don't know because thosesamples really don't exist.
During the epidemic and let'ssay the SARS, covid pandemic,
people kind of in survival mode.
They're not really thinkingabout these scientific questions
if it doesn't relate to theirability to just get by.
So oftentimes we don't have thesamples that are collected
(11:33):
during these periods ofepidemics and pandemics to be
able to study later that.
And oftentimes these are notlethal diseases that we're
studying, so biopsies usuallyaren't available.
So translating what we see,let's say, in a small mouse
model which is one of the bestmodels we have, to be able to
study this to something that'sclinically relevant sometimes
(11:56):
can be a challenge.
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
I've heard another investigator who was doing semen
studies and the only reason Ibrought it up is because they
said it was really hard todetect it at all in semen, just
because there's so manyproteases that will destroy the
cells that you're working with.
So you're trying to look forevidence of virus infection, but
the sample itself is killingthe cells, so it just makes it a
little bit more difficult towork with.
(12:19):
So even if you do have theclinical samples, it can still
be really challenging to get theanswer to the question you're
asking, just because it's notalways as easy as collecting
samples.
Yeah, there's technicalchallenges.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
So what do you look for in the sample that you
receive?
So normally we'll receive asample and we'll put it onto
like a Vero cell monolayer andlook for evidence of viral
infection.
This way, sometimes it might beeasier just to take that sample
and pop open everything that'sin it and look for evidence of
the nucleic acid of the virus.
Like with RT-PCR or somethinglike this.
(12:52):
They measure two very differentthings Exactly, but sometimes
it's easier to detect one thanthe other, right for sure.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
There's probably strengths and limitations to
both approach.
There always is Yep.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
I love it.
I found that really interesting.
I think we'll get back intosome of the day-to-day and the
day-in-life type stuff.
What kind of got you into allthis, into this world of
virology, of science?
We were talking a little bitbeforehand how desperately we
need more women representationscience, especially in
leadership positions.
Now you have an MBA, so thatmeans you know everything there
(13:23):
is to know about business.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
That's exactly what that means.
But can you say a little bit?
Speaker 1 (13:28):
of.
Can you talk a little bit aboutkind of your origin story and
what kind of got you into allthis work?
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Yeah, but let me turn it around.
When I was, let's say, six,what do you think I wanted to be
when I grew up?
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Let's see, I'm going to date myself.
I was going to say, like MightyMouse, I'm not that old.
That's a good one, mighty Mouse.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
I mean you're close.
No, no guesses, Daniel.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
I think I actually know your story, so I can't
really guess.
Was it a tooth fairy?
I?
Speaker 3 (13:54):
don't want to put magic in it.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
It was a tooth fairy.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
I love it.
I was convinced when I wasreally young Because I had a
great imagination that I wasgoing to be the tooth fairy when
I grew up and it was becauseyou thought there could be viral
reservoirs and teeth.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Oh yeah, I had that for thought.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Obviously.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Now she was magical and she got to fly and I just
really wanted to fly when I wasyoung, which makes zero sense.
I think it makes perfect sense.
I know it's still a lot of fun.
But I kind of fell into scienceby attrition.
I always just like science andI knew I was going to end up
somewhere in the sciences.
It was a school teacher that Ihad.
She pushed us really hard.
(14:31):
It was an AP biology class andI think we were in the 10th
grade, 10th or 11th, one of thetwo and it was just really
interesting the things that wewould talk about in class.
I remember thinking for thefirst time about the immune
response and the things that animmune response has to do to
keep you healthy.
Yeah, I'm thinking how the helldoes the cell know how to do
this?
It has no brain.
(14:52):
This is really interesting.
Oh my God, wait, wait, wait.
There's more than one kind ofimmune cell and my teenage mind
was absolutely blown.
So I thought I was going to dosomething with this and it
wasn't until I took aninternship over the summer I
think it was between my freshmanand junior year of college.
I did an internship at WyethErst, which was in my hometown
(15:14):
of Pearl River, new York, and itwas for a vaccine branch of
their pharmaceutical company.
