|
 Aaron Joseph Villaraza taught Chemistry at the Institute of Chemistry in the University of the Philippines-Diliman for three years before he went to Great Britain in 2004 to begin his PhD studies in the School of Chemistry of the University of Manchester. From England, Aaron responded to some questions from LSEC.
LSEC: What is your research interest or field?
Aaron: “Synthesis of polyheterometallic lanthanide complexes exhibiting multiple spectroscopic signatures as potential tools for multi-modal biological imaging”
The rare earth metals, specifically the lanthanides, possess a wide variety of unique spectroscopic properties which, when incorporated into a suitable targeted molecular delivery system, can serve as “handles” to discriminate between tissue or physiological phenomena of interest with their surroundings. For example, gadolinium in the +3 oxidation state is currently employed as a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agent, a strongly paramagnetic ion which causes a dramatic shift in proton magnetic resonance in any water molecule bound to the paramagnetic centre, and thereby unambiguously discriminating it from bulk solvent molecules. Other lanthanides, such as terbium, europium and ytterbium, all in the +3 oxidation state, manifest long-lived luminescence when their excited states are populated by the triplet state of an adjacent chromophore with a large absorption cross-section, and exhibit atom-like spectra with large Stokes shifts and characteristic sharp emission lines of green, red and near infra-red, respectively. The aim of my PhD is to study and develop a variety of synthetic strategies to selectively incorporate different lanthanides into the same molecular scaffold, in order to produce a library of contrast media which exhibit multiple spectroscopic signals. Current biological imaging modalities such as PET, SPECT, MRI and bioluminescence, all require the administration (or expression) of a contrast agent, and hence necessitate multiple dosages of a whole variety of biological probes, which may perturb the physiology of the molecular event of interest, in order to generate a multi-modal image. Polyheteromettalic lanthanide complexes can serve to reduce the number of probes administered, since these complexes already exhibit multiple spectroscopic signatures.
LSEC: Why go for a graduate degree and how to best prepare for it?
Aaron: Why a graduate degree? That depends on what a person thinks of his field, or of science in general. In the course of these years I have met a variety of attitudes which I will list down. There are those who do the PhD simply because it’s another title which will give them an edge over others in the job market, be it the chemical industry or the academe. There are those who do the PhD as if it was just another job; if you are under a scholarship (or a bursary if you are in the UK) and receive a regular stipend, then as long you do your job, you have guaranteed employment for the next five years of your life. I have met some people who said that they were doing the PhD because “it was the done thing, all of my friends were doing it, so I signed up for it myself”. There are those who do the PhD because they are looking for a very specific set of skills which only years in research in a particular lab will give them, because these skills will help them achieve whatever their future goals. For example, a person may want experience in setting up a spectroscopy lab, or a synthesis lab, or may want to learn a specific technique which will make it easier for him/her to apply for the next job which is what he/she is really interested in. Lastly, there are those who are the true and honest scholars, who are just interested in science; and getting the PhD is only a natural consequence of that interest.
How to best prepare for it? That depends on how one answers the first question. The PhD experience is undoubtedly an intellectual one, but it is important to underline that it is very much an emotional experience as well. You are far away from home, and will inevitably feel intensely, morbidly homesick and lonely for the first few months. If one is not emotionally mature enough to handle it, one runs the risk of real psychological damage. I was amazed to discover how many PhD students in my university suffer from some form of depression, I had several bouts of it myself. I had a friend who suffered acutely from it, he couldn’t sleep at night, which affected his performance during the day, but he couldn’t sleep the following night, and was even worse the next day, and so on. And what kept him from spiraling down into ruin were pills and friends. Among the Filipino students I’ve met, what I’ve noticed is that the ones who always complain about missing the Philippines are the ones who suffer the most, have problems making friends, or if they find fellow suffering Filipinos they band together in their misery, which doesn’t help anyone at all, least of all themselves.
