Lori Banks | The Gift of Science

Banks:

Everybody has their thing—in my perception of course—within the kingdom of God, whether, you know, you have the people who are clearly called to be the door greeters and the cheerleaders of the kingdom of God, right? I’m not necessarily one of those people, but God bless the people that are. But you know, whatever it is, like for every niche and every need that there is in the world, somebody is gifted to do that thing. And mine happened to be looking at amino acid structures and figuring out how to turn off evil proteins and microbes, like, that’s just—when we were all in line for spiritual gifts, that’s the one I got.

My name is Lori Banks and I am an Assistant Professor of Biology at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.

Stump:

Welcome to Language of God. I’m your host, Jim Stump. 

One of our aims on this podcast has been to introduce you to people you might not otherwise come across in the world of science and faith. The discipline has been dominated by questions about evolution and the age of the Earth. But there are lots of Christians in other areas of the sciences, laboring to understand some small corner of creation and glorifying God through their work. And quite often, their work has much more important practical implications for our lives. Today’s guest is one of these scientists.

Late in college, Lori Banks found herself at an internship in a research lab. She had been planning to go to medical school and to work with sick patients. But she found instead an important place alongside the researchers who were engaging the causes of disease. She realized that her knack for understanding microbial systems might allow her to make a real difference in fighting disease and infection. Not all scientists see their abilities and work as a gift in this way, but for Lori, it is what motivates her work and her quest for discoveries that will lead to healthier lives. 

In the first part of our conversation, Lori shares some experiences that helped her as a young girl to develop a love for science alongside the Christian faith that was part of her life from an early age. In the second part we focus on the science—microbiology and virology—which Lori practices and teaches. She helps us to understand the science behind some of the new COVID vaccines, what is so revolutionary about them, and about why we can trust their safety and effectiveness.

Let’s get to the conversation.

Stump:

Well, Dr. Lori Banks, thank you for joining us.

Banks:

Yeah, great to be here.

Stump:

So you’re, you’re a biology professor at Bates College, which is way up in one of the corners of the lower 48 states. You originally came from a different corner of the country and have covered a lot of territory on the way to Maine. Right? So let’s hear about some of that journey, if you would, starting with where you came from.

Banks:

Yeah. So I’m originally from Seattle, Washington. And I grew up sort of around western Washington in a couple different places. I was out in Pierce County, so not too far from Mount Rainier that most people can recognize from the Washington State license plates. I grew up sort of at the foot of Mount Rainier. And I went to Bethel High School right there in Spanaway, Washington, and is was pretty interesting. Lots of military in the area and also, obviously, the Boeing Company is really huge around there. And I have a lot of family that has come through the Boeing Company, including my parents.

Stump:

So how did you get interested in science then?

Banks:

So yeah, directly tied to Boeing, back in the late 80s and early 90s they started this program called take-your-daughter-to-work Day. And it was a really fun time. You got a day off from school, of course, right, but lots of places that were heavy into science and engineering really took it seriously, because it was about the same time that there was this huge push to get more girls interested in careers in science. And so Boeing in, you know, just sort of a moment of clarity, I guess, they decided they were going to shut down most of their regular operations for daughter’s day every year, around that time. And I got to go to, you know, a couple different plants around the Western Washington area. And one year, gosh, I must have been either like a third or a fourth grader—almost the same age my daughter is now, which is kind of funny—I got to go to daughter’s day with my dad. And he somehow or another got us this sort of behind the scenes pass to this place they called the In-flight Impact Test Center. So in this particular laboratory, they had this fabulous setup, where it was sort of a collaborative space between physical chemists who were able to, or like material scientist guys, who made different mock ups of windshields for the front of a plane. And on the opposite side of the lab, they had this cannon, where, as I’m sure you can imagine…

Stump:

Sounds like they’re shooting something at the windshields.

