Beyond Lab Walls | Salk Institute

Joseph Swift is a postdoctoral researcher in Professor Joseph Ecker's lab at Salk, but has recently launched his own start-up called CropDiagnostix. Inspired by his parents, Swift has always embraced “crazy” choices—leading him to leave Australia to study plant genomics in New York City then San Diego. In this episode, you'll hear about everything from the microscopic similarities between plants and humans, to what it's like road-tripping with a car full of potatoes.

Jeff Jones is a staff scientist in the lab of Professor Rusty Gage. Jones' journey to science started on a dirt road in Florida and with a slew of questions about cancer. His tinkering hands and inquisitive mind led him to study life's basic building blocks to uncover how, why, and when our cells age—and whether we can prevent age-related dysfunction.

Beginning as a spark stirred by rainy day boredom in Galicia, Spain and encouraged by wanting to understand her grandfather's brain tumor, Irene Lopéz Gutiérrez became a neuroscientist. Now, she's a postdoctoral researcher in Professor Susan Kaech's immunology lab—searching for answers about Alzheimer's disease in the exciting new field of neuroimmunology.

Things are changing in Alzheimer's research. We've got new tools and new ideas, and we want you to know about them. To kick off Salk's “Year of Alzheimer's,” hear how our scientists are bringing us closer to a more modern and personalized landscape of Alzheimer's diagnosis, treatment, and prevention.

Kay Watt was not a scientist when she arrived in the remote jungles of Panama, assigned to help coffee farmers protect their plants from environmental harm. When she returned from the Peace Corps, she'd learned that driving change was a science in and of itself. Hear how the experience motivated Kay to become a plant geneticist and program manager, supporting the fight against climate change through Salk's Harnessing Plants Initiative.

"What are the things that cause cancer in people? Can we prevent cancer?" These are the questions Assistant Professor Daniel Hollern is asking in his research at Salk. From blending spices and vinegar on his kitchen floor growing up in Michigan to blending computational biology and immunology on the lab bench in San Diego, learn about Hollern's life and scientific journey in this episode of "Beyond Lab Walls."

How can an infection in your lungs have such a lasting effect on your brain? Lara Labarta-Bajo, a postdoctoral researcher in Associate Professor Nicola Allen's lab, studies how the immune system and the brain communicate with each other. Her latest findings reveal a surprising relationship between infections, brain aging, and mobility.

Did you know each of your cells contains a six-foot-long strand of DNA? In a miraculous feat of molecular origami, your genome can fold itself into a tightly packed structure that fits into the tiny space of a cell's nucleus. Hear how Assistant Professor Jesse Dixon combines his scientific and medical training to unravel the rules of DNA folding and explain how a single misplaced bend or loop can lead to diseases like cancer.

Jake Minich is a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Research Professor Todd Michael. Minich had a long and winding journey to Salk, crossing continents and oceans to land in sunny San Diego studying microbial ecology. Combining his childhood joy of fishing and a passion for community, Minich is working to alleviate or prevent the burden of undernutrition in low- and middle-income countries.

Laura Mainz is a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Professor Jan Karlseder. Always curious about the human body, her father's cancer diagnosis inspired a career in cancer biology. In this episode, we learn about Mainz's journey from Germany to California, the science of stopping cancer before it starts, and how researchers cope with such emotionally draining lab work.

In the first year of her new life attending university in Montréal, Research Professor Pamela Maher made a fateful switch from political science to the biological sciences. On this episode of Beyond Lab Walls, Maher recounts how the science major girl-next-dorm inspired her flourishing career studying age-related neurodegeneration and diseases like Alzheimer's—and how we could potentially treat them with plant derivatives.

Salk Fellow Talmo Pereira first learned to code in his hometown in Brazil as a way to improve his video gaming. His lab now uses artificial intelligence (AI) to track complex motion in video data. Hear how he's using these tools to study how the brain coordinates body movements to produce complex behaviors, how plant root systems sequester carbon, and how humans and animals behave during health and disease.

Natanella Illouz-Eliaz is a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Professor Joseph Ecker. A plant biologist by training, she studies how plants recover from drought conditions. On this episode of Beyond Lab Walls, Illouz-Eliaz recounts how her life plan went from business to biology—all because of a tomato field.