Teksti Ulla Veirto, kuvat Heidi Strengell
What brings an Egyptian chemistry student to Finland? Heavy metal and a PhD in pharmaceutical chemistry. At the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, Mai Soliman learned one key lesson: follow inspiring work, not journal prestige.
What’s up? What are you working on these days?
I am writing my first PhD related manuscript. It is going well! It is almost ready to be submitted, and I have started working on the experimental part.
Right now, I am trying to optimize my chemical reactions more. I am working with nanoluciferases to label glycoproteins on the cell surface. So far, the kinetics have been slow, and there have been non-specific interactions.
Recently, you took part in the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting for young chemists. What was your biggest takeaway?
Journal prestige does not matter. According to one laureate, about half of the work that won Nobel prizes in chemistry in the past 25 years was not published in a super prestigious journal.
Many laureates urged researchers to follow inspiring work and take risks. They warned against staying in one place out of comfort, stressing the importance of finding mentors who share your values and interests.
Mentorship was a huge concept that was stressed by laureates, as most of them were greatly influenced by their own past mentors, who pushed them to do work or think about doing work that eventually would lead to the Nobel prize.
What surprised you the most?
How daring and blunt Nobel laureates were to talk about hard topics that are often avoided, like politics, discrimination, equity, healthcare, diplomacy, climate change and so on.
If you think back to the history of chemistry, who’s your hero?
Currently, because I am working with bioorthogonal chemistry, my heroes would be Carolyn Bertozzi and Morten Meldal. I was very happy to meet Meldal in Lindau. More generally it would be Peter Agre, who discovered aquaporins. This discovery has greatly advanced our understanding of a variety of infectious diseases, such as malaria.
What made you choose Finland?
Heavy metal. When I was a freshman in my BSc at Alexandria University, I discovered a small Finnish metal band, Dark Sarah. I’ve been following Finnish metal bands ever since.
When I saw the call for a PhD position in Finland, I of course thought about the project and future opportunities, but I also thought it would be pretty cool to attend the Raskasta Joulua concert for four years straight.
”Interdisciplinarity in science is extremely important, otherwise you will have blind spots.”
If you were a tool or piece of lab equipment, what would you be?
An electronic lab notebook. You can document your experience, along with the laboratory inventory, and you can crosslink all the data and what is happening inside the lab.
Besides my PhD, I help my colleagues with their experiments and data analysis frequently. I also take care of our group’s inventory in terms of materials and chemicals.
Tell us about your team — what’s it like to work together?
My team is quite interdisciplinary, we have pharmacists, chemists, biologists, engineers, and material scientists. Every person is able to provide a different perspective on scientific aspects.
I think interdisciplinarity in science is extremely important, otherwise you will have blind spots. For impactful research, all sides must be considered, as the research question must be quite robust. My colleagues are quite nice and helpful, and I like working with them.
My supervisor, Shiqi Wang, supports me and follows up quite frequently with all our work. My mentor, Timo Laaksonen, provides me both technical and work-life balance related advice.
Can you see yourself living and working in Finland longer?
I don’t know what the future brings. Helsinki has grown on me, and it is always nice to go back to the quite and green after a conference somewhere else. I would be happy to work there longer. But I do not dwell on the future too much for now.
Read also Mai Soliman’s article:
