Black Excellence Oral History with Kevin Cox, June 16, 2021 (Ms2024-072)

Korin Jones: My name is Korin Rex Jones, and I’m interviewing Dr. Kevin Cox for the Black Excellence in STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] project via Zoom. Today’s date is June 16, 2021. Could you state your name and date of birth for the record?

Kevin Cox: I’m Kevin Cox. My date of birth is April 11, 1991.

Korin: Great. Could you also give us a description of your current position and a little bit about the research that you perform in that position?

Kevin: I’m currently a postdoctoral associate at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, and my research involves focusing on plant microbe interactions by using these high-resolution RNA-seq technologies, such as single-cell RNA-seq or spatial transcriptomics, in order to figure out the cellular signals in those interactions between plants and microbes.

Korin: Very cool. Now, to sort of go 00:01:00way, way back before any of this happened. Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

Kevin: I was born and raised in Florissant, Missouri. It’s like a small suburb or subsidy in St. Louis. I was born there; I grew up there and went to high school there. I even went to my undergraduate there; I went to the University of Missouri in St. Louis [UMSL], and that’s where I got my bachelor’s degree in biology. So, I’m from St. Louis, and I’m actually now back in St. Louis for my postdoc. So, it kind of worked out in full circle.

Korin: Could you tell me a bit about your parents? What kind of jobs did they have?

Kevin: Yeah. So, my dad, he’s an electrician for Ameren. I don’t know if they’re known throughout the U.S., but Ameren is big here in Missouri. 00:02:00He’s been an electrician there for, at least, over thirty years. So, he’s been there for a while. That was kind of his first big job that he kinda got going, and he just stayed there and worked his way up. My mom, she started out as a…she was into business, so she was working in human resources and that business department more so. When I was younger--let’s say five or somewhere in toddler age--she got cancer, and she had to step away from work for a little while. And when I was in eighth grade in middle school--so I think this was about maybe eight, nine years later after she stepped away--she started working again, but she became a special education 00:03:00teacher, and she’s been in that position ever since I was in eighth grade, so, at least, fifteen years. She’s coming up on her retirement, but ever since then, she’s been a special education teacher in the same school district I went to high school in.

Korin: Now, this is sort of a broad question, and I know for many people, it’s not like one singular event, but when you were growing up, was there anything in particular that made you sort of feel like, science is the direction that I’m going in?

Kevin: Honestly, no. I thought science was kinda cool, but, at the time, when I was growing up, I thought scientists were…I didn’t know that being a scientist could actually be a job. I thought that was just reserved for those super geniuses that were selected by some secret society 00:04:00or something like that. I don’t know. I didn’t think you could be a scientist when you’re growing up. I thought I wasn’t good enough for that or smart for that. So, that wasn’t that wasn’t always an option for me as a career search. I just always heard the doctors or lawyers or--the typical engineers, like the typical successful quote unquote career paths. Those are the only three that I kind of heard about, but scientists I hardly heard anything about, except if they were in Hollywood films or whatever.

Korin: So, when would you say, then, that you started to get more involved in science? Was that something that started in undergraduate, or was this something that sort of started to take shape when you were in high school?

Kevin: In high school, I noticed that I would enjoy taking my science classes a lot. So, biomedical sciences 00:05:00or just any biology or chemistry class, I normally enjoyed being in those classes, but they didn’t really stick out to me as like, oh, I can do this as a career. It was just something like, oh, I love going into this class; stuff is fun here. It was in my undergraduate; that was when I finally realized I could become a scientist, and what happened was I took a microbiology course in my sophomore year. So, to backtrack just a little bit, growing up, I always wanted to become a pediatrician. And the reason for that was because I have a passion for working with kids, and I just wanna help people. So, I guess, I figured at the time the best way to help kids was to become a doctor. That’s what you’re kinda taught to do. Doctors, they help people. So, I went into my undergraduate [degree program] wanting to become a pediatrician and pre-med focused, but 00:06:00also at the time, they didn’t have a pre-med degree; they just had a biology or chemistry program. And they just said, well, normally, our pre-med majors, they take one of these two options. I picked biology because I leaned towards biology a little more. One of the courses I took in their biology program was microbiology my sophomore year, and, at that point, I fell in love with the subject. I fell in love with what microbes can do for us, how much they can hurt us, how much they can harm us, and how complex they are. From there, I found out people could actually research microbes for a living. I was saying that, okay, no matter what I do, for the rest of my life, it has to involve researching microbes; I don’t know what I’m gonna exactly do yet, but as long as it involves microbes, I’m good. So, I think my sophomore year, that’s 00:07:00where it kind of took off for me where I could probably have a career in science.

