2023-06-12 15:11:47
Sitting on the edge of her seat, Elles Raaijmakers tells enthusiastically about it Santiago Ramon y Cajal – “possibly the most beautiful story in the history of neurobiology” – who went from being the odd one out to ‘the father of neuroscience’. To clarify why Raaijmakers researched electrical currents and brain cells, she delved into the history of brain research and came across numerous recognizable stories. What did her especially good was that she saw that it had not all come naturally to the big names in the field.
“It sometimes seems as if they had a brilliant idea, experimented a bit and immediately came up with an innovative theory, but nothing could be further from the truth. I encountered long stretches of struggle, such as Andrew Huxley and Alan Hodgkin, who eventually received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their description of the action potential. So that started with years of muddling through, discoveries they couldn’t explain and colleagues in the field who didn’t understand their out-of-the-box ideas. Still, they went for it and finally succeeded. And that gave me hope. Not everyone who struggles has to drop out, a message I like to pass on to fellow students instead of shoving it under the table.”
Control
Because Raaijmakers’ PhD trajectory didn’t go smoothly either, to put it mildly. “As a recent graduate you usually throw yourself full of enthusiasm into your project, everything seems possible. But gradually you find out that what your promoter calls ‘low-hanging fruit’ is often a lot more complex in practice. The focus is very strong on success and performance. You depend on people around you, and sometimes you get into one unnoticed flow rightly where you don’t support at all when you look around you. I felt that I had lost control of my research. A new supervision team gave me the space to take back control, so I can now rightfully say that this is my thesis.”
Exhaust valve
Because of her struggles to give it a place, Raaijmakers found an outlet in comic strip drawing. She has been busy with pencil and paper since her high school days, she also cared for Cursor for years a weekly strip. During the long train journeys – she conducted part of her experiments at the University of Amsterdam, her project was a collaboration between the two universities – she shrugged off her frustrations and inspirations. But gradually became her doodles increasingly a help as to why she did the experiments she did.
“Fairly early in my PhD trajectory, an opportunity presented itself to strengthen the teaching team. I grabbed that opportunity with both hands, the combination of research and education makes my heart beat faster. I gave subject-support education for a number of years, and only then do you discover how important it is to transfer knowledge properly. I noticed that the ‘why’ of research often remains underexposed, even though it can bring it closer to people. In the words of Ionica Smeets (professor of Science Communication and Society at Leiden University and known for her popular science columns, ed.), of whom I am a big fan: science communication is still too often a monologue, we need more talk to each other.”
#Research #comic #form #brain #power