Looking Out for Serendipity

I was recently invited to speak to graduate students from the Cellular and Molecular Biology Program at the University of Michigan. They asked me to provide a broad perspective, speaking not only about my current research but also about the training I received and the path that brought me to where I am now. As I mulled over how best to present the choices I’ve made and twists of fate I’ve experienced, I kept coming back to serendipity, a faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).

 For me one instance of serendipity occurred near the end of my own Ph.D. research. I had worked diligently, and answered some interesting questions, but I was feeling limited by my skill set and opportunities for training. I read an ad in the university newspaper (yes, we actually had newspapers back then) for an upcoming seminar in another department. I convinced one of my advisors to come with me. It was the only time I ever (1) set foot in that department, (2) attended a seminar based on a newspaper ad, or (3) brought my advisor with me to a seminar. The seminar ended up being life-changing for me. Dr. John McLachlan from Tulane University talked about his lab’s research on endocrine disruption, and he made a passing reference to “coral reef animals”, presumably the reef-building corals I was studying. After the seminar, my advisor and I peppered him with questions, and ran up afterward to engage him in further conversation. This interaction ultimately led to me spending several months in Dr. McLachlan’s lab as a guest student. During that time I received my first training in molecular biology and had my eyes opened to a whole new field of study. This experience is absolutely what made it possible for me to obtain a postdoctoral scholarship here at WHOI and laid the foundation for virtually all of my subsequent work.

A second example occurred during my postdoctoral training. A fellow postdoc, Mark Baumgartner presented some of his research at our weekly departmental seminar. He described studies of right whale foraging including observations that the whales spent the majority of their dive time deep underwater where a layer of dormant copepods aggregated. I had probably heard of copepod dormancy (diapause) at some point in my schooling, but I never gave it much thought. Something about Mark’s talk really struck me. The dependence of the whales on that copepod aggregation made me think about how important the dormancy must be to the ecosystem. With my background in comparative endocrinology, I figured that the dormancy was probably hormonally regulated, and I wondered if there was a possibility that environmental chemicals could disrupt this natural process. I eventually managed to spend some time talking to Mark and learned that regulation of dormancy was very poorly understood. I was shocked by this huge knowledge gap and also confident that we could help to fill it. Those initial conversations have led to one of my strongest collaborative relationships. We still don’t fully understand diapause regulation, but I think we’ve dug up some useful clues.

And I’ll share one more possible example of Serendipity, although I’ll admit it’s a little corny. I’m honestly not really sure how I got interested in marine science. As I’ve written before, it wasn’t exactly a lifelong calling, at least not consciously. But as I was preparing my talk and mulling over these events, I remembered a book titled “Serendipity” that I had as a little girl. I remembered it as being about some kind of pink dragon and thought it was funny that I only knew Serendipity as the name of the animal without having any understanding of the meaning of the word. I wondered what that book had been about….so I googled it, and found a YouTube video that included someone reading the book. It turns out that Serendipity was a kind of sea dragon that hatched from a mysterious egg on an Antarctic iceberg. She didn’t know who she was or what she was meant to do, but along the way she befriended a walrus, rescued a dolphin, splashed a bunch of oil and garbage out of the ocean, and punished some irresponsible fishermen. She decided that her job was to serve as a guardian of the ocean. I wonder if this idea has been lurking somewhere in the back of my mind for decades.

So that brings me to one final thought. I’ve chosen to call it serendipity rather than luck. I think these events are a little more nuanced than just luck. Attending the seminars was a little coincidental, especially in the first case, but it was also driven by intuition. In each case, following up to establish a collaboration required that I have some useful background knowledge to bring to the table, as well as the resolve to strike up a conversation. The ultimate success of these collaborations, involved some hard work and a little bit of luck again. I like to roll up all those things into a package and call it serendipity.