Dr. Aya Osman
Postdoctoral Fellow Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
PhD in Neuropharmacology University of Surrey
When Dr. Aya Osman is posing in front of a camera or walking down a runway, her creativity is in full gear, just as it is when she’s writing about science or designing an experiment. A scientist and a professional model, Aya finds that these roles complement each other, sharing a common denominator in creativity. While Aya’s path in academia has not been perfectly linear, the twists and turns have augmented the experience and perspective that she brings to her current position – a postdoctoral fellow at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Aya first discovered a love for science in high school. It was the one subject she always looked forward to, and she was especially enamored by the process of designing experiments and collecting data in lab classes. In the UK, at age 16, students move on to two years of college, where they choose four topics of focus. In addition to biology and chemistry, Aya chose English and geography – English because she loved to read and write, and geography because she was deeply interested in how humans interact both with each other and with their environments. As she moved from college to university, Aya chose an undergraduate major in biomedical sciences, seeing it as several different scientific disciplines converging to understand the human body and human population.
During her time in college, Aya was also working as a model. When she was 17, a woman sitting next to her at a hair salon asked if she would be interested in doing a shoot for a new clothing line, SIKA Designs. From there she dove into professional modeling, eventually landing representation at a well-known modeling agency. However, Aya soon came to a crossroads when she started at university. Her agent was booking her for full-day castings, at the end of which she might not even get the job. Aya was finding it impossible to juggle these casting days with her demanding coursework, so she sent an email to her agent asking if they could only send her to confirmed bookings rather than castings. She laughs remembering this request, but at the time she did not realize quite how bold it was. The agency said no, and that was when Aya realized that science was her true priority. She left the agency, continuing to do some modeling but representing herself and working with the network of clients with whom she had already established relationships. Meanwhile, she focused on carving out a career in science. As she took the different modules involved in her biomedical sciences major, the neuroscience classes stuck out to her. She decided to save up money for a master’s degree.
After a year modeling and working as a manager at Abercrombie and Fitch’s new flagship location in London, Aya began a master’s (MSc) in Toxicology at the University of Surrey, excited to pursue an even deeper focus on science than she had as an undergraduate. Again, it was the neuroscience modules that interested her the most, particularly addiction and how drugs of abuse affect the brain and alter social interactions. During her three-month research project at the end of her master’s, she studied the cellular and molecular basis of cocaine addiction using a technique known as autoradiography – assessing how radioactively labeled compounds bind to certain receptors on brain sections. When the research block came to an end, Aya was sad – she had loved being at the bench. However, the path of master’s to PhD to postdoc to PI was not one she really understood at the time. Instead, she began to look for a job and landed one as a desk-based toxicologist at Public Health England (PHE). Her role here involved providing advice on the health effects of chemicals/contaminants in drinking water, land, and waste to other governmental bodies including the Environment agency as well as local authorities. At PHE, Aya also worked on publishing a guidance document on emergency preparedness in response to chemical warfare or a chemical-based terrorist attack such as anthrax.
So, at 23, Aya found herself doing interesting, meaningful policy work at a governmental level utilizing part of her toxicology training, with a comfortable salary and pension plan. This was the type of solid position that people retired from after a few decades. Even though she found the work stimulating, she did not feel as if she was ready to be settled at a life-long job. Remembering how much she had loved the research aspect of her MSc training, she reached out to her master’s research advisor, Dr. Alexis Bailey, and asked him to keep an eye out for a PhD position for her. Coincidentally, he soon received external funding for a new project. After an interview, Aya landed the job and began her PhD with a prestigious training grant from the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), leaving her governmental job with a pension for a €13K stipend and no job security. “You trust your instincts and trust what makes you feel good. […] I knew that this was what I was passionate about,” Aya remembers. The money did not matter as much when she was excited to go to lab each day.
During her PhD, Aya studied early-life manipulations in diet and how resulting changes in the gut microbiome could affect brain development. Specifically, she was observing differences in the gut’s response to maternal and bovine milk. While other young mammals stop drinking milk at weaning, human children often continue to drink milk after they finish breastfeeding. Aya hypothesized that this might be detrimental – that the opioids and active peptides in milk might affect the development of the brain’s opioid receptors, which in turn might affect the brain’s ability to regulate mood. She found that post-weaning exposure to milk containing A1 β-casein significantly increases a stress response in rats, and this behavioral effect coincides with changes to the gut microbiome as well as the brain’s opioid and oxytocin receptors. As Aya neared the end of her PhD, Alexis suggested that she look for a postdoc in New York City. Aya was confused, as he had spoken openly about the rough time he himself had had as a postdoc at Rockefeller. But he was convinced that Aya’s interests outside the lab would keep her balanced in a way that he had not been. Still skeptical, Aya took a trip to New York after getting an offer from a lab at Mt. Sinai. She fell in love. Alexis had been right – New York felt like a perfect fit.
Aya is now a Seaver Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Dr. Drew Kiraly’s lab, where she is continuing to study the gut-brain axis. She is particularly interested in how the Shank3 gene might be involved in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Mutations in Shank3 lead to Phelan-McDermid syndrome, a common cause of ASD. Aya uses a mouse model to study how a Shank3 mutation dysregulates the gut microbiome and how the altered metabolites released by those gut bacteria can in turn act on the brain. She is also assessing the immune profile of the gut and how an altered microbiome might act through the immune system to alter behavior. Still interested in addiction from her master’s degree, Aya is also pursuing a second project examining the mechanisms by which resveratrol – a polyphenol found in grapes and other plants – modulates morphine addiction.
While her visa prevents her from making money as a model during her postdoc, Aya is still active in the modeling world, doing test shoots or modeling for free to build up her portfolio. She has always felt that it gives her something to look forward to whenever science is moving slowly. Her other main outlet beyond the lab is science communication. While she had always enjoyed the process of describing her research to her immediate family of non-scientists, the pandemic led Aya to dive into scicomm with a special purpose. She found that there was one thing that helped her battle the onslaught of fear and anxiety: information. Armed with the skills of reading scientific literature, distilling data, and reporting it directly and simplistically, Aya began to share reputable COVID-19 information through her Instagram stories (@yes_iya), combatting the pervasive sensationalism of the media with clearly presented peer-reviewed data. As the pandemic continues to rage, Aya continues to read, distill, and repost. She particularly hopes the data she shares reaches Black and Brown communities, which from the beginning have been hit the hardest due to pervasive structural racism. Because her family fits into this category, the disparities in risk and access to care have hit close to home. “That is how I find time and energy for it – it’s personal to me,” Aya says.
As a Black woman in science, Aya has spent her education and training in white-dominated spaces. She now has found a Black female mentor at her institution who understands the unique challenges of navigating these spaces, but Aya recognizes that it would have been impactful to have found a similar mentor at an earlier career stage. Now, when she sees new PhD students from minoritized backgrounds around Mt. Sinai, Aya reaches out to them as a mentor. Undoubtedly, Aya is an incredible source of inspiration not only to these students who know her personally, but also to anyone who can relate to her academic journey. Whether she is imaging a brain section, using an Instagram image to explain COVID-19, or adding images to her modeling portfolio, Aya approaches life and science with a passion and creativity that anyone would aspire to.
Listen to Catie’s full interview with Aya on May 28th, 2021 below or wherever you get your podcasts!
