life as a medical researcher 'doesn’t really feel like work'
“[medical research] it's a really, really rewarding career. you have the freedom to decide for yourself what your passion and interests are, and then you work on it"
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for dr. charu kaushic, being a researcher and fostering positive change in the world has allowed her to feed her curiosity and passion for working with a team to solve problems.
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when dr. charu kaushic was in her 20s, she was still “trying to figure out what to do.” she spent a lot of time choosing between different subjects, crossing off things such as physics and math, eventually landing on zoology for her undergrad because of her passion for biology.
it was there she got exposed to laboratory work.
“one of my best friend’s dad was actually running a research lab, so we would go hang out in his lab, and there were all these phd students who, at that time, because i was 19, looked so much older to me, but they looked like they were doing very important things,” she said.
those experiences watching other students work in the lab sparked a curiosity in dr. kaushic that followed her through her studies to cell biology for her master’s and her phd in immunology.
research on its own was interesting to dr. kaushic, but it wasn’t just any kind. she wanted to learn more about what people did in a lab that actually translated into helping real people, and eventually, that’s where she took her career.
“that was a foundation for me to always think about research and how it applies to improving people’s lives,” she said.
medical research isn’t just a job
according to dr. kaushic, medical research isn’t your typical career; “it’s more like a lifestyle.”
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she notes that the work being done is vital and interesting, but the ability to balance her career with her family has made it a facet of her life rather than a way to make a living.
“that adds a lot of flexibility into how you do things and when you do things. it made it easier to juggle raising kids,” she said, of which she has two boys.
in the beginning, she started out like any other medical researcher, working in the lab and running experiments to see what worked and what didn’t. but it all starts with funding, and funding is the most critical area of medical research; getting it can be an arduous task.
she notes that to get funding for just one project, medical researchers will have to write roughly five grants, giving it a success rate between 15 and 18 per cent.
“it’s very tough,” she said.
once she secured funding for one of her projects early in her career, she hired a technician to handle administrative tasks and continued to build teams under her. every single person on the team is tasked with an equally important job, because without one piece of the puzzle, the research and their ability to secure funding can become almost impossible.
“it’s very much a team effort, absolutely,” she said.
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over time, she kept climbing the ladder and building a team under her. while this didn’t change the flexibility of her career, it did change a lot of what she does.
she now meets with her team to discuss findings on what’s going on in the lab, and those who work under her, like the lab technician, handle other aspects of the job.
“a research lab like mine, if you are working in human cell lines, working with viruses or bacteria, there’s a lot of paperwork that goes with it because you’re working with human pathogens,” she said. “so, behind the scenes, there’s a lot of ethics, compliance work, biosafety work for the lab to run.”
she notes that “research labs are really entrepreneurs at heart” because they have to do all the work themselves, from finding grants to fund the research, all the way down to the research itself.
the highs and lows of a career in medical research
the biggest high in medical research, according to dr. kaushic, is getting grant funding. it pays for the entire thing, from the salaries of the researchers to being given time to really figure out a solution to the problem at hand.
“that makes sure we can do the kind of research that we want to do,” she said. “it’s a team celebration because that means their jobs and their research are secured.”
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getting a paper published is another celebratory event, especially when phd students are just starting in medical research, because it’s tremendously difficult to convince the community that the work is novel and important. graduation is also a team celebration for people who work together in the trenches of medical research.
“phd students typically work for about five years and publish about three to five papers,” she said. “graduation is a big deal. phd students take five to six years to complete their work and graduate, so those are big celebration events.”
another high is the work they do, because when an experiment works as intended, it’s a great feeling knowing that all their hard work has paid off.
it’s not always celebrations and good news in medical research, though. experiments can go wrong, forcing them to start from square one, or they may be rejected for grants, which happens four out of five times.
that’s when the core of what a medical researcher is comes into play.
“people who do research, by virtue of what i described, are typically resilient people. doing a phd and getting into research teaches you resilience,” she said. “it’s a self-selection of people who are determined, resilient and want to keep trying things over and over.”
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she notes that every rejection she has gotten over the years didn’t “sound like a rejection.”
“to me, it just sounds like, ‘what can i do better?’”
she also notes that internal validation is how medical researchers get through the lows, because looking for external validation for their work and talent is futile. it also helps knowing that the work she’s doing and has done impacts the lives of real people.
“you have to have a lot of internal motivation and validation,” she said. “that’s the reason to get up and get going, because just because my grant didn’t get funded or my paper didn’t get accepted, there are still people out there who are waiting for me to provide solutions to their questions, so you have to just get up, shake it off, and get going.
spending a professional life to help others
dr. kaushic, who remains focused on serving women’s health in underserved and underrepresented communities, has remained self-motivated throughout her career because she learned that being a medical researcher isn’t just about feeding curiosity or having flexibility. it’s about truly helping others, and that in itself makes the experience rewarding.
“i actually see the impact of that in women’s lives and how we improve their day-to-day decision-making empowerment,” she said.
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she’s also a big supporter of including communities in discussions of what’s important, because the entire point of the research she and her research teams have done is to help those people who are often left without a voice.
for dr. kaushic, being a researcher and fostering positive change in the world has allowed her to feed her curiosity and passion for working with a team to solve problems, as well as her humanitarian nature, which has driven her toward translational work.
“it’s a really, really rewarding career,” she said. “you have the freedom to decide for yourself what your passion and interests are, and then you work on it. it’s not facetious to sort of say, my research work doesn’t really feel like work. it feels like something that i want to do, and then i can do it at my pace, the way i want to do it.”
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