Mansi: So thank you so much Anisha for joining us today. Just to get started with the interview, if you would like to share your journey so far with us. Mm-hmm. How did you come into the field of physics?
I believe that's your field, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like to start
Dr. Anwesha Sarkar: with that. So like, you know I'm from India and stem like, you know, from very early childhood. We, I'm like, you know, I was interested in STEM and my mom was a teacher of math. So like, you know, I didn't have any tutor or anything.
I. Saw her like, you know, tutoring students like who are falling behind in class after class. Like, and she was always busy with helping kids who are struggling. So that was post influence and that's the biggest influence. In terms of getting into stem. I was always interested. Physics always interested me.
Like, and I always studied in institutions where it's nineties to one ratio of male and female students as like I got into graduate level, postgraduate level, all those things. And I went to CVI College in Calita to do my bachelor's in physics. I went to, I address after that for my MS in physics.
And actually I joined I Institute of Physics in India in gu. To start my PhD and I went through their first year of program while I was applying here to, to some colleges, and I did their first year program of infill in physics. So yeah, it always interested me. Biggest influence is my of course my mother.
I. Like seeing her in stem and like, you know, how many lines you can change how many people you can help. Of course, like, you know, perception of women in stem is not that good. And all her lines, she tried to help students around her and I kind of picked up from that. I wanted to follow that lead.
And in terms of, I. Or in chemistry like, you know, and physics is always like, you know, it felt very easy to me. So that's obviously was like, you know, I got admitted to an engineering college. I took my application back and went back and went got admitted to college where like, you know, 2 cent years where I can study physics.
So that happened and it was kind of clear for me. There was no. No other choice really. I loved biology, but it never no. And I still like, you know, I collaborate with it because we work in the bioengineering and biophysics section right now. I collaborate love collaborating with a lot of biology faculties and learn from them.
But yeah, physics is, was always my first choice and it kind of clicked. Yeah. Yeah,
Mansi: absolutely. I think mechanical engineering and physics that are the two areas where I don't see that many of of female candidates coming out of. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it's very interesting that you were from the get go into physics.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you for sharing that. Can you tell once you came to United States mm-hmm. Started your higher education, what was that journey
Dr. Anwesha Sarkar: Yeah, so I did my like, you know, PhD from Wayne State University in physics. Yeah. And like, you know, there, like, you know, I taught so I was a TA during my four and a half years of graduate study and I taught a lot of courses, a lot of labs.
I love teaching. So like I love teaching from the get go. So even like in Institute of Physics, I try to help teachers like, you know, take, take classes to assist classes. I love interacting with students. So yeah, it was a lot because like, you know, the lab I joined. And during my graduate study was an experimental lab, and it was at only force microscope.
It's not a turnkey thing, so it takes actually seven to eight to nine hours at a stretch for the student to actively participate in the experiment. Like, you know so it was it was a lot like, you know, doing. Like teaching that many courses, being an experimental lab. And so all those things were going on at the same point.
And I did my postdoc after that in I s U physics department. And then I actually, I. Was an adjunct assistant professor in in my department, E C p, electrical and computer Engineering for two years, from 2020 fall to 2022. And during 2021, I applied for being instead of adjunct assistant professor.
I applied for being an assistant professor. And from 2022 falls, which is like last August, I became an assistant professor. So that's kind of after that journey.
Mansi: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No, thank you so much for sharing that. In terms of, you shared your mother was one of the most influential person mm-hmm.
In terms of being in stem. Yeah. And you had a quite a long journey in terms of where you different experiences with different universities back in India here. Was there any particular thing, I know you mentioned that there was always like this nine to one ratio of being a woman, but then once you came here in terms of higher education, was there, was there some kind of reservations when you are like Asian, but also female in a field which is predominantly dominated by
Dr. Anwesha Sarkar: Yeah. So kind of I told you like my entire journey, so, right. Like I, like, you know, starting from bachelor's to now I've been in physics and then bioengineering and all those things, so yeah, absolutely. Like, you know, there are. The perception of women in STEM is not what we want it to be.