We were working on Venezuelanequine encephalitis virus
vectors.
That's kind of where that wholething started.
Yeah, and it just was reallyinteresting.
The virus work.
Yeah, well, I guess I can dothis.
So I tried it on for a coupleof months and it just stuck.
(15:38):
So I've been here ever sinceand it's been a fun ride.
I tried out genetics for alittle while microbiology, like
I flirted with doing bacterialwork, but now a virus is.
They got my bum apart, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
I'm stuck.
That's so funny because I wentinto science because of my AP
biology teacher, so it's sofunny how these early influences
yeah.
Do teachers really know thatthey have such a big impact?
I don't know.
I hope so.
I hope they do?
Speaker 3 (16:04):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Why don't you tell us , Dr Sweetenham?
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Professor, yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Do you're having an impact?
Speaker 2 (16:10):
With great power.
With great power, it becomesgreat responsibility, it's true.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I mean, I think you don't always know when you're
impacting someone, but sometimesit's just showing up and being
interested yourself.
Do you think you bring that now?
You have young learners in yourlab, you have people coming in
and doing internships with you.
Is that kind of something thatyou try to bring?
Speaker 3 (16:27):
I try to.
You would have to ask them ifI'm successful.
I don't want to.
That's the next episode.
I rise them right and staytuned.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
And we've got some of them right behind the curtain.
I try.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
I think to instill on wonder in someone is really
important, especially if you'regoing to stay in this career for
the long haul.
Right, because it can be veryarduous.
I have so many notebooks in myoffice that are full of data,
most of which are null data.
Some of the greatestcharacteristics you can be as a
scientist include curious andpersistent, because a lot of
(17:02):
what we do doesn't work and youhave to continue to think about
things, try things out, andfailure is a great teacher.
So if you're really not biginto failing, you either get
used to it or you maybe go dosomething else.
So I try to.
When I talk to, young studentssay it is one of the coolest
things in the entire world tosee something for the first time
(17:25):
as a person that no one else inthe world has ever seen.
Right, that is really amazing.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah, and I love what you said about cultivating awe
in students, because there'sthis really interesting.
She said was it a physicist oran astronomer?
But her name was Rebecca Elsonand she passed away kind of
recently, but she was also apoet and she wrote about exactly
all the things you're talkingabout is the scientist's
responsibility to honor awe andabout the significance of
(17:50):
failure in our lives asscientists and how it's a place
of inspiration and notdiscouragement.
Yeah, that's an incredible wayof looking at it.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
I think you have to be in that right ecosystem where
people appreciate that actuallyfailure is part of the process,
and we're going to just kind oflet you keep doing it, work
hard, you're on the right path,you're doing the right kind of
question.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yeah, try not to fail the same way twice.
Maybe you didn't learn what youwere supposed to do the first
time.
But failure is such an integralpart of the learning process
that if it wasn't for failure,it wouldn't teach you what you
are not doing correctly or whatyou're not looking at in the
right way, or maybe it isexactly where you're supposed to
be.
You're just looking at it fromthe wrong angle, right?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Yeah, if you decide you're going to do science,
you're now doing all this reallyreally cool work, so your day
to day not necessarily like well.
First I respond to emails.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
It does.
It starts at 5 am.
Yeah, starts with emails.
It starts with emails.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
But can you say a little bit about some of the
maybe active work that you have,maybe some recent experience
you've had, either with successor failure?
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Well, huge success is just finishing up the MBA.
Congrats, by the way, thank you.
Speaking of tenacity, I thinkit's important going back to the
curiosity, keep remainingcurious, but then realize that
you're never going to stoplearning Right, and with
learning does come a lot ofthose failures, but sometimes a
good success and a good win willkeep you sustained for a long
(19:15):
time.
It's been a while since I'vedone an actual experiment in the
lab.
This is something that I reallywant to get back into doing,
because I do miss for lack of abetter way to put it moving
pipettes around and being ableto design an experiment, see it
all the way through and thengather the results and the data
at the end of it.