Banks:

Yeah, it was designed to test how these windshield mock-ups would react with in-flight impact with birds. And…

Stump:

I’ve seen video of this, so they’re shooting frozen chickens or something at them? [laughs]

Banks:

They are, yeah. This one particular year, we got into the testing center. Well, I wasn’t like in the room, I was on the other side of whatever the safety door was, right. But I got to see them fully launch, you know, roasting birds of different sizes at the windshield of an airplane. And so yeah, at that moment, it was just sort of, you know, I knew my dad, he was an electrical engineer at Boeing at that time—it was kind of cool. I knew he worked on electricity stuff, but whatever this was, was like, very different. And so I was sort of both intrigued by the science that they were doing and you know, the things that you had to think about in order to design the experiments, but also who these people were that were getting paid a very decent salary, to shoot chickens at a windshield and watch it go splat, so. So that was a defining moment.

Stump:

So this suggests an interest in science in general, but why not engineering then? Or aerodynamics? What was it that pushed you toward biology in particular?

Banks:

I was always sort of interested in how people’s bodies worked and this is, I know this sounds like I’m aging myself, way back in the days when there was only one single Discovery Channel, they had these sort of late Saturday afternoon shows where they would show you somebody having like knee replacement surgery or something, and became really interested in those. And maybe about junior high school had some really affirming comments from teachers, about like, hey, it seems like you’re really into math, but also health class. And that sounds like what people do when they want to go into medicine. And so that’s sort of how my journey into the things that I do now started.

Stump:

Nice. Well, we’ll talk a little bit more about your specific scientific work after a bit, but let’s rewind the clock here a little bit again, and talk about your faith background. Is that something that’s always been part of your life, or what was your religious community like growing up?

Banks:

Yeah, pretty diverse, actually. So I grew up in a blended family where one part was heavily Catholic and then the other part of my family that originally came from Northern Alabama was very heavily, like, Baptist tradition. And so about the same time, oddly enough that I was having all of these, you know, moments where I was deciding what kind of adult I wanted to be, I started going to church with my dad and my stepmom. And really, you know, just was sort of led to be a fully participating member of the church as much as I could be at the ripe old age of like 13 and a half. With no car, of course. So I had to depend on other people to get me to and from service, but I decided I was going to, you know, go to Bible study, and I joined the usher board and had my little usher suit, and was like tithing out of my allowance, which sounds so funny, but like, you know, I just I felt really good about being a contributing member and didn’t feel like there was anything about my age that should limit my ability to contribute to those things, which, you know, I think is kind of profound now as a much older adult, right, thinking about those things. But, you know, that’s just kind of where I was at about 13. It was like, you know, I gotta make some decisions about what’s right for me and what kind of grown woman I want to be. And at that point, I decided that this was what I was going to do. I wanted to be a fully-functioning member of the church. And so I kind of have been an active participant in any congregation I’ve been a member of ever since then.

Stump:

Well keep the story going here from the 13-year-old Lori to— You, I think you ended up going to Texas for college, is that right?

Banks:

Yeah. So I knew, you know, I had some affirming comments from teachers in junior high. And it’s so funny now that when I got into high school, some of my teachers nicknamed me Dr. Banks. Which, you know, like, that’s a nice nickname to have, right? But, you know, we were just having conversations about, like, what are things that are interesting to you? And, of course we’re all thinking about, okay, we all know we want to go to college, but what do we want to study when we get there? You know, what kind of impact on the world do we want to make? And I happen to have a group of really highly educated, very dedicated science teachers at my high school. Which I found out later was because we were officially zoned as a rural area. And so for them to work at some of the schools in that district, they could get their student loans paid off.

Stump:

Nice.

