Dr. Letisha Wyatt
Assistant Professor Department of Neurology, Oregon Health & Science University
Postdoctoral Fellow Legacy Research Institute
PhD in Molecular Pharmacology & Toxicology University of Southern California
Dr. Letisha Wyatt often felt like she had blinders on for much of her journey through neuroscience. As the first in her family to go to college, let alone graduate school, Letisha didn’t have the guidance or support that many of her fellow students had; instead, she had to forge ahead and chart her own path. She excelled in her PhD and a postdoc doing neuropharmacology work that was both enjoyable and impactful, yet she had to overcome hurdles - as a first-generation student, and as a Black woman - that many of her colleagues did not. But today, as the Director of Diversity in Research and an Assistant Professor at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), she is working to change the field for the future generations.
Letisha’s introduction to neuroscience was pure happenstance. When she decided that she no longer wanted to pursue a pre-med track and needed to declare a new undergraduate major, she selected neurobiology out of a general fascination in the connection between brain function and human behavior. Luckily, it turned out to be a fortuitous choice. She loved her courses, and her lab courses in particular. This led her to consider pursuing an advanced degree in neuroscience and a research career. However, working full-time to pay her way through college did not leave her with any time for additional, unpaid research opportunities. So after graduation, she decided to take a two-year gap period before applying to graduate schools in order to gain some additional research experience.
Ultimately, the research experiences that Letisha acquired between her undergraduate and PhD would be more formative for her future career path than she could ever have anticipated. Letisha spent two years in San Francisco, working full-time as a data and project manager overseeing clinical trials of new pharmaceutical therapies. With her remaining time, she volunteered in neuroscience and pharmacology labs at UCSF, learning electrophysiology and studying how muscles work. Even though she ultimately hoped to pursue a different line of neuropharmacology research that aligned more closely with her root interests in addictive behaviors, these experiences bolstered her conviction to go to graduate school. Meanwhile, in her full-time clinical research work, she acquired valuable skills in rigorous standardization and data management practices that would ultimately become a centerpoint of her future career.
Letisha initially felt wholly unprepared as she began her PhD program at University of Southern California, but she eventually settled in and followed her dreams of studying the neurobiological basis of addiction. Her thesis research in the lab of Dr. Daryl Davies focused on the role of purinergic receptors - a particular class of ion channels - in alcohol addiction. She developed a purinergic receptor knockout mouse line and found that the knockout mice exhibited a number of intriguing differences in alcohol drinking, as well as in social communication and sensorimotor behaviors. This proved to be a fruitful PhD project that yielded multiple publications. But all the while, Letisha found herself constantly thinking back to her clinical research management days and noticing the stark differences between how research is conducted and shared in the world of clinical trials compared to the world of basic science research. She found the lack of standardization in the academic space perplexing and counterproductive and thought a lot about how to make science more rigorous and reproducible.
Though she still wasn’t certain what she wanted to do after completing her dissertation, Letisha decided to start a postdoctoral position at the Legacy Research Institute in Portland, Oregon. The lab focused on adenosine and adenosine kinase receptors, and she began specifically looking at their roles in brain injury and stroke. She was particularly interested in whether she could modulate adenosine to protect the brain from stroke or even regenerate areas of damage. While she was excited about her work and loved the freedom and independence that came with being a postdoc, she felt that her primary passion was for improving the environment of academic research, both in terms of reproducibility and equity. Fatefully, she happened to meet a woman who was an academic librarian at OHSU - essentially a “basic science liaison” between the university library and the basic science researchers. Letisha was captivated by the prospect of being able to work in an academic setting among basic science research, but with a focus on helping other researchers do their science better. When that same woman moved on to a new position, Letisha applied for her job - and got it.
Today, Letisha is still at OHSU, but her position has shifted. She is now an Assistant Professor of Neurology in the School of Medicine, as well as the Director of Diversity in Research in the Department of Research and Innovation. In this role, Letisha is focused broadly on issues of equity in research. Her work still incorporates her expertise and commitment to open and reproducible science - after all, Letisha points out that “open science is an equity issue”. She also works closely with OHSU’s graduate programs, admissions committees, and upper-level administration on hiring decisions, DEI programs, and other ways of improving the experiences of those in or seeking to enter the academic space. In this role, Letisha helped found the Alliance for Visible Diversity in Science, a student-led advocacy group at OHSU. This group has presented a proposal to their institution’s administration with concrete actions for restructuring and refocusing DEI efforts that is currently being piloted on campus.
While Letisha finds her equity work incredibly rewarding, she is keenly aware of how far academic institutions still have to go to become truly welcoming, inclusive places. “I do a lot of equity work out of necessity for my own sense of belonging...building communities that I need to persist.” Letisha hopes that more people will start to share accountability and the burden of that work, and that institutions will value and reward it appropriately (e.g., as a factor in tenure decisions!). Even more, she wants people and institutions to be more willing to engage in potentially difficult conversations about race and its intersections with gender, sexual orientation, and other identities, instead of talking about all forms of equity as if they are interchangeable. Still, she is encouraged by how the conversation has evolved over the last year and hopes that it will continue to grow. In the meantime, Letisha is already having a tangible impact on making science more open and inclusive - both in terms of accessibility and reproducibility, and in welcoming and supporting its diverse participants.
Find out more about Letisha’s exciting work here.
Listen to Nancy’s full interview with Letisha on March 24th, 2021 below or wherever you get your podcasts!
