Tag: BCM

Biology is special that way, [with real success often arriving in mid- or even late-career, after a few false starts and fruitless sidetracks]. It takes years for people to get a feeling for the organism—for how nature actually works. Young people come in all the time knowing a bunch of fancy math. They say, ‘What if it’s like this computational model, this physical problem?’ They’re terrific ideas, but they’re wrong. Nothing works the way you think it should.

David Eagleman, aforementioned graduate student, now running his own lab. Presumably with a few bags of potatoes stashed around there somewhere.
But: yep.
Source: newyorker.com

I remember, when he was writing [a computationally modeled neural tissue], he had a sack of raw potatoes under his desk. He would cook a potato in the microwave, put it in a cup, and lean over and bite it while he was typing. It kind of set the tone for my lab for the succeeding decade. It chased away the faint of heart.

Read Montague, recalling his then graduate student David Eagleman and their salad days at Baylor College of Medicine.
I spent many a formative evening which then took the form of seemingly endless years at BCM earning this very same degree. But let’s just say I never saw a sack of potatoes under anyone’s bench. And not because I wasn’t looking.
But: every thesis adviser thinks this way. So you know.
Source: newyorker.com