Banks:

So all of the science teachers that I had toward the end of high school, had a master’s degree, had written a thesis and done research. But they, you know, in addition to exposing us to lots of different things, were very supportive of me writing scholarship applications and those kinds of things. And I got an offer to go to a school that I had never been to before, that was in my imagination way out in the sticks in Texas. In reality, it’s only about 40 minutes outside of Houston. But, you know, in my imagination at that point, I had never been there. So I knew, just based on the environment that I’d grown up in that I wanted to go to an HBCU. And this little school out in Texas was an HBCU, that had a really strong track record of training little brown scientists and clinicians. And my parents thought it was really cool. The chair of the department actually called and talked to my dad, on our landline at our house, to let him know that I had been accepted to their scholarship program. So of course, that appealed to my parents, you know and knew that it would be kind of a familial environment. And a week to the day that I finished my last high school class, I started college early in the summertime at Prairie View A&M, and so I was sort of off to the races with my biology degree.

Stump:

Nice. During your college years, then, do you start to see any issues between the science you’re studying and the faith communities that you’re a part of?

Banks:

Yeah, that was a really interesting time. So in Washington, where I was from, about that time, my mom who was a licensed minister, actually started to pastor. And so at that point, she was an assistant pastor. But before I graduated with my Bachelor’s, she eventually became a senior pastor. So as I was, you know, learning all of these things about how genetics works, and Mendelian inheritance, and biochemistry and all these things, she was also sort of coming into her own in ministry, where, you know, she had been, again, a very active member, before she had moved to Washington state—had gone and taken some seminary classes, but didn’t quite finish her Bachelor’s in that. So this was sort of a, I don’t want to say necessarily an awakening, but she, I think the opportunity came for her and the calling at the same time for her to pastor. And so, as I was doing the science classes, you know, I would like come home on break, and she would be preparing to speak somewhere and at the same time asking me about, like, what I’m reading in these textbooks. And because she was a very kind of biblical literalist, we had some interesting conversations over dinner, you know, about how did these things fit together? Because, you know, as I was becoming an expert in biology, and she was becoming sort of, you know, deeper into her practice as a minister, the texts that we were both coming from didn’t always agree. And so we had a lot of conversations about like, well does this necessarily—does one sort of set of texts mean that the other is not valid? Or is it just that they are coming from two different perspectives and those kinds of things? So it was interesting.

Stump:

Did those conversations get resolved?

Banks:

So interestingly, my dad is sort of in the middle. And, you know, would typically propose some way of thinking about both of these things in a way that both of them sort of work. And yeah, I mean, it was interesting, because, you know, of course, we didn’t feel like one point of view necessarily was bad or untrue, or blasphemous or anything, right? But it just happened that we were trained to understand these at different levels. And so it just, I think it was good for the education of everybody in the household, to be honest. Yeah.

Stump:

I think most of us who are involved in science and religion in those ways have similar kinds of challenges with the communities that were part of I wonder, does being part of of African American communities add another dimension to that at all, specifically, to the kinds of questions that people ask or maybe even suspicions that people might have about either science or faith?

Banks:

Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great point you bring up. There is a lot of, I think a lot of the sort of biblical literalist views that my mom had even, come from these traditions in the Black church, where it’s almost like you’re expected not to question things. And that if you do ask certain questions, or question God for that matter, that somehow that’s a bad thing. So I think that, you know, the sort of viewpoint that compliance is a survival issue within the Black community carries over into the faith realm. And I think that’s where a lot of that comes from. And so thankfully, as we have not had to deal with the same levels, you know, of those views in my generation, it still is something that sort of carries over into church like, this is the way we’ve always done it. We don’t ask questions, we don’t argue. And that somehow that even is tied into your, like, religious obedience. And so the more compliant you are, the more obedient you are, the more that you deny whatever this thing is that makes you want to question things somehow that, you know, is—it makes you more religious or more holy. Which I don’t again necessarily agree with that now, having gone and looked through scripture to see where it doesn’t say that at all. But culturally, absolutely, that’s a thing where it is, it sort of feels like in order for you to embrace your curiosity as it relates to science, somehow that makes you less of a person of faith, or less relevant culturally too, which again is a whole other can of worms, but they’re definitely related.

