Postdoc Feature Series with Jude Phillip

• 2020 – American Institute of Chemical Engineers MAC Distinguished Young Professional Award
• 2020 – 1000 Inspiring black scientists in America (Cell Mentor and Community of Scholars) 

Recent Publications:

• Phillip JM, Han KS, Chen WC, Wirtz D, & Wu PH. (2021). A robust unsupervised machine-learning method to quantify the morphological heterogeneity of cells and nuclei. Nature Protocols, 16 (2), 754-774.
• Phillip JM, Zamponi N, Phillip MP, Daya J, McGovern S, Williams W, Tschudi K, Jayatilaka H, Wu P-H, Walston J, & Wirtz D. (2021). Fractional re-distribution among cell motility states during ageing. Communications biology, 4 (1), 1-9.
• Kotlov N, Bagaev A, Revuelta MV, Phillip JM, Cacciapuoti MT, Antysheva Z, Svekolkin V, Tikhonova E, Miheecheva N, Kuzkina N, Nos G, Tabbo F, Frenkel F, Ghione P, Ataullakhanov R, Tsiper M, Almog N, Fowler N, Melnick AM, Leonard JP, Inghirami G, Cerchietti L, (2021), Clinical and biological subtypes of B-cell lymphoma revealed by microenvironmental signatures, Cancer Discovery

Where was your background before Weill Cornell and Johns Hopkins?

I grew up in Grenada and I came to New York in 2006 to start my undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering at the City College of New York. Following that I went to Johns Hopkins University for my Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Then in 2016 I joined Weill Cornell as a postdoc, where I was co-advised by Leandro Cerchietti and Ari Melnick in the hematology division.

 What do you love about Baltimore and how has it changed since you were there during undergrad? Particularly about Baltimore, I like that it’s a smaller city, definitely less crowded than New York. Having grown up in Grenada, I think when I first came to New York it was kind of a culture shock because there’s a lot of people and just a lot of everything. I think Baltimore is more like a happy medium. One of the things that I really like about Hopkins is how collaborative the academic community is. That’s one of the key reasons I chose to come back. Also, I have some familiarity with the program, the people, and I know that I will be supported here to pursue some of my most creative ideas. There’s a very strong engineering school, strong medicine, and in the area of aging some of the world experts are here. 

Is there anything you miss about New York City?

Definitely! A lot of my family, my friends, and other things I like to do are in NY. One of the big things I do miss is access to Caribbean food. My wife is from Dominican Republic, and we tend to eat quite a bit of Caribbean food. One of my favorite foods to eat is Caribbean-style Roti, which is a food that was passed down as part of Indian heritage in the southern Caribbean. The Caribbean-style version is like a burrito, except, the wrap is a Dhal Puri with the curried meats, veggies and potato on the inside. In New York there are so many places – you just walk down the street and get something, or even in the supermarkets you can get Caribbean ingredients that you can cook, but it’s a bit more difficult to get that here in Baltimore. I’m sure there are places, although not as common, so we’re definitely looking to see where those places are. 

What kind of scientist are you?

I’m actually a Chemical Engineer by training, both my degrees are in Chemical Engineering, but the work that I do is very much Biomedical Engineering. My official title at Hopkins is Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, but I also have affiliations and a secondary appointment in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering as well as Oncology. 

What project are you most excited to get started in your new lab?

One of the things I’m super excited about is the concept of being able to rethink aging through the perspective of an Engineer. I started getting very interested in aging a few years ago, partly because there are census projections that the older population is poised to significantly increase over the next 30 years. With that comes many challenges, including more age-associated diseases – various multi-morbidities, cancer, Alzheimer’s – but also, increased health care costs, which will negatively impact our socioeconomics. As an engineer I like to also think of the big picture: What are the individual components that actually feed into these big societal problems, how do they interrelate and how can we come up with innovative solutions? I think this is a place that we can really have an impact.

The approach that I’m taking is trying to understand aging itself, and then using that to develop technologies to predict aging trajectories in humans and understand disease. An overarching question that we have is why do we age differently? When you look at three individuals, let’s say they’re all 85 years old, one can run a marathon, one is bedridden, and the other one is somewhere in between. Chronologically they’re all the same age, but biologically, and based on the manifestation of diseases, disorders, or dysfunctions, they’re different. So, the big question is: are there things about a person that that we can measure that would allow us to predict these aging states, and how far ahead of time can we predict? To do this we are studying phenotypes of cells, as many age-related dysfunctions likely start off as defective cells. Cells are integrators of molecular signals, and as defective cells arise, they propagate throughout tissues and organs, eventually manifesting as diseases. So, there may be a lead time between the dysfunction of the cell and the manifestation of the disease, and if we can identify these dysfunctional cells, we should be able to predict the manifestation of the disease, this is something that we are actively working on and we are particularly excited to learn more about the potential magnitude of a lead time. That’s the big picture, broad strokes of what we’re interested in. But we’re also developing technologies to profile cells and then linking these biophysical profiles to molecular states that we can eventually target with drugs or therapies.

