Finding My Own Way in Science

Milka Kostic

One of the first scientific projects that I remember attempting to do was during a summer school break between grades 6 and 7. I just completed my first year of physics classes and fell madly in love with basic principles that govern our physical reality. What puzzled me greatly, and led me to spend my summer days hunting through pages of an encyclopedia for information on mass of planets in the solar system and their distance from the sun, was the nature of the gravitational force. Why was gravitational force only attractive? They must have made a mistake, there must be a way to prove that it can also be repulsive, and I spent some considerable effort calculating gravitational forces between the sun and the planets in the hope I would discover something that others have missed. Needless to say, I failed; but, I did get really good at multiplying and dividing really large numbers as all my calculations were done by hand (I did not get my first calculator until high school)!

Milka Kostic, Ph.D.
Cancer Biology
Program Director, Chemical Biology. Photo by Sam Ogden.

After reading this, you may think that I grew up to be a physicist or that I gave up. But I did neither. I became a chemist, and I remain one to this day. One of the most impactful things that happened to me in Grade 7 was my chemistry class. Although I loved, and continue to admire physics, there was no looking back once chemistry entered my life. I quickly became so good at it that my chemistry teacher gave me the keys of our school lab and permission to experiment on my own. And I took a full advantage of it!

None of my experiments was earth shattering, and to my credit, school shattering.  But I enjoyed the hands-on experiments nevertheless. I remember heating up some potassium permanganate, a sort of silverish-purplish looking crystals, collecting the gas that this reaction would release, and showing that it was oxygen by bringing a smoldering piece of wood close to it and observing the flames flare up. Those were magical moments of discovery, and in chemistry I found my one true scientific love. And from the time I was 13 to the time I was 33, I spent most of my days thinking about chemistry, biochemistry, biophysics as well as doing the research in these areas.

During those twenty years, many things changed. I graduated high school, the country I was born in, Yugoslavia, fell apart in a tragic civil war, I finished college and master’s studies, survived NATO-led bombing of Serbia, then moved to another continent where I completed graduate school followed by my postdoctoral studies.

My graduate research at Brandeis University, done in the Professor Thomas C. Pochapsky’s laboratory, focused on using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to study proteins, and I carried this interest into my postdoctoral work.  In graduate school I focused on bacterial processes, more specifically proteins involved in helping bacteria use weird things, like camphor, as their sole energy source. During my postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Professors Peter E. Wright and H. Jane Dyson, at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA, I turned my attention to human proteins involved in cancer, especially proteins that regulate tumor suppressor p53, the most frequently mutated protein in cancer. I studied one protein that destabilizes p53 by marking it for degradation, an E3 ubiquitin ligase called Mdm2 (Hdm2 in humans), and another that lends p53 a helping hand and protects its structural integrity, a chaperone protein called Hsp90.

I was making discoveries. I was publishing my research results. I was enjoying research. But somewhere along the way, I lost my passion for doing science, and I found myself facing a real conundrum. On one hand, I had invested majority of my life to studying and doing science with a clear expectation that I would continue along the same track; however, doing scientific research no longer sparked joy. This was partly because I found bench research to be routine and repetitive, but mostly because I began to realize that I preferred not to focus on a single narrowly defined area of science but preferred to think broadly.

There are numerous ways to contribute to scientific discovery, including through working to improve scientific literacy and public perception of science, advocating for the role of science in policy making, improving scientific process, funding and publishing.

There was only one thing to do – admit that I needed change and pivot from research and discovery into something else that would allow me to stay intimately involved with science but not have to do it myself. More by accident than design, I stumbled across a career path in the world of scientific publishing. I became the Editor of two journals, one that focuses on structural biology called “Structure” and the other with the focus on chemical biology called “Cell Chemical Biology”, and served the two communities in that role for a decade. Being the editor was an incredible opportunity to shape the thinking in the two fields, and promote standards for high-quality, rigorous science. As the editor, I also had a pleasure of meeting hundreds of scientists, handling more than ten thousand manuscripts and publishing thousands of interesting scientific stories. Moreover, this position gave me visibility and empowered me to advocate for the two fields and their power to transform biological sciences and deeper molecular understanding of biology.

Recently, my adventures in science took another turn. I left my editorial path to go back to academic science where I now provide strategic framework and support for a program with more than 100 scientists who are using chemical ingenuity to tackle cancer. I help others shine, and I am paying it forward!

What I learned during my tenure as the scientific editor, and what I continue to appreciate now is that love of science and commitment to making scientific discoveries can take many shapes and lead one down diverse range of paths. The best advice I can give to anyone, no matter what career stage they are at, is to keep an open mind about different types of opportunities and to be honest about personal preferences and aptitudes. There are numerous ways to contribute to scientific discovery, including through working to improve scientific literacy and public perception of science, advocating for the role of science in policy making, improving scientific process, funding and publishing.

Despite the nonlinear, less unusual path through science I took, I remain a scientist, a chemist looking to accomplish the next big transformation, except that the transformations I am working on these days are not confined to a flask. My efforts are aimed at transforming the culture of science through re-thinking how we train and support the next generation of scientists, and through building a more just and inclusive scientific ecosystem that revolves not only around ideas of research excellence, but wellness and respect of others as well. And for that I will need a bigger flask, and maybe a hot plate and a stir bar!