Korin: So, thinking back to your desire to become a pediatrician and then your later desire to study microbes, what was your support network like? Were your parents supportive of the pediatrician aspirations, and then, later, were they also supportive of the microbial research aspirations? And what about your teachers as well?

Kevin: Yeah. So, the pediatrician, my parents, they were definitely onboard with me doing it because who wouldn’t want their son to become a doctor or their daughter to become a doctor? Like, who doesn’t? So, they were definitely on board for that. They would just kind of tell me the process is a little bit long; it’s hard, but you’ll be all right, we support you. So, they were really supportive about me. They figured that I was kinda dead set 00:08:00on that path because I’d been saying I wanted to become a pediatrician since elementary school, and I was doing all this shadowing with other pediatricians in high school and even early on in college. My parents were kinda thinking at the time, okay; he’s dead set on becoming a pediatrician; he wants this. So, when I kinda came to them, after my sophomore year, telling them, hey, I wanna go into research, I don’t think I wanna become a pediatrician anymore, they were a little set back about it--hesitant about it at first. They were asking me basic questions like, can you make money off of this? Is this even a job? Just these random questions that--they were kinda just hesitant about it at first. But over time, when I told them more about what it’s like getting a degree in science and becoming a researcher in science, they became more 00:09:00open to it. And now, of course, they support me to the fullest, seeing how everything worked out.

Korin: How would you describe your undergraduate experience overall, and, specifically, what was the makeup of your classes as far as race and sex?

Kevin: UMSL was primarily a commuter school, meaning that most people drove to class, they attended class, and drove back home to their parents or their apartments. There was very little campus life there. You still had some people living on campus; you still had undergrads and whatnot, but, for the most part, it was primarily a commuter school. Overall, my undergraduate experience, as 00:10:00far as education-wise, was good. The reason I went to UMSL was because it was a relatively cheaper option versus going into a school out-of-state or out of the city and trying to pay for dorms and out-of-state tuition and everything. If you go by gender or race, particularly what stood out to me was race during my biology classes. One thing I kind of noticed was that, as I got more into my advanced biology courses, I was constantly the only Black person in a classroom. We’re talking classes where there’s like fifty or so people in there, at least, and I’m the only Black person out of all of them. 00:11:00It wasn’t just a one-class occurrence, but it was every biology class. It was like that over and over and over again, and at that point right there, I kinda realized, hmm, something’s not right here because there should be more Black people involved in the sciences, not just me and me not finding another Black person in my biology program. I don’t have proof of this, but I’m pretty sure that there was a point in time where I was the only Black biology major at UMSL at a given period. In that entire department. I hardly saw anybody that looked like me.

Korin: So, at what point during your undergraduate career or after it, did you decide that graduate school was a necessary 00:12:00step and a step that you were going to take?

Kevin: When I wanted to become a microbiologist, or study microbes in general, I started looking for positions to where I could get some type of laboratory experience during my undergraduate. Because even though I was encouraged to go into research and study microbes, I had to be sure that this was for me and not just some type of fad that I was going through because of this one course. So, I ended up getting a part-time lab assistant job at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. Ironically, where the position is I’m at right now. Yeah, full circle, like I said. I got an undergraduate lab position there, and that was actually my very first exposure to plants. I hadn’t taken any plant biology classes; I didn’t really care for plants growing up. I thought they 00:13:00were cool. I thought they were there, but I didn’t really have a desire to study them. I didn’t really too much care for them. But, the Danforth Center really exposed me to all the researchers that were studying these cool biological questions about plants--how much they can do for us, how much we need them, and how much we can harm them, if we’re not careful, and that, like humans, plants, they also can get sick, too. That kinda interested me, at the time, because me having this passion for microbes and realizing, oh, plants can get sick, too, and when they die that hurts us. That’s what kinda inspired me to study plant microbe interactions and study plant pathology and plant diseases. I think towards my last year, the principal investigator of the lab I was working in kinda suggested, you know, maybe you should try to go into graduate 00:14:00school, since you’ve loved doing research so much, and I agreed with him because I love doing independent research. I love being in a research environment asking these questions and being in a laboratory. So, having that undergraduate experience at the Danforth Center, that kind of propelled me to go to graduate school.

