by Yash Pershad (G3) and Thomas Clarity (G2)
The MSTP’s Spring Physician Scientist Speaker Series recently welcomed Dr. David Clapham, distinguished ion channel biophysicist and former Chief Scientific Officer at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Students gathered for an evening dinner with Dr. Clapham, who shared a candid and wide-ranging account of his life and career – from growing up in rural West Texas to training at Emory, the Brigham, and eventually building a storied laboratory at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Earlier that day, Dr. Clapham delivered the MSTP Discovery Lecture on “Ion Channels in Organelles and Primary Cilia”, highlighting recent work on the mitochondrial permeability transition. His lab’s phenotypic CRISPR screens identified NLRX1 as an essential activator of the human mitochondrial permeability transition, a finding with broad implications for cell death, metabolism, and disease. The talk was a masterclass in using unbiased genetic approaches to crack open longstanding questions in organelle physiology.
During the evening session, Dr. Clapham offered reflections on a career full of twists, turns, and hard-won wisdom:
- Choose environments over titles. The most fulfilled physician-scientists find settings with genuinely protected research time, an aligned clinical niche, and real institutional commitment to their work.
- Find a true mentor and keep them for life. Dr. Clapham’s mentors became lifelong friends. That kind of relationship is rare and worth cultivating.
- Master a powerful assay. Deep technical expertise gives you a durable competitive advantage throughout your career to answer interesting questions.
- Avoid jerks…and don’t be one. Be kind.
- Keep your research program central. Funding and high-quality publications are the primary levers that give you autonomy over your clinical load and future opportunities.
- Be deliberate about clinical specialization. Pick a field that naturally feeds your research questions and realistically allows 50–80% research time.
- Negotiate your job description early. Define expectations for research vs. clinical time in writing when you start a faculty position, and revisit them regularly.
- Focus on what you truly love. You don’t have to be both a practicing physician and a scientist unless you genuinely need both. Once you find what you enjoy, pursue it without apology.
We are grateful to Dr. Clapham for his generosity in spending an evening with us, and for modeling what a rich, nonlinear, deeply human career in physician-science can look like.