Another aspect of my lab is focused on cancer, in terms of understanding the aged lymphoma microenvironment, and how the aged macroenvironment—the body, potentially drives and shapes the pro- lymphoma aged microenvironment, with the goal of identifying targetable vulnerabilities. The goal and vision of my lab is really geared towards impacting human health, and impacting people, through technology development and biological discovery. 

Is the research in your independent lab building on the research you carried out as a postdoc?

The back end of my Ph.D. is where I started developing these cell-based technologies to determine age of healthy people. Then I specifically wanted to step away from engineering a little bit for my postdoc and work with physician scientists. I only applied to labs that were run by physician scientists for my postdoc. That’s when I was hired by Ari Melnick and Leandro Cerchietti to work on the lymphoma microenvironment.

They’re world experts in lymphoma biology and epigenetics and their labs have helped to define some critical pieces of lymphoma biology, so when I joined, I started focusing more on the microenvironment in trying to understand the coordination of the different cell types and extracellular matrix components within the lymphoma niche. For my own lab, because of my interest in aging and disease, I’m also combining multiple aspects of the lymphoma microenvironment. So, we are looking at healthy aging trends with cells, but then also looking at aging trends within the microenvironment more as a way to decipher disease phenotypes. 

What techniques do you use?

We think that there is a potential advantage that comes from looking at cells. To understand this, we use high-throughput single-cell imaging together with computation approaches to measure biophysical properties of cells. We take cells from healthy and diseased individuals across different ages, for instance we can take blood cells and then look at T-cells or monocytes, or we can take skin biopsies and then extract dermal fibroblasts and measure various properties. We can measure how the cells look – essentially have them spread on a 2D substrate or within a collagen gel or another three-dimensional hydrogel and then quantify their morphology. We can measure how they move – we expose them to different drugs, or we put them in different matrices, and quantify their movements. Also, in order for the cells to move, and in order for them to attain a particular shape, they exert forces. They can pull on surfaces or surrounding collagen fibers. So, we can also calculate how much force these cells are generating. We also look at biomolecular properties of cells, for instance energy production based on ATP, DNA organization and cytoskeletal organization. We measure hundreds of parameters for hundreds-thousands of cells. So far, we have seen that using just a few of these parameters together with biomedical data science approaches and machine learning, we can predict the age of healthy individuals, showing that the cells encode aging information. But we are excited to push this even further towards predicting not just age, but aging patterns. 

What is the symbolism of your lab logo, the (tiME)n lab?

It’s a play on a couple things. One, it’s a play on the “tumor immune microenvironment” – t, i, M, E. But then I also have it in parentheses with a little n superscript, so it also includes the changes through the passage of real time. In combination, we’re asking how does the tumor immune microenvironment change with time? So, how does tiME change with time. 

How is it going setting up your independent lab?

Some of the things I’m learning as I go. The workload, all the different things that go into starting up a lab – I knew it was going to be tough, but I didn’t anticipate it was going to be this much, this fast. There are a lot of moving parts. Something as simple as trying to get the best deals when purchasing a piece of equipment takes a lot of going back and forth, talking to different reps, and having to figure out what is a good price point, or what are some things I can compromise on, etc.

Another aspect is the restrictions because of COVID. Whether with lab space and renovations or the density of persons in the offices or labs. When I started, the restriction at Hopkins was 1 person per 400 square feet. My temporary lab space is a couple hundred square feet, so initially it was only one person allowed in that space at a time. Now its three, with 1 person per 150 square feet. It can be a bit overwhelming at times, understanding the logistics, and setting things up, and getting students, and trying to recruit, but I’m learning quickly. Right now, I have one postdoc and I have a graduate student, so two people, I’m hoping to recruit another two graduate students this fall, and I am also trying to recruit a postdoc.

