#WhyIScience Q&A: A structural biologist adopts a new role catalyzing collaborations

Although Gail Guo’s parents had no formal scientific training, she fondly recalls their curiosity and frequent chats about research discoveries during her childhood in China. They also told Gail about her aunt who’d studied chemistry and moved to the US to work for a pharmaceutical company. “She was such a role model for me,” said Guo. “Even before I had a sense of what college was, I knew I wanted to be like my aunt.”

Guo followed in her footsteps by enrolling at Peking University, where she first studied sociology and later switched her major to chemistry. In 2009, she moved to the US for graduate study in biophysical chemistry at the University of Iowa, followed by graduate co-op work at her aunt’s employer, Bristol Myers Squibb. After a brief stint at Biogen, she joined the Broad Institute’s Center for the Development of Therapeutics as a research scientist, where she worked for seven years generating high-resolution structures of challenging and novel protein targets to enable small molecule drug design.

Then last year, an unexpected career change brought uncertainty but also a fortuitous opportunity to shift her work in a new direction. After her role was eliminated through an organizational restructuring, Guo chose to lean into her growing interest and success in managing research projects. She soon rejoined the Broad as an alliance manager in the Broad-Bayer oncology research collaboration, where she now works with team members from Broad and Bayer around the globe to keep the alliance’s research projects on task and moving forward.

We spoke with Guo about her background, her evolving role in scientific research, and what advice she has for others in this #WhyIScience Q&A.

How did you decide to transition from conducting scientific research to your new role in alliance management?

I’d always been interested in the pharma industry — not only in drug discovery and development, but also in the business side of making medicines. I felt that I have a skill set that would shine in a role outside of the lab. For example, during my interview for the research scientist position at the Broad, I was asked to describe my smartphone, which I thought (and said) was an odd question. I answered the question on many levels — from my phone’s look and feel down to how I organized my apps. I later learned that the question was designed to evaluate my ability to communicate with people with different levels of scientific and technical knowledge, a skill I used frequently as a researcher. My manager who’d asked me the smartphone question later complimented my presentation style and allowed me to serve as liaison with software vendors and external partners. He told me, “You have the business side in you, and maybe you want to pursue that.”

The restructuring was the push I needed to think outside of the box and make a transition, along with support from people who trusted me, saw my potential, and gave me courage. I don’t regret leaving the bench.

What does your new role involve?

As an alliance manager for the Broad-Bayer oncology collaboration, I work to align various stakeholders, ensure effective communication across different groups, and help shape the direction of the research projects. Fortunately, I had seven years of experience at the Broad already, which helped me easily navigate between various programs and groups, such as the Cancer Program, administration, scientific researchers, institute leaders, business development, and legal teams. In addition, I connect with individuals at Bayer who are here in Cambridge or in Berlin. My role involves learning the best ways to interact with each group, and my personal relationships with colleagues across the Broad helped build trust and improve communication. Miscommunication can easily happen, so I look to anticipate and avoid that, while diplomatically solving problems. In addition, my experience as a bench scientist helps me understand the needs of the alliance researchers, advocate for them in leadership meetings, and influence decisions to promote the effort’s overall success.

Why is it crucial to have industry-academia collaborations like the Broad-Bayer alliance?

In the Broad-Bayer oncology collaborations, many parties work together toward the same goal, which in my specific case is to bring new therapeutic molecules onto the market by identifying novel biological targets and developing ways to intervene. Bayer has long-standing experience in bringing new drugs to market, and Broad is deeply skilled in cancer biology and drug discovery. In this collaboration, as with Broad’s other industry partnerships, we each provide very different angles of research and draw on each other’s expertise to achieve things that we each can’t do alone. 

How did mentors shape your academic and professional career?

I’m very lucky to have had my parents as role models. They didn’t go to college, but they inspired me to always want to advance myself and keep learning. After I came to the US, my two PhD advisors at the University of Iowa were very supportive and let me shift my research project from a focus on instrumentation development to enzymology instead. They wanted me to pursue what I was interested in and what I was enthusiastic about, and they really let me explore my interest in structural biology. They also supported my industry work during graduate school and without that I might not have ended up here at the Broad.  

What are you most proud of?

My PhD advisor once told me, “Gail, you might not like this, but at the end of the day, you’re just a regular person.” People often go to graduate school hoping to be the top student or achieve great things individually, but only collectively can we accomplish amazing things. The most important product of my academic career, they said, is not a scientific paper or discovery, but it’s me — as a person and as a scientist. I try to borrow that mentality now. I’m proud of the three undergraduate researchers at University of Iowa and direct reports here at the Broad whom I mentored and trained and who’ve gone on to academic and professional success. To see young scientists excel makes me proud. 

What advice do you have for young aspiring scientists?

My advice to them is to never be shy to express what you’re interested in, and be brave to network with folks in your field.