Stump:

Okay, so you’re this college student who’s having these engrossing conversations with her mom and dad about the Bible and religion and learning straightforward science in college. For you personally, then, so besides the kind of questions or challenges you’d get from various communities, for you personally is there any issue or do these things seem to fit together just fine from your perspective?

Banks:

For me, it was confusing at first and my sort of knee jerk reaction was just to get more information. And I think that’s not necessarily a bad thing for anybody, to be honest, is just, if you have questions about what it says in Scripture, go read the Scripture and see what it says. And I was really into looking at different translations of the Bible to see what the different interpretations were for, you know, whatever scripture I was interested in. Along the same lines, I was sort of also checking PubMed a lot for scientific information to see, you know, like, is this something that we know and understand maybe when it relates to gene evolution or something. Is this something that we see in lots of different models systems? Is this something that’s unique to humans, or do we see it all the way down to bacteria? And so it just became a time of trying to gather as much information and see as many different viewpoints as I could, before I would make a decision about how I felt about it.

Stump:

So let me ask it this way, I think a lot of people in similar situations as what you were going through there, have often tended to compartmentalize and to say, “Okay, I’m doing the science right now. And that’s all I’m worried about,” or, “okay, now I’m going to church or now I’m reading my Bible, that’s all I’m worried about.” But can you point to any tangible ways in which these two influenced each other—where the things you learned in the classroom had some kind of effect on your faith, or the other way, the way that you understood your faith affect in any way how you understood science, or how you put everything together into a bigger picture? And maybe this isn’t in college, maybe this stretches out to now or today. But any ways that you’ve seen your scientific knowledge and your faith influencing each other?

Banks: 

Yeah, definitely. So I guess the observations of that interaction for me did start around college, but they’ve absolutely continued, you know, up to present day. I remember, my after school job in college was to be a tutor in the library. And since I was, you know, really good at math, and certain kinds of science and stuff, I worked with my peers in everything in math up to Calculus 1 was about as far as I could make it, and chemistry and any of the biology classes they needed help with. And so I did start to notice that, you know, in sort of ways that I couldn’t really explain, I was able to interact with my peers, on a level that helped them have consistent ah-ha moments. And so that, you know, I think, later gave me sort of an insight that education might also be a thing for me, within science, but being able to really communicate the science that I was doing, or the way that something, a figure was put together in a book, and have other people get excited about it the way that I was excited about it, and see what possibly other people couldn’t see in the data, really let me know that I was kind of uniquely gifted with something. And that, even though sometimes people were uncomfortable with whatever it was that I was doing scientifically, it didn’t necessarily mean that that had or should have any effect on what God had given me. 

And it really became apparent, it’s probably in my later years in college or maybe a senior, my aunt had to have a surgical procedure that she was super nervous about. Also, like, you know, a woman of faith and really had a hard time reconciling whether she should be patient and wait for God to heal her miraculously, or whether it was his will to heal her through the hands of another person. And so, in watching her go through that, and some of the sort of, I guess, family Bible studies we ended up having around that, you know, I really got a clearer picture that I felt like Scripture was really telling us as a family, that we’re all uniquely gifted, and that there are times when, you know, God says, part of the resources that I’ve given you are these people who are gifted to do these things to go help people be healthy. And I kind of felt like he was talking directly to me, that like, you know, even though this doesn’t necessarily look a way that people are comfortable with, or they’re used to seeing, this is what I gave you. And so not only should you not necessarily question it, based on other people’s opinions, but because I’m sovereign, I never needed their permission in the first place. [laughter] You know, it was just kind of—it was a revelation. And it was very freeing, because it’s like, you know, if God gave me the ability to look at these chemical structures, and think about what they might be doing in a biological system, who am I to question what he has given me?

Stump:

Yeah, that’s a really beautiful way of seeing faith and science come together, to see that your scientific aptitude itself is the way God has uniquely gifted you and to be used for His glory, right?

