About the Episode

Have you ever felt a bit like Goldilocks? Not quite one thing, but also not quite another? Like you float a bit in between worlds, questioning whether you belong around all of the incredibly intelligent people specializing in something around you and not sure what role you play in all of it?

Devika Nair is one of those people. She’s a researcher, existing between brilliant colleagues with specialized training in high-level physics who run the MRI machines at a tumor research facility and the clinicians who make important decisions based off of the lab’s findings. One day, though, an unexpected health scare took her out from behind the glass to inside of the very MRI machines she asks patients to enter every day. Suddenly, what was simply a professional passion—using story to communicate science to the general public—became a personal mission. She wasn’t sure how to explain the way MRIs work that might actually be interesting to other people, until she realized that the movement of hydrogen protons, which is how images wind up on film, look just like the movements of the Indian classical dance she learned as a child.

Episode Details

About Devika (she/her)
As a clinical researcher, Devika manages a large translational brain tumor project at UCSF. Their goal is to better predict tumor transformation to higher grades and differentiate between tumor and treatment effects in primary gliomas using advanced MR imaging techniques. Outside of research, she helps direct a science podcast group called Carry the One Radio whose mission is to ignite scientific curiosity. She also takes classes in and performs Indian classical dance, which has informed her understanding of her field of study—neuroscience.

What We Discuss

• The amazing story of how we met.

• How the spinning of hydrogen protons when viewed in an MRI machine—the way images are made—reminded her of her classical Indian dance training, and led her to create dance videos to help people learn about MRI.

• A health scare that moved Devika from behind the glass to inside an MRI machine—where her patients typically are. And how she applied her research skills to lend herself a sense of control in the midst of this scary situation.

• Growing up with an artistic mom that inspired her early dance training and who continues to teach today.

• Her fascination with what art and science have in common.

• Her collective radio show, Carry the One.

Sources Mentioned

• Here’s the old SciComm Camp site, though the conference is no longer running.

• “Sharkologist” Michelle Jewell, can be found on Instagram and Twitter.

• Alie Ward and the Ologies podcast, inspiring -ologists of all stripes to update their social media handles everywhere.

• The book, MRI Made Easy

• Here’s what precession is in an MRI.

• Science Talk, the organization and conference mentioned by Devika.

• The Sigma Xi STEM Art & Film Festival

• Suba Subramaniam, the UK-based choreographer and educator who runs a South Asian dance organization called Akademi Dance, was one of the individuals featured on the “Art is Science is Art” series of Carry the One Radio. Here, too, is the TEDx Talk  of Suba’s that Devika references.

• Dr. Alex Naka, the computational biologist and generative artist also featured on that episode can be found here on Twitter (love this particular tweet from him), and on Instagram here.
  

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Credits
Audio engineering by the team at Upfire Digital.

All of my music is provided by the in-house musicians at Slip.stream.

Coming soon, hopefully! Would you be willing to help? Email me at brandi@thisplusthat.com!