What do I suggest? A person needs to have a very open mind, which is possible only when one is clear and honest about the good things (and bad things) one possesses. Never have I felt more Filipino than when I started living in Europe, even if I don’t eat Filipino food as a matter of choice. There will be lots of adobo left when I return to the Philippines. However, the years in a foreign land are an opportunity not just to learn new ways to do science, but to learn the history of a country, the history of one’s country with respect to that of the world, to learn languages and the development of languages, to learn local customs in food, drink, clothing and religious expression which, at least here in Europe, have endured and survived thousands of years or war, famine, drought, celebration and revolution. Every time I step out into the streets of Manchester I feel like I had walked into a living encyclopedia. Manchester is the city of the Industrial Revolution, of John Dalton and Ernest Rutherford, or Marx and Engels. All the forms of transportation, even those dating back 500 years, are in use: the canals to transport coal from Durham and cotton to London and Liverpool; the trains, first introduced over 200 years ago, and the British railway system which can take you anywhere from the coast of Devon and Cornwall at the tip of the southwest to John O’Groates in the northeast, and of course the modern buses and trams, and an international airport which, thankfully, services airlines which fly direct to Hong Kong or Singapore, making my journey home a lot easier. The chemistry department alone has, in the course of the years, been home to nine Nobel Prize laureates, such as Sir Walter Haworth (Haworth projections and Vitamin C), Melvin Calvin (the Calvin cycle), and Michael Smith (single-site mutagenesis and cloning). And this is only Manchester! However, I leave chemistry at the chemistry building. Outside, there is Great Britain, the final frontier of the Roman Empire, the lands of conquest for the Normans and Anglo-Saxons and William of Orange, the centre of the empire built by individuals such as Elizabeth I and Victoria, and the Motherland of the United States of America. When people ask me what London is like, I tell them to put together the entertainment industry of Los Angeles, the government offices of Washington, the financial district of New York, into a chichi and beautiful city over a thousand years old, and that is London. And what of Oxford and Cambridge, university towns with literally more than a thousand years of higher education tradition? And the port cities of Portsmouth, Southampton and Liverpool, from where the American Founding Fathers sailed, such as Sir Francis Drake and Lord Nelson, leaders of the British Navy, the only force strong enough to defeat the Spanish Armada and then on to build an empire that reached across the Atlantic to America and beyond, becoming the masters of subcontinental India, establishing control over Hong Kong after the Opium Wars, even winning the Philippines for itself if only for a brief two years!
I am rambling. The point is, one must not do the PhD only to learn one’s science. If such were the case, it’s not worth it. Believe me, in the first world, PhD holders are a dime a dozen. There are so many people with PhDs who can’t find a job not because they are over-qualified, but rather because they are underqualified! For example, in order to land in an academic job here in the UK, one must have done, in addition to the PhD, at least three or four postdoctorates before a university will even look at your application for an academic position. Learning a science isn’t everything, it’s important to see everything in the right perspective, and live a life.
LSEC: What are your future plans?
Aaron: I am currently wrapping things up with this PhD, and have started applying for jobs. I was recently offered a postdoc at the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland: “the synthesis of optical, magnetic and radioactive probes for cancer detection and therapy”. A two-year contract, renewable on a yearly basis, under the Section Chief for Radioimmune Inorganic Chemistry and the Molecular Imaging Program. Sounds attractive. If all goes well, and if I accept the post, I should begin sometime in the first quarter of 2008. It’s attractive because working in the NIH will give me the biological and some medical technology experience which may be useful in the Philippines.
|
A picture of Aaron’s research group, a collection of PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and his supervisor Prof. Stephen Faulkner, “the fat man in olive drab”. Taken during a group trip to Chester Zoo.
Going out with friends.
Still time for excursions: at the peak of Pike O’Blisco in Derbyshire.
Aaron presenting a poster and a talk at the last American Chemical Society meeting held in Boston a few weeks ago, 19-23 Aug. He spoke in one of the sessions on f-element chemistry.