Banks:

Exactly. Yeah. Like, everybody has their thing, you know, within my perception of course, within the kingdom of God, whether, you know, you have the people who are clearly called to be the door greeters, and the cheerleaders of the kingdom of God, right? I’m not necessarily one of those people, but God bless the people that are. But you know, whatever it is, like for every niche, and every need, that there is in the world, somebody is gifted to do that thing. And mine happens to be looking at amino acid structures and figuring out how to turn off evil proteins and microbes, like, that’s just—when we were all in line for spiritual gifts, that’s what I got.

Stump:

I so wish the Apostle Paul would have listed that in one of the spiritual gifts that are given out because that is awesome.

[musical interlude}

BioLogos:

Hey listeners. We live in an age of COVID 19 and a climate crisis but also an age of amazing new technologies and scientific discoveries. Either way you look at it, science is a major part of our lives and undoubtedly, questions will arise at the intersection of science and Christian faith. BioLogos is hoping to help you explore these questions faithfully. The BioLogos website has articles and other resources to wade through some of the tough questions. And for students and teachers, we’ve recently released INTEGRATE, a resource designed for homeschool parents or Christian school teachers to help Christian young people grow in their faith in Christ as they develop a deeper love and stronger understand of the world God has made. You can find it all at biologos.org.

Stump:

So you are at an undergraduate college working now not a big pharmaceutical research lab or anything, but you’re still engaged in scientific research, can you describe for us in layperson’s terms, what your lab is doing these days?

Banks:

Yeah, so we think very critically, and in a very detailed manner, what the evil pieces of different microbes look like. So that’s a whole separate part of biology and biophysics, really, where we try to get clear, very detailed, high resolution pictures of evil molecules that are central to how bacteria and viruses hurt our bodies and cause disease. So the really cool part about that is, that once you know what the proteins— these are mostly proteins we work on—what they look like and how they function, then you can figure out how to turn them off. And so that’s something actually that we’re going to be pursuing here in the next year or so.

Stump:

So give us some specific examples of either bacteria or viruses that cause harm, at least have things that we would have heard of, you know, kinds of diseases or whatever and how that works, exactly. So you say the evil parts of these molecules. Unpack that a little bit more, if you would?

Banks:

Yeah. So the model system that we’re working on currently, is rotavirus. So it’s what we call an enteric pathogen. So that means it causes vomiting and diarrhea and infects cells within your digestive tract. So the one—the virus that we work on specifically infects these cells at the end of the finger-like projections in your small intestine. And so part of what happens when that virus lands on a cell, is able to inject its RNA genome is that it expresses a protein that makes these salt solutions within compartments in your cells, go everywhere. So they should be walled off and in certain compartments, so that they can be selectively released in order to make, you know, normal functions in your cell happen. But one of these evil proteins, we call it nonstructural protein number four—pokes holes in the membranes that wall of these different compartments, and it makes the salt water go everywhere. And part of that misregulation leads to very severe vomiting and diarrhea. And so our plan is to get a picture of this thing and a better understanding of which parts of the protein are the most important for its function so that we can work with medicinal chemists—who work, I call it the in the stinky benzene hood, because I don’t do organic synthesis—to design small molecules that will hopefully bind this protein and be able to turn it off. So the hope then, is if we can turn off the protein, that we can turn off the vomiting and diarrhea in people who are already infected. 

Stump:

Lots of the things you’re telling us about the mechanics of how this works. I think we have heard on the evening news recently, in some context, right, about coronavirus. And I know you’re not working on any of the COVID vaccines directly, but I bet you can help us understand them a little bit better. Because I think most of us, non-scientists probably have the idea of vaccines from the 18th century when Cotton Mather is using the pus from other smallpox sores to try to inoculate people. And I assume we’ve made some progress since then, right? So how do these vaccines actually work in the—I mean, you’re talking about identifying the evil parts of them and turning them off. Can you— Can you— I know this is an audio only format here. But can you paint a picture for us in some sense of how these vaccines are doing their job?