Now I have a very active programand the people that work
(19:36):
alongside with me in my lab.
They are able to do this, soI'm living vicariously through
them.
Yeah, and it is one of the mostsatisfying things again when
they come up and say, oh my God,look what I found.
Right, that's amazing.
But I think when the successhas come, you take a hold of
them, because sometimes theydon't come as often as you want
them to.
Yeah for sure.
(19:57):
So celebrate it whenever you doget a chance.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
You and I were talking at some point when you
were in your MBA and oh yeah,exactly those dark days Was I
tired and surly.
You were just tired, yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
You were never, surly .
Speaker 1 (20:13):
But one of the things you were mentioning was how
stimulating it was to belearning alongside different
people.
Yeah, you were always kind ofincubated in the science
environment and then now you'rewith some business people or
people who had worked inmarketing or they worked, you
know, they're just in a verydifferent sector.
Their way of looking at theworld was very different.
And can you say a little bitabout what the process of
(20:33):
studying this MBA because again,this was your curiosity, right
you can maybe tell us a littleabout what made you want to do
that and then what some of yourobservations were about being
part of that learningenvironment?
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Yeah, and if I don't hit all of the answers to your
questions, just remind me ofthem.
But my parents when I wasyounger really instilled in me
this love of learning, thisdeep-seated curiosity and the
expectation that if you have it,you're going to seek it out.
So they were always veryencouraging of go ahead and take
all those AP classes and if youget a, b, it's okay because you
(21:06):
tried.
You didn't settle for the thingthat was the easier A.
You were striving, you wereconstantly pushing yourself and
you're always trying to makeyourself in that realm of being
a little bit uncomfortablebecause that's where the growth
occurs?
Yeah, absolutely.
It can be very easy for us,especially when we start to get
older, to sit back on the thingsthat we're very comfortable
(21:27):
with, like, oh, I've done plaqueassays, I don't need to learn
this new technique.
A plaque assay will workcompletely fine and I'm just
going to do this until I retireor whatever.
And so part of that was thereason I decided to get the MBA
to challenge myself, to makesure that I still had the
capacity to want the drive tolearn something completely
(21:47):
different.
But also, the more I started tothink about it, the more I
realized science is a business.
When I was younger like gradschool days back in the day I
thought this was very altruistic.
If you had a really goodquestion, of course you were
going to be able to get fundingfor it.
Of course somebody was going tobe interested in it, because
it's science, it's the pursuitof this knowledge that has
(22:10):
nothing to do with our thoughtsor feelings.
So it was noble and it was pureand you should be able to study
it for studying its sake.
Well, the real world isn'tquite like that, and someone's
going to have to pay the billsat the end of the day.
I think the first lesson Ireally learned about this was
when I was a graduate studentstudying how to make a vaccine
against West Nile virus, and atthat point it was maybe 2006,
(22:35):
2007.
So we were kind of right offthe heels of it emerging in
North America in 1999.
And we were still tracking itevery year.
It was, first and foremost, ona lot of people's minds.
You go up to an average personon the street and said I study
West Nile.
They were, oh, I know what thatis.
That's important.
Why don't we have a vaccine?
Great question why don't wehave a vaccine?
Well, because maybe themarket's not quite there for it.
(22:56):
So once you start to thenunderstand that science isn't
necessarily as noble of pursuitas I thought it was and that
there's going to be moneyinvolved, then that brings the
business aspect into it.
So how is it that you cancommunicate your idea to be able
to get money to study the otherthings that we need to study
because they are of great humanimportance?
(23:17):
I thought was something that Ineeded to augment my learning
about, and I did get to meet alot of really interesting people
as part of my MBA class,because some of them were MDs,
some of them were marketers.
There were a couple of CPAs anda lot of them were from oil and
gas, because we are situatedright next to Houston, texas.
So it was very good to remindmyself that I don't have to sit
(23:39):
in my little micro chasm ofscience all the time.
