New directions
I’m now a few weeks into a new job at the University of Pennsylvania working in the lab of a cardiologist. This lab is primarily interested in examining the potential for stem cells (both originating in bone marrow and those residing in heart tissue) to repair failing heart muscle in adult humans. The idea is that with a better understanding of how these stem cells participate in cardiac repair, it might be possible to manipulate this system to better handle the high volume cardiac cell death that happens in many heart diseases. The power of this type of medical intervention is that it could have much better implications for the patient compared to, for instance, a heart transplant where the patient has to deal with potential rejection of the transplanted tissue and the side effects of taking immunosuppressive drugs.
It’s certainly a change of pace from my post-doc experience in several ways, but I’ll spare those details. So far I have found that this new experience is a good mixture of cool hands-on tasks which I have acquired and more theoretical thinking-type activities, such as assessing and re-vamping the cell isolation set-up and protocol.
I will only be in this position until I move back to Ontario at the end of the summer when I will take a lecturing position in the Kinesiology program offered jointly by University of Guelph and Humber College. In the Guelph-Humber position I will teach 2 courses in the fall term (Biochemistry & Metabolism and Natural Health Products & Physical Activity) and 2 courses in the winter term (both are Biochemistry & Metabolism).
This choice to leave Philadelphia is both good and bad on a few different levels. From a career standpiont, I really like my current position and I can see that staying in it for longer would give some nice continuity to the job. My supervisor has also expressed that he would like for me to stay past the end of August. However, I’m also really excited about the new opportunity for me back in Ontario. I am interested in exploring the teaching side of academia and I believe that this will be a good test of the waters. I ultimately know I am really lucky to have these kinds of opportunities, especially in the current economic environment.
On a more personal level, the decision I have made to move back to Canada in the fall was really difficult. Since Nadine feels the best thing for her is to stay here in Philly to continue her post-doctoral training, it will mean that we are living apart for the next 8-12 months. My fall classes are all scheduled between Tuesday and Thursday and this will hopefully allow me to visit Philadelphia regularly, however this will still be quite an adjustment for us.
Fundamentally we both feel that this decision is a step towards me establishing an academic career in a place where we would like to settle down. In our minds this is analagous to saving money for the future in that when it comes time to make the transition back to Canada, we will have a head start. In the end it is an experiment, the results of which are unpredictable. At this point we have made our hypotheses, which we believe to be sound, and have decided on a method. Come September, the experiment will begin and we will keep a running tally on the data and tweak the details of the protocol until we can make conclusions from the results.