Banks:

Yeah, so what’s interesting about what we’ve seen over the last year with this pandemic, is that those older technologies for developing vaccines, while they’re good, they take a lot of time. So we’ve had to figure out other ways to make this work. And so there are, we call them the cauliflower cells in our household, your white blood cells are able to recognize different chemical signatures from microbes. And they come, you know, sort of in different flavors. So it could be the outer coating of the microbe, whether it’s a virus or a bacteria or a parasite, for that matter. Or it could be an internal piece that’s made out of protein or DNA or RNA. And so the way that our white blood cells from our immune system interact with the proteins, that’s sort of the information we’ve been using to develop vaccines, up until very recently. But again, the way that the research or the experiments are required to get the protein and then also in large quantities, and then be able to test it to see how it’s interacting with your immune system takes a very, very long time. And there’s not really a good way of predicting how well your immune system is going to recognize those protein pieces. So what’s been going on with the vaccines that we are getting out to the world now is that rather than using the evil protein pieces, we’re able to take mock versions of the instructions manual that the SARS-CoV2 virus uses to make lots of these evil proteins and use that instead of the protein itself.

Stump:

So is that like skipping the middleman or something, then, that we’re giving that instruction, or that recipe directly to our immune system rather than having to have our immune system respond to the actual virus, or at least to the proteins.

Banks:

Yeah.

Stump:

Or am I mixing up the terms here?

Banks:

No, that’s exactly how that works. So where we would normally have, like you said, the fully expressed protein, what we’re giving people’s immune systems now, like you said, is the recipe instead of the cake. But your cells are able to read the recipe and make, like, fragments of the cake that can then be expressed on your cells or from your cells. And then your immune system seems to recognize those better. So it’s kind of a neat thing where you get the increased recognition by the immune system but also, in terms of manufacturing, it’s much easier to make copies of the recipe than it is to make copies of the recipe and then try to make a bunch of cakes, and then get all of that out to people. So, you know, in terms of being able to work within a very tight timeline, but also get the biological outcome that you want, which is people protected from virus infection, it seems like it’s working. You know, this was in development for years prior to the beginning of this pandemic. So there were some data to support how this would work, but obviously, we weren’t able to test it on a scale this big, but it looks like it’s working.

Stump:

Do you expect this as the way vaccine development is really going to go in the future then, to lean much more heavily on the RNA vaccines?

Banks:

I think it will. Yeah. And there are different ways that companies are looking at now to translate the same kind of technology into other viral systems. So I do, I don’t know, necessarily that this will, like replace the way that we do the flu shots. But if that did happen, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Stump:

Do you have any scientific concerns with the COVID vaccines that have been approved? I mean, they’ve only been around for a few months, right? Some people are worried that well, we really need to have a much longer timeframe to see what it might do to us to inject ourselves with this RNA.

Banks:

Not so much. So because, like I said, the technology had been in development for other viral systems for years prior to the beginning of this pandemic, they had checked out some of the sort of basic safety concerns. The other part is that, you know, the way that research is normally conducted where it’s somewhat of a nine to five job, we have just changed the way that we do science in order to increase the capacity for us to generate this data, especially around you know, the work that’s being done for the SARS coronaviruses. And so, you know, while it sounds scary, that you would increase the rate or increase the manpower behind the research and so it sounds like there’s more places for things to go wrong, the process is very much the same. We’ve just changed the schedule that we work. So I definitely am confident—I have, I should say, read a number of the primary literature articles that are out there surrounding the vaccine development, so I’ve been able to see firsthand kind of, you know, what is going on. And a lot of people don’t have access to that or don’t know where to find it. But from what I’ve seen, it looks pretty solid.