There are situation where like, you know, I saw like like, you know, my colleagues, I, I'm not like, you know, my colleagues were very good and supportive. Like when even I, when I'm applying here my friends were like very good, luckily, and but yeah, there are situations where I saw because of the number of like, you know, female students coming to STEM are low.
I don't know. It's like, you know what? Build that perception. But you know, women are as good as men in stem, but unfortunately, I have seen situations where I saw faculty members like, you know, throughout this entire journey, I've seen faculty members saying, look, okay, like, you know, not to the student, but yeah, behind their back that, okay, I am tired, that female student because I ran an experimental lab and I'm, I'm gonna push her and she's not gonna produce Expected result that I want.
I have also seen faculty members like, you know, promoting male students or like, you know, emphasis on putting like a lot of emphasis on their work where they cannot even talk or write a paper or do their work appropriately. While a female student is doing all she can and actively, like, that faculty member is actively acting to suppress that work.
I have seen the rainbow of experiences. So because I have been like in academia for a long, long time, so, yeah. But yeah it doesn't, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter like, you know, Male or female member. It's just the perception. And it doesn't depend on like in any country or class or creed or religion, nothing.
It just depends on that particular family. What I understood at the end of my journey, it depends on that particular family, that person is coming from. Like what was taught in that family. Yeah. Like was like, you know whatever. It was told that you can do whatever you want to both men and women and how women were perceived in that particular family.
It doesn't depend on your country. It doesn't depend on how rich or poor you are. But it doesn't depend on anything else. So, yeah, that was very clear. So it's just Sarah, like, you know, if you are lucky enough to get those kind of friends or people who see like, you know, good in you who won't ne will never stand in your way and always like, you know, add value to your journey, you know, put some effort to maintain those people because you know in your journey as she and woman in stem, he will need those people.
Yeah.
Mansi: Absolutely. Totally. I totally agree because I feel like mm-hmm. Often I, when I talk to people from different countries or anything mm-hmm. It's, mm-hmm. It's the same issue. It's not like Yeah. For a particular, as you mentioned, yeah. Country or a particular region or something like that. Mm-hmm. While you did mention that you have been in academia for a long time now.
Mm-hmm. Have you, have you seen changes taking place, particularly around a woman in
Dr. Anwesha Sarkar: stem? Yeah. Yeah. And I have seen changes through many different ways. I have seen changes like, you know like, you know, just like what you cannot see, you cannot be that kind of, that is true. It's also true for women to push hard and get into academia more and more so that they are male counterparts who are living with them.
They see the struggle. Unless they see the struggle, they cannot internalize the struggle. They can like, you know, read about feminism, they can read about, and we are like, you know, we are only asking about equality. So they can read about those stuff. But until they see their counterparts suffering through those problems, they don't internalize the, the more they internalize, the more the society, the general view of the society is gonna change.
Yeah, through that. So that's one way. And also like in general, like, you know, for colleges and universities to put more and more effort on these topics, talking about these topics. Yeah. Having conversation about these things are like super important. Like the more you converse, the more you change like, you know, the view in general view.
And I, as I say, like, you know, the more the male members internalize those suffering through all their counterparts through real experiences, the view will change. Yeah,
Mansi: absolutely. I, yes I think that was something, this is, this has been the constant conversation I had with pre other, other professors when I interviewed with them, that communication and conversation is the most important.
Mm-hmm. Right. Because. We don't think that other people know what's going on actually. Yeah. We say we need more representation. I don't think what we mean by that. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just checking mm-hmm.
Dr. Anwesha Sarkar: Yeah. Talking about it. Yeah. As you said, so talking about it in actually like, you know, things are happening, going in the right direction.
These are completely two different things, but talking about it is 50% of the progress done. When you start talking about it. Yeah,
Mansi: absolutely. Yes. Yeah. Changing a little bit gear here. Mm-hmm. So going towards more into what your research looks like, what you have done. Mm-hmm. Can you share with us a memorable accomplishment or anything recent you did or you would like to highlight in terms of what you have done in academia field?
