Dr. Asma Bashir
Postdoctoral Fellow UK Dementia Research Institute
PhD in Neuroscience University of British Columbia
“What am I going to do?!” Dr. Asma Bashir once said to her Neuroscience 101 professor, asking him whether she should just forget all her dreams of studying psychology. Her professor replied yes, she should certainly consider it. Since high school, Asma had had her mind set on studying the psychological basis of behavior. She was well on her way towards completing her psychology major at Boston University when she took Neuroscience 101 to fill a general science requirement. Asma felt immediately passionate about the subject – she was “sucked into the world of neuroscience” and into the intricate biological basis of behavior. Recognizing her incredible enthusiasm, her professor Dr. Paul Lipton encouraged Asma to expand her dreams to include neuroscience. Ultimately, she took his advice and applied to neuroscience PhD programs after completing her undergraduate degree.
Asma not only switched fields but also moved countries, choosing to do her PhD at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Particularly interested in the cellular and molecular mechanisms at play after traumatic brain injury (TBI), Asma joined the lab of Dr. Cheryl Wellington. The Wellington lab had previously developed a non-surgical rodent model of TBI, which they named CHIMERA for Closed-Head Impact Model of Engineered Rotational Acceleration. CHIMERA was an improvement upon other common models in that it more faithfully captured some of the biomechanical aspects of human TBI. However, there was one key issue. The new model did not induce vascular damage, which is a key component of TBI in humans and which likely leads to many of the devastating cognitive consequences of injury. Thus, for her PhD, Asma created a version of the CHIMERA model in which there was blood-brain barrier leakage and long-term memory deficits. She also discovered that her model induced elevated blood levels of tau – a molecule implicated in Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias – after a single injury, suggesting tau might be a biomarker for injury severity in human TBI patients. While her work ultimately had important clinical implications, Asma was simply following her passion and curiosity when she started her graduate career, not necessarily thinking about the broader impact of the work she was doing. When it came time to write her comprehensive exam (analogous to “quals”), as she put together the grant proposal, Asma was forced to consider the significance of what she was proposing for her thesis work. She remembers being hit with the realization, “my work could actually do something bigger than me.” This thought became a new source of motivation.
Research is not the only way in which Asma has created something bigger than herself. One night during grad school, Asma had a dream in which she was host of her own podcast. When she woke up in the morning, she decided to make the dream a reality. Asma knew that, because of her race and religion, she was experiencing the world of research differently than her labmates and others in her cohort. Her podcast – Her Royal Science – was thus born from a desire to create for herself a community of other scientists from minoritized groups: people who might be better able to understand her own experience in STEM. Each episode, Asma welcomes a new scientist into this community she has created, talking with them about their science and their stories. While the podcast episodes focus on the interviewee, Asma takes the time after each episode to reflect on its themes and revelations. She composes a journal-style post, publishing these reflections on the Her Royal Science blog.
With a newly minted doctorate and the first season of Her Royal Science complete, Asma moved to Edinburgh, Scotland to start a postdoctoral fellowship at the UK Dementia Research Institute studying the interaction of astrocytes and blood vessels in disease. After experiencing the research culture in three different countries, Asma finds a noticeable distinction in the expectations surrounding work-life balance. While in the US and Canada it is common to work weekends, send and receive work emails at all hours, and take very few vacation days, the culture in the UK seems generally more respectful of scientists’ lives outside of the lab. Asma appreciates this, as she does not want to lose herself in her research. “I was a fully formed human being before I fell in love with this world [of neuroscience research],” she explains. This focus on scientists as whole human beings – of whom research is just a part – is also particularly evident in Asma’s podcast. Her insightful questions and incredible warmth help the interviewees open up, revealing their distinct personalities as they tell their stories.
Outside of the lab, Asma writes and performs spoken-word poetry and always makes time – even before COVID-19 – to video chat with friends across the world. It is evident from her podcast as well as how she fills her free time that a theme of human connection runs throughout Asma’s life and science. On Her Royal Science, Asma expresses her belief that “each person is an amalgamation of all of the experiences they've had, and most of those experiences involve people.” In other words, it is our interactions with others that over time shape who we are as scientists and individuals. Through both her impactful science and by cultivating these personal connections, Asma is undoubtedly influencing the lives of those in her life and in the Her Royal Science community.
Check out the Her Royal Science podcast here.
Listen to Catie’s full interview with Asma on August 19th, 2020 below or wherever you get your podcasts!
