The Baker Lab Podcast

Doing research over the summer as an undergraduate is a great way to experience what life is like as a scientist. In this episode, you’ll hear from students who visited us last summer to advance computational and laboratory experiments. The podcast team’s very own Nathan Greenwood also shares his story from a summer student to a mentor. // This podcast was produced at the Institute for Protein Des...

As a new professor with a newborn, Parisa suffered a stroke that left her unable to walk or talk. She leaned on love and stubbornness to recover her voice, raise her child, lead her lab, and even run a 5k foot trace. This episode traces her remarkable journey from growing up in Iran to starting a lab at the University of Oregon, and from sudden setbacks to lasting resilience. // This podcast was p...

When is it time to walk away from a research project? For Linna, it happened after a year of frustrating experiments — when her PhD advisor helped her reframe what it means to do science well. In this episode, Linna traces her path from chemistry student to computational biologist. Now ready to mentor others, she will soon lead a research lab of her own as a new professor. We explore how machine l...

What happens when a kid who sketches dinosaurs grows up to reimagine biology? In this episode, postdoctoral scholar Arvind Pillai traces his unexpected path from paleoart to designing proteins that change shape on command. Along the way, he reflects on the sting of academic rejection, the joy of discovery, and how online debates with creationists sharpened his view of evolution. Arvind’s story exp...

Launching UW’s first iGEM team changed the course of Ingrid’s career. Her team built an enzyme to digest gluten that took first place in the biotech competition — and fueled a new company. Hear Ingrid explain what it takes to translate scientific breakthroughs into real products and companies. // This podcast was produced at the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington School o...

Yuliya Politanska’s path to science began with onion cells and a microscope in her hometown of Chernivtsi, Ukraine. As a teen, she moved to the U.S. and grew comfortable speaking English only after propping a dictionary right next to her textbooks. Now a third-year PhD student in the lab, Yuliya is designing custom proteins that bind to DNA to control how cells behave—work that could one day help...

Centuries ago, explorers set sail across vast oceans. Today, scientists like Alexis Courbet are navigating uncharted waters at the nanoscale. As a researcher at the Institute for Protein Design, Alexis is building molecular machines unlike any seen before—creating nanoscale sensors and protein-based rotors that move with atomic precision. Whether designing molecules or mapping out his next mountai...

Winning a Nobel Prize is a rare and extraordinary achievement—but what happens behind the scenes? In this episode, David Baker takes us inside his journey to Stockholm, from preparing his Nobel lecture to delivering it on science’s biggest stage. Hear clips from practice talks, reflections from trainees who were there, and David’s thoughts on what the prize really means. But that’s only half the s...

Jeremiah Sims is trying to stop the next pandemic. As an MD/PhD trainee with a deep passion for public health, his research with David Baker focuses on outsmarting viruses. But there's more to Jeremy than lab work. When he's not creating new antivirals, he's making music and building up Black communities. In this episode, hear how Jeremy faced down racism in school, found his path into medical res...

Susana Vazquez Torres embodies courage. Born in Mexico, she moved to a big city to study science — and then crossed continents twice to advance her studies. Unfamiliar cultures, language barriers, and imposter syndrome were all part of her journey. But with support from labmates and others, Susana found her footing and joined the Baker Lab for her PhD studies. Here, she’s used AI to create antitox...

Born a Palestinian refugee, Mohamad Abedi didn’t have the luxury of exploring science as a kid. But at 17, when he unexpectedly immigrated to the United States, he discovered that learning could be a creative and transformative process. This led him to pursue degrees in biomedical engineering and eventually to his current research on cellular communication and drug development as a postdoctoral sc...

Your front-row seat to the human side of science. Music by Kevin MacLeod ( incompetech.com ). Licensed under CC BY 3.0 .