There's an entire world ofpeople out there that have
different ways of thinking,different interactions with
science.
I'm sure that we had somepeople and I went through during
COVID.
They were like, oh, covidvaccine, I don't know about that
, and I'm over here like, oh,okay, now we're in the realm of
(24:00):
like science and policy andeverything that I'd never
thought I was going to have tobecome involved in.
But I'm happy for theseconversations because science
can't be performed in a vacuum.
Only some of the science we dois tax funded, so we are
beholden to the people thatultimately pay the bills, right.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
That's such a great answer.
What an adventure.
What a very cool person you are.
We're really lucky that you'rehere and that you're doing the
work that you're doing and thatyou are maintaining an energy
and a dedication to this fieldwhich I think everybody in the
world now knows what a virus is,no matter what.
They know what a vaccine is,and now we need folks like
(24:39):
yourself more than ever.
So I think that's really great.
I've really enjoyed getting totalk to you.
Do you have any final thoughts,like for anybody who might be
on the fence about their career,out there, thinking about what
they want to do in their lifeand what they might want to
bring into the world, any adviceor guidance from Dr Shannon
Rossi?
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Oh, I don't know if I'm the best person to give any
life advice, but I think if youfind what you're good at, what
the world needs and what yourpassion is, you can probably
make a really good, fulfillingliving from it.
If science is something thatyou are interested in, then
there are a couple of thingsthat you can do to set yourself
up for future success.
(25:17):
When I was younger, I thoughtscientists.
They stayed at the bench, theywore pretty lab coats, they
worked in the dark and theymoved beakers of colorful liquid
back and forth, because this iskind of what popular media
shows us scientists do.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
That sounds exactly right.
That's accurate right.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Yeah yeah, yeah, with the mood lighting and
everything else all the time,our labs are very well lit.
One thing I didn't appreciatewas how much communication there
would be in science.
Right, because the stereotypeof a scientist is this loner,
geeky person that just kind ofis by themselves doing science.
Yeah, but yet here we are inthe podcast closet, talking
(25:53):
about how I got to where I am.
You guys have been doing thisfor how many episodes now?
Many, much.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
A lot.
Ten.
Our producer has said ten.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
So you're seasoned pros at this point.
Why did you start off doingthis Me, I mean in general
because communication isimportant, right, right, right,
right yeah.
So the ability to articulateyour thoughts both in written
word but also in speech isreally important.
One of the most critical thingsI think I did and now looking
(26:22):
back in retrospect I'm surprised.
I had the forethought to do it,but it sounds really good when
I tell it in the story Is incollege I decided each semester
I was going to do something thatsucked and something that was
fun.
So for fun, I took beekeepingand I love it and I hope to
eventually get back a high onbees one day.
The thing that sucked was oralspeech and debate.
(26:43):
Oh my god, it was sonerve-wracking.
But the return on being able todo that back when I had the
ability to make a bunch ofmistakes and it didn't really
impact my career so I couldscrew up as much as I could and
got the comfort to sit in frontof a crowd and just say words it
was really, really valuable.
(27:05):
There's a lot of writing,there's a lot of talking and the
better you can be at this earlyon, the easier it's going to be
for you later.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Yeah, definitely.
I think that's great advice.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Yeah, that, and travel.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
A lot of travel, a lot of travel, yeah it is all
about the teams.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
It's all about the communication.
That was great messages andsometimes my house.
We've had a recurrent beeinfestation, so next time we
have to bring the guys over toexcavate the bees, then I'm just
going to call them and say, hey, I got a place, you can bring
them.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Yeah, shannon's house , shannon's house, the cats are
going to be thrilled Awesome.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Well, this has been great.
Any thoughts from you?
Like the sweet them.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I think we're good to go Say thank you so much for
being here.
Well, thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
This has been fun.
Shannon, thank you so much forspending some time with us.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Thank you both, bye.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
So we'll see you next time for a new episode, and in
the meantime, stay happy stayhealthy, stay interested.
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