The other part, I think that’s really neat is that where previously, in again, some of the older vaccine technology, we would have had a whole virus, even though it was attenuated or weakened in some way, be the basis of the vaccine, this doesn’t involve any whole virus going into anyone. And so that’s really nice, because, you know, as we saw, you know, decades ago with polio, viruses are biological systems that mutate on a regular basis. And so the chance that you could have a, what we call a revertant, that goes back to being evil, you know, the chance is always there. So with this mRNA technology that’s being used for the SARS COV2 vaccines, there’s no whole virus, and you only have one, the instructions for one evil piece of the virus being present in your arm, and it doesn’t even have all the pieces to make a whole virus.

Stump:

So with all of the information you’ve gleaned about the COVID vaccine, are you intending to get it as soon as you’re able?

Banks:

Absolutely. I’m waiting for the email from our college administration. And as soon as it hits, I’ll be in line. 

Stump:

Good. Well, let me ask, in closing here a little bit more about your work. So we’ve said you’re at Bates, which means you’re not just a research scientist, but also a kind of science educator. Right?

Banks:

Yeah.

Stump:

And share with us a little bit, what are some of the joys and maybe some of the frustrations with teaching science to undergraduates?

Banks:

Yeah, it’s, you know, a really neat time to be interacting with people in their lives and in their development, in sort of early adulthood. Everybody is super wide-eyed and very enthusiastic about, you know, what it is that they’re going to take on in the world. And so that part of it is really helpful to be around that energy. What also obviously comes with that part of your life is, sort of, not knowing what you don’t know. So, as we learn different techniques or, you know, try to think outside the box about these very complex biological questions, there is some covering of basics that has to happen sort of over and over again, because there’s just a lot of material that I’ve been looking at for the last 9000 years, but they just have not seen before. And so, you know, while it’s cool to have that fresh perspective because you haven’t seen these things before, you also haven’t seen these things before. So I wouldn’t say that it’s necessarily frustrating, but it just comes with the territory. And the good definitely outweighs the bad. Like I see my students come into the lab, you know, figuring out their schedules between classes and things and they’re like really motivated and really dedicated to whatever piece of this scientific question that we’re working on today. But they seem to take really good notes and try to be very careful about how they do their experiments. And they’re really supportive of each other too, which is, you know, good to see and makes you have hope for what future scientific laboratories are going to look like, and how people are going to interact with one another. So, you know, it’s cool to be training my own private, teeny scientific army, you know, to make sure that they’re being good citizens, and they think critically, and they’re taking this knowledge and experience with them out into whatever they’re going to do once they graduate and finish their Bachelor’s. But it seems like they’re picking up good skills and good habits. And that makes me happy.

Stump:

Do you have any advice for young people who are considering a career in science?

Banks:

Ah, yeah, set up good habits, early, I would say.

Stump:

Good advice to all of us.

Banks:

Right. It’s really easy in science to take that dedication sort of a step too far and lose track of self-care and maintaining other relationships and those kinds of things. And one thing that I’d like to stress to my students, whether it’s in the lab or the classroom is that genius really seems to come when you take care of your physical body. Because you know, the thoughts come from neurons and the neurons are governed by the laws of biology. So the kinder you are to yourself, you know, getting sleep, drinking water, eating healthy, giving yourself a break, doing things you love, going to church, hanging out with friends, all of these things, you know, will give your body the things that it needs for you to get the genius out of it that you want. And so while it feels counterintuitive, because of you know, what the old guys have told them about, you know, like, you need to be in the lab all the time, or you should be reading more, you really got to find the balance that works for you, so that you can get the best out of you. Because if you stress yourself out, your neurons will go AWOL and then you won’t be able to do anything, you’ll be making mistakes in the lab, you’ll have to read a chapter two or three times in order to make it make sense. So you really, really want to take care of yourself, so that you can have the brilliant aha moments or look at data and see something that nobody else has seen. And that’s really, you know, you want to maximize the amount of genius that you can get out of yourself. So take care of yourself.

Stump:

That’s probably counterintuitive to many people who think the way to really succeed in this field is to just work harder and harder and put in more hours than anybody else is.