Dr. Anwesha Sarkar: Sure. So as you know, my background was completely physics. I only got exposed to biology or biophysics or bioengineering during my postdoc. And I'm doing like, you know, atomic, my main research instrument is atomic force microscope. So we do a lot of like. Cell imaging like ano mechanical property characterization.
Just like in mechanical engineering, you measure young modulars, deformation, dissipation, ation, all those forces. We measure that on live cells. And we measure protein, protein interaction forces. So interaction force between two proteins on live cells. We measure the binding tics between them, like, you know the binding probability most probable binding force.
All those things, dissociation constant, all. All those things. And through these studies we try to find a better drug delivery carrier, which has a like, you know, a higher probability of binding to the drug. So we also apply this study to target a particular protein, which is over expressed in cancer fibrosis or other diseases.
And it has been reported continuously in multiple research papers. So we try to target those proteins to develop. Novel therapeutics like, you know, approaches to like, you know develop drugs. And also like, you know, part of my like lab is also developing like, you know, computational approaches, which is kind of making a FM faster.
So a FM is kind of a instrument where I told you like it's a, it's a seven to eight to nine hour long experiment on a daily basis. So it's not very like, you know, user friendly. The experimentalist has to be there continuously, and the data analyst is also, is not that like, you know, it takes a lot of time, lot of expert experience.
So we are trying to automate some of those processes, incorporating machine learning app. Approaches into a f m. We are also trying to predict so alpha fold is the big thing now on predicting the protein structure. So each protein has a unique three D structure, a unique amino acid sequence that dictates the protein function, what the protein is going to do inside our body.
So once that protein, like, you know, something happens or there, some misfold happen of the protein, some diseases we can see on macro levels, some diseases. So predicting protein structure and protein complex structure is becoming super important. So although this alpha fold algorithm or the machine learning approach is very good in terms of predicting protein three D structure, it's not, the insco approach purely is not that good in terms of predicting protein complex structure where multiple proteins are joined in.
Specific geometric manner, different angle, different position, all those things. So we are trying to combine a f m and alpha fold approach to predict the protein complex structure. So all those things I'm doing and like in terms of like, you know, I and all those things, I was lucky enough to receive when I was an adjunct assistant professor back to back, I received a exploratory research grant in 2020.
In 2021 I received a town development faculty award for participating in conferences, which is our, like the flagship conference of our community, which is B M E S, biomedical Engineering Society, the like, you know group the kind of the area I work in. So I got that back to back two years. In 2020 and 2021.
I also got seed grant the Translational AI Center Seed Grant Award. Recently this year I also got like national like, you know, N Ss F grant along with my pi Han, who is also Asian female faculty in I U C B. So yeah, and I, my target was to probably, this will be your other question, but my target was to participate in, so I'm very passionate about underrepresented minority student education in general.
So I made a promise that in first year, so 2020 August 20, 22, August, I joined an assistant professor. So I made a promise that I'll participate in. Definitely participate in two things as soon as possible. One is wise I s U, so I have actively mentored for, for them. So first day I joined, second day I went to their offices, both inspire lsam, which is underrepresented minority undergrad student.
They support those students and also wise, which is women in science and engineering. Those so I actively mentored for WISE already. And mentoring involved directly like, you know, participating in my lab in. Also just career advisors. So Gabriela was my first student that I mentored through wise inspire, I mentor.
I have like, I have been mentoring this summer, two students who are from D M A C, who are extremely good undergrad students. And I do feel extremely passionate about this. Like this two topics definitely I try to get involved and you know just help any way I can because underrepresented minority students they are not just struggling with passing courses or they're not just, they have a ton of problems going on in their life.
So help them as many ways as you can. That should be like in, in general, our motto. So I try to follow through those things and I like the honors program, we have ton of undergraduate students who are very good and want to parti participate in active research. Because I run an experimental research lab, I do need a lot of undergrad students, so I do have honor students too in my lab.
So, yeah, like literally like, you know, all the undergrad students, like every way I can support, I make sure in my first year I, I I go through all those things, get as many students, help as many students as I can. Yeah, well that yeah, that was my purpose. And yeah, in general I wanted to do that, so I did that.