Korin: Microbes, and microbiology in general, is sort of viewed publicly as one of those more nerdy topics, so I’m wondering how your outside of science or outside of academic--like hobbies and stuff, how your identity as that person and your identity as a microbiologist sort of melded together, 00:15:00or if they are still separate but--just sort of how you dealt with those things?

Kevin: Yeah. I guess, if I’m understanding your question correctly, you’re saying like, how does my interest in microbiology mesh with, let’s say, me as a person or like…?

Korin: Yeah.

Kevin: I mean, to be honest, I don’t think it meshes too much. Obviously now, I love like picking out punny microbiology shirts or anything that’s punny and microbiology related; if it’s funny or anything, I’ll grab that. But, as far as my hobbies, I don’t think it affected me that much because at the end of day, I’m my own person; I have my own interests, and I’m just a guy 00:16:00that happens to be a scientist. I kinda embrace the nerdiness because my people, my family members or friends, they’ll give me a little bit of a hard time like, oh yeah, he’s a plant nerd, or he’s a microbe nerd. I’m like, yeah, you’re right; I am. I embrace that. At the end of the day, I’m still my own person. I still like watching sports, playing video games. I have my own interests, do what I feel like doing. But, I’m just a guy that has this interest in science.

Korin: I love that. So, going to graduate school, how did you find yourself in your graduate program? What was that search like, and why did you choose the school that you chose?

Kevin: My graduate school search was pretty interesting because I had a 00:17:00unique situation at the time. I had a daughter my last year of my undergraduate; she was born at the end of my junior year, so there was a lot of pressure for me to support my family financially at the time. But, at the same time, my girlfriend, who’s now my wife, she was supporting me to go to graduate school because this was something that she knew I wanted to do, and it would be the best option for my career. So, I don’t know what the cost for graduate school is now, but some of application fees were relatively expensive for an undergraduate. If you ask an undergraduate to pay out fifty, sixty, or seventy dollars for an application, and you have to fill out multiple of these applications, that adds up after some time. With me having a kid, I limited myself to only three schools because those were what I could afford 00:18:00at the time. You add that on with the GRE [Graduate Record Examinations] and these other fees you have to pay, and that’s all that I could really afford. There was this one scenario to where I was interested in applying to a certain ivy league school. Me and this professor, we had like a good interest in each other. I was thinking about applying, but I had looked at application fee, and it was just…I just couldn’t afford it. So, I just decided not to apply there, so I had to really narrow my search and select wisely because my resources were limited. My parents, they helped out a lot with the costs, but it was also a prideful thing on my end, at the time; since I was one that wanted to go to graduate school, I should pay for the application fee and shouldn’t ask for help, 00:19:00but that’s a whole ‘nother story on its own. I end up applying to three schools, and the way I chose these schools was, I was searching for schools that had good plant pathology programs because I knew I wanted to do my Ph.D. in plant pathology. So, I was just looking around schools across the country, anything that had a good plant pathology department, and I picked out three schools. One of the schools I applied to, they ended up losing parts of my application. And I kinda was like, okay, whatever. The second school accepted me, but because my GPA [grade point average] was around a 3.0, 3.1 from my undergraduate, they put me on academic probation. Which, 00:20:00at one point, I understood their reasoning, but, at the same time, it’s also discouraging right off the bat for an incoming graduate student that worked hard to get into graduate school--to say like, hey, we’ll let you in, but if you screw up in one semester, we gotta kick you out. It was a bittersweet moment because that was my first acceptance into a graduate program. The third school, they accepted me in and also gave me a university fellowship on top of that. On top of those two things, they had an advisor that I kinda really favored more than the other three schools. I had similar research interests with her, and I loved what she was doing with her lab and training her students. Ultimately, that’s the university that I ended up going to, was the third option. So, Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University [Texas A&M University] was the school I selected, and 00:21:00that’s how I ended up down there. They had a good plant pathology department. They have a good agriculture program, and it worked out that way.