Banks: 

Yeah, and it’s such a freeing revelation once you get it. But having lived through both a time, mostly in graduate school, where it felt like I had to put in a certain number of hours and, you know, like, you got some kind of extra cool points if your boss saw you in the lab on a Saturday morning at 5:30. You know, it’s really not sustainable, number one, and it’s not healthy, even in the short term. So if you have, you know, some major project that is coming due or something, you know, try to pace yourself rather than cramming it all at the end. Because you’re going to get a better product in the end anyway.

Stump:

I would guess that the sample of students you have to work with is not perfectly representative of the US population as a whole when it comes to attitudes towards science. But I wonder if you might have any tips for communicating science to people who may be skeptical of science?

Banks:

Yeah, wow. I think in this area, you know, the scientists really have a lot of work to do. There’s a really interesting yet unfortunate persona that we have projected to the rest of the world that I think makes us very untouchable, and not well understood. You know, I think a lot of people see, or if you ask them what a scientist looks like, they think of this old white guy with crazy hair, who is probably, you know, like, not the person that you want to go have dinner with and feel like you’re gonna have a great conversation. And I think that has done us, as a profession, a huge disservice on a number of levels. Where, not only does that create an image for people that’s very closed off about what kinds of people can do good science and what genius and smart looks like, but it also projects this sort of, you know, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or Dr. Frankenstein stereotype where, you know, you feel like scientists are standoffish, scary, weird people, and not, you know, like, regular Girl Scout moms or the cookie lady at church, that I happen to be, right? We’re just regular people. And I think we need to number one, work on that image. And also get ourselves out there, you know, into regular conversations more consistently. I think a lot of people are doing good work in that area now but we definitely need more voices of, you know, Miss Frizzle or Neil deGrasse Tyson or whoever, to just show people that, you know, we’re actually kind of just fun goofball people. And that we don’t take ourselves so seriously that we don’t want people to know what we do.

Stump:

I think that’s really helpful to see scientists are people too, right, on the one hand. And I’d also say that the kind of scientists that attract me are also those who convey some enthusiasm and excitement, where you see something of why they got into doing what they’re doing, right? So let me ask you, just in closing here, what is it that excites you about your work?

Banks:

Ah, so coming out of the experience that I had, when 9/11 and the Amerithrax attacks happened, I was like a sophomore in undergrad. I knew then and have sort of carried with me that, you know, infection is sort of like the great equalizer of not just humans, but other species on this planet. And that, me having the ability to see and understand chemical structures and stuff the way that I do, while it seems very abstract, is actually a way that I could potentially affect, positively affect, the health of like millions or billions of people on this planet. And so, you know, while we do experiments sometimes that fail, or you get the blue screen face from a student who doesn’t understand what you’re talking about in class. It’s like, you know, I’m here for a purpose. And my purpose is to help stop this thing from affecting people all around the world. So I gotta keep pushing at it. It may not be cute or it may not be comfortable every single day. But whatever contribution we can make, you know, every day is important, and it’s necessary. And that sort of, you know, that and coffee is what keeps us going.

Stump:

Well, I can tell just from the conversation that we’ve had, that you’re calling to do this, your gifting from God to do this, is one that fits you well, and just want to affirm that the work you’re doing is so important, and to thank you for it. And thank you so much for talking to us too. I hope we can do it again sometime.

Banks:

Oh, yeah, definitely.

BioLogos: 

Language of God is produced by BioLogos. It has been funded in part by the John Templeton Foundation and more than 300 individuals who donated to our crowdfunding campaign. Language of God is produced and mixed by Colin Hoogerwerf. That’s me. Our theme song is by Breakmaster Cylinder. We are produced out of the remote workspaces and homes of BioLogos staff in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

If you have questions or want to join in a conversation about this episode find a link in the show notes for the BioLogos forum. Find more episodes of Language of God on your favorite podcast app or at our website, biologos.org, where you will also find tons of great articles and resources on faith and science. Thanks for listening.