Yeah. No,
Mansi: thank you for sharing so much with us. I think your research is very interesting. I, I, I never thought that someone from a physics background, like pure physics background contributing like biomedical engineering. Yeah. You know, like until you are in the realize that this all overlaps so much.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then coming to the second part of where you described your involvement in WISE and mm-hmm. Honor program, I think. Mm-hmm. I'm not sure if you came across Multicultural Student Affairs department, but we do have a faculty panel which mentor our students. So I work with. On campus as a assistant.
Mm-hmm. So I teach first year undergraduate students for like mm-hmm. The same thing that we mentor mm-hmm. Kind of the multicultural background students. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And we do have a faculty panel, so Oh. Wanna like, I don't know if they're like still looking for more, but I can definitely, you know, talk to my director because I think, I think I would love to have a STEM faculty, women faculty on that panel because that's like Yeah.
I mean, my students, a lot of my students are female in stem. Yeah. And they oftentimes comes to come to me saying that, oh, we, I, I don't know how I can relate to a faculty. I don't know how I can like, talk to them. So definitely, yeah. I would
Dr. Anwesha Sarkar: love to help anyway I can. Yeah,
Mansi: absolutely. Yes. Mm-hmm. So in terms of how your journey so far and this is often something I ask lot of people I meet across mm-hmm.
Conferences, but what role do mentorship plays in your, played in your entire journey and how can a new budding student can approach for mentorship?
Dr. Anwesha Sarkar: Yeah, just the rule of approaching is just approach like, you know close your eyes and jumping the, it is the same approach. I always took that approach.
I like, you know, as I told you, my first mentor was my mom till, till my bachelor's. Like I didn't take like, you know, in India, you know, this there is this culture of. Or going to a tutor. I never did that. So, yeah. So it was my mom till that point. After that, when I joined, I went to my address.
My faculty members female faculty members I think her name was Mila. So she was a very good mentor to me. Like whatever problem I had, I always used to go to her and take solution. Mainly she, because she just joined when we started our masters, so I kind of felt comfortable doing that.
I went to male faculties and approached them in the same way. There was a famous, very famous guy and I couldn't understand anything. He was teaching. I just went and said that, that I cannot like I don't know if, like, you know, if it's me, but I cannot understand anything that you are saying. So it's always like I approached the male and female mentors the same way.
It always worked in my favor. Because sitting on something is just not me. Like, and it like, you know, if you like, you know, if someone is sitting on something, it's not gonna ill good results in good time. And it's gonna make you more tense and anxious. Yeah. For no reason. So I just close my eyes and always approach my mentors, whether it's my and mentorship plays a very, very good role.
I. Learn from my collaborators and mentors. You know, collaboration are just like that. So you approach, say you meet a go to a conference, you approach 40 different faculties and 10 of them write to like, know you write back, and then four of the project starts and two of them will actually lead to good papers.
So, you know, I always jump closing my eyes and I always learn from my collaborators. I always talk like when I get back, well, this person is doing this thing. I wish I have hard or his quality, this quality, okay. So I, it's always like, you know, you are absorbing as is sponge. So trying to take everything in it does play.
A mentorship does play a long or like, you know, very, very good role. For example, in institute of my physics, one of my seniors, I was, I was a theoretical physicist, he told me something, one line that changed my entire direction. So I went to actually like, you know, experimental physics, started thinking about experimental physics.
Pretty late. I was that person who is sitting in a corner with their, their math book because they're good at math and they're combining math and physics. So I was that person. But this guy. Changed my direction of and he was my super senior, so he was like, you know he was almost finishing his PhD and he said something that kind of made me think, okay, I can do experimental physics too.
Yeah. So yeah, mentorship like it plays everything. So try to ask around you know, for future women Asian women who are coming to stem. Please ask around, please talk to people. Women are like very good at communication compared to the male counterparts. So yeah, use that like, you know, jump, jump, closing your eyes and approach people.