One of the things I am learning is tempering expectations and experiencing the process. Sometimes we look at our PI’s and think “yeah they just sit in their office all day, I could do that it’s just meetings and writing”. But the amount of meetings that you navigate, the amount of writing, grants and emails navigating your schedule – there’s a lot more than you would expect, or at least more than what I expected, especially this early on. I think that many postdocs will benefit from gaining more insights into what it’s like to be a new PI, and building your lab, etc., and it would help to have more transparency in the process. This was something that I experienced while going through the interview process for faculty positions. You have to prepare and deliver a chalk talk, yet you’ve never seen a chalk talk. You have to give these job talks, and interact with faculty, yet in many cases, you’ve never had the experience before. I think definitely having more awareness and experience will help. I think that having more postdoc organizations, PIs or different departments helping to provide more insight as to what that is like is much needed, particularly in the postdoc phase. But all that being said, there was a lot that my PIs and mentors did in order to help me be prepared. Also, being at Hopkins, I have a great support system, faculty within my department and institute– they’ve been super helpful. Finding a place where you can strive and people are actually excited about you being here is a big deal. I feel welcomed, I feel like I fit in, and I feel that people actually want me here and are rooting for my success, which I think it critical for a junior PI. 

What characteristic are you looking for as you recruit new trainees and lab personnel?

My goal is really to build an interdisciplinary lab. Initially I was looking for someone with a similar background to my own, having both experimental and computational experience. But this has changed a bit over the last several months, and I have projects that are fully experimental, fully computational or hybrid.

I think at the core, I’m looking more at potential and curiosity as opposed to somebody who has a specific background. I think someone who is curious, driven and determined is the person that I want to work with and that person will be able to grow within my lab. Having an openness to learn, openness to push new boundaries or test new ideas. In the beginning, as an Assistant Professor, you’re testing multiple things, trying to see which paths work, as you try to establish your research program. In some cases, the workload on any one student or trainee may be a little bit more. But I think there’s a balance of risk/reward that could really drive innovation. Also, I think the fact that an Assistant Professor is hired, means that after going through that grueling process, other smart people (faculty) think that the ideas they’re proposing are feasible, and sound, fundable and potentially exciting. 

Do you have any advice for postdocs, particularly those going down academic career path?

For someone wanting to go into academia, at the postdoc phase, I would say stay determined, stay curious, and stay motivated. There’s a lot of things that go through our minds, as postdocs, particularly when we have interest in making that transition. I can speak for instance for me, I had mentors and colleagues who told me that I was ready before I felt that I was ready. I think having that network of people, that network of mentors, is critical, because they can see things in you that you can’t see or aren’t able to see yet. There’s a great advantage in having a network of mentors, and I would even qualify it a little bit further and say an “activated” network of mentors. They have to be activated in the sense that they have to know what it is that you want to do, or what your aspirations are. I think many times we look too much to just our PI, or one mentor, to be that one person for us. But one person can never provide everything that you need so that’s why you need a network—a village. So stay determined, stay driven, and keep your network of mentors activated.

 What technical and professional development resources did you take advantage of at Weill Cornell? As a postdoc, I attended a number of conferences, webinars, and other career development workshops. I also attended the programs that are offered through the Tri-I (Weill Cornell, Rockefeller and MSKCC), such as the “Transition to Research Independence” series and boot camps. I attended the “Transition to Research Independence” the last two years as a postdoc– the year before applying and the year I was applying. I also attended their boot camps, where you get to see what a successful and unsuccessful application looks like, and you also bring the drafts of your application documents to get feedback from your colleagues and peers. I think that was super helpful for me. Having other people read your research and teaching statement is helpful. Of course, I think that your PI should read it too.

I also had a couple of peers at Weill Cornell, in sort of like a peer-mentoring group, we would meet up and discuss ideas, push ideas back and forth, and encourage each other. They helped me a lot in fine tuning my teaching and research philosophy documents and staying encouraged. You also want people outside of your field to read your research plan. One of the things you quickly realize on interviews is that it’s a very broad audience and you have to try to reach everybody. Everybody has their own expertise, but in the end, everybody has to gain an understanding of what you want to do. 

What is your experience navigating the balance between work and family life?

Family life and balance is something that is very important to me. My daughter turns two in March, she was born while I was still a postdoc. I actually took two months of paternity leave while as a postdoc. I remember the decision of whether to take it or not was a tough one, because it puts you back at least two months since most times it takes more time to start things back up. But my mentors were very understanding in that regard and realized that I needed to have that time to be able to help my family make that adjustment. Even now, as an assistant professor we are still adjusting, but we make it work. I typically do drop-off and pick-up, my wife is a physician so her schedule is a bit more rigid than mine in terms of scheduling. It can be challenging at times, and sometimes you’re running on little sleep, but it’s worth it. I think, taking the time to be with your family is important to overall happiness, and in my experience, I am more productive when I am happy.