It, it, it'll be good. The result will be marvelous, I promise you.
Mansi: Okay. Yeah, we take away the jump in any situation. Yeah. Jump into it. Okay. And then kind of what do you perceive the progress so far? So I know you talked a little bit before mm-hmm. The uc progress, but then mm-hmm. Are there any particular changes you would like to see, you know within the progress we are making?
Dr. Anwesha Sarkar: Yeah, I would like to see, you know, as I said, I would like to see, like, you know, approaching a female and male student equally. Lot of academia faculty members in academia, they're already doing that. But I would like to see an overall effect. I, again, I say it like, you know, it doesn't depend how you approach what you think.
What, what are your precon, conservations notions about women in STEM are. Like, you know what your unconscious biases are, it doesn't depend on that. One single female student can change your experience, can change your preconceived notions. So as like, you know, women also have have to like, you know, get into same field.
They have to. Follow through. Like, you know, they're gonna hear and see a bunch of things but that's their like, you know, that's what they're bringing to the table. I saw one of your questions bringing to the table. So they have their unique experiences and all those things like that they have like as like Asian faculty or Asian women in stem bring those to the table.
You, you will humanize. Everything. So like, you know, your student, you will bring, you'll look at them with compassion if you see another for example when that incident happened, like, you know, and make promises to yourself. Like, you know, when I heard that faculty member saying on some female students back that, oh, I don't hire I made a promise that like, you know, if I am lucky enough to pursue like, you know, stem as a faculty, my first female student is gonna be my first graduate student is gonna be a female student, and I keep that promise.
So make, use those as a fool and make promises to yourself. Follow through no matter what. Don't, don't back down. Your experiences are your strength. Yeah.
Mansi: Yeah, absolutely. You kind of touched on my next and the last question to kind up based on, so kind of. Advice you would like to give someone who is new?
Probably a graduate student or an undergraduate female student, Asian female student coming into stem? Yeah. What would you tell them if you have to use this platform?
Dr. Anwesha Sarkar: I would like to say that you already have as women, especially Asian women in stem, where you are right now, you have already shown extreme perseverance.
So keep, keep building, build on those experiences. You have unique qualities you like, you know, just push through. Don't, don't listen to, and it's very happy, like, you know, it's very like, you know, important to be happy at your work. So make sure that you have, you are happy. So like, you know, if you are not, sometimes, like as Asian women, we don't have a backup plan.
Like, you know, we don't have any backup plan at any point because we are just okay pushing through from the get go. And so yeah, if you, if you are pursuing. Like, just pursue, like don't, don't quit, don't like, you know, push through. Like, you know, if it's a new day, it's a new day. Just start from there.
Like, you know, use what you have, start where you are, those kind of things. And because it's very important to be happy at your work. I. It'll be like, your productivity will be marvelous if you do it that way. So make sure like, you know, you surround yourself with happy and confident people, men and women, both.
Because the reason is because they will be so busy in their life. Constructively that they will never stand in your way or never drag you down. They, they can only add value to your life. Absolutely. I understood that like throughout this years, that it's very important too because like, I'm a super happy person.
Either I'm happy or I'm angry, why I am not happy. So like, you know, I have, I need to be happy to do my work and it kind of follows through. Like, you know my productivity is higher if I'm happy. So make sure you have those people. In terms of mentors, in terms of friends, in terms of spouses so or like, you know, parent parents are like, you cannot choose your parents, but your parents are, will support you.
So yeah, surround yourself with those people. Like, you know, our, we don't choose our support system. Our support system kind of chooses us. Yes. So yeah, make sure like you have those kind of people. Confident and happy in their own life. Yeah. And they will add value. They will never, they will never tell you what to do, what not to do.
They will believe in you and what you want to do. Yeah. Yeah.
Mansi: Absolutely. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for that advice. I think that, At it applies to me as well because I'm a graduate student still working through my master's. Yeah. Thank you so much and you give such a positive vibe. Anisha, it was so good to talking to you for last 30 minutes.
Thank you so much for your time and if you have any questions, please lemme know. You can email me time. Gimme one second.