Korin: Trying to decide which question I wanna ask first. There was a lot in there that was really interesting. As far as getting graduate students into these programs, a lot of people seem to take issue with the GPA status, which I can agree with, but I was curious. If you could suggest to these schools--how they were selecting for students or what their application process was like--how would you potentially improve it?

Kevin: Yeah, if I were to change anything--first off, I would throw out the GRE completely, which a lot of schools, they’re starting to do that. In my personal opinion, 00:22:00I think the GRE is a waste of time. It doesn’t reflect what you do as a graduate student. It’s kinda hard to convince me that a standardized test, where you fill in bubbles and whatnot, tells you like, oh, you’re gonna do this well or this terrible in graduate school. I’m just not convinced by that. The only way that I see the GRE being a useful tool is, let’s say, if you had this really competitive program where you have a bunch of students, and you gotta draw the straws somewhere. I can see the GRE fitting in there. Other than that, to determine how well somebody’s gonna do in graduate school, I think that’s bogus. For me, if I was looking for graduate students in a department, one thing that would interest me a lot is to see how much 00:23:00independent research that they tried to do as an undergraduate or how much interest that they have in doing research for biology. Because if you have an undergraduate that actually tried getting in these internships over the summer, or they’re doing research credit hours, and they were able to get a good recommendation from their professor, that shows me that they have a passion for doing research and that they will be able to survive in a graduate school. And I guess another criteria that I would look for is if they have any obstacles that they’ve overcome in undergraduate. There’s a lot of struggles in undergraduate, as far as studying hard or having family problems or personal issues or financial issues. I think the personal statement, what that allows you to do is put yourself out there to tell yourself what you overcame 00:24:00in your undergraduate and how you’ve built yourself up to overcome any obstacles in graduate school. Because graduate school is gonna be tough, if not tougher, than your undergraduate life. There’s gonna be a lot of low points, a lot of struggles. If I see in your application that you are a resilient student that’s willing to keep on pushing, even when it gets tough, then that looks good on you. I don’t see a problem with GPA. I don’t think we should really penalize the students too much for it because…it’s possible that you could have a student like me, where I started off kind of shaky at my first year or two because I didn’t know how to study for college. But, as the classes got tougher, my GPA kinda 00:25:00stayed the same. It didn’t decrease, and it actually increased a little bit, if I was thinking correctly. But, yeah, I don’t think we should really punish a student too hard on their GPAs. I think it still should be a criteria because it kind of shows you how much effort you’re willing to put into a class or into a coursework, and if you’re willing to keep your GPA at a modest level, then that kinda shows, okay, you know how to put in the work; you know how to put in the effort. That’s what you need to get through graduate school, is work and effort. I don’t think they should be penalized too hard with their GPA, but I definitely see why it still should be a criteria. Because what you don’t want happening is, if you disregard GPA entirely, you could have somebody where they may like science a lot, but they may not be able to put 00:26:00the effort and the work into it to develop their own dissertation or research program. You’ve got them spending five or six years wasting their time not doing anything. Those would be my three criterias, if I was a department head.

Korin: Do you think that the GPA requirements, the application fees, and the GRE are things that are sort of hindering advanced degrees for people from underserved school districts? Because I’m imagining, if you are in a school system where maybe they weren’t preparing you for college, and maybe you just barely got in and that was on you, you know, working really hard. You get in there, and you have a shaky, rough couple of years, until you sort of figure out how to do it on your own.

Kevin: Yeah, I totally agree that 00:27:00those would be a huge hurdle or huge obstacles for those from underrepresented backgrounds or underserved communities. With the fees, obviously, if you charge an arm and a leg, and you got people coming from these less fortunate backgrounds to where like they can’t really financially support themselves as well, or they can’t financially afford to come out and visit because they’re trying to pay for their school and whatever they have going on, that’s a hurdle itself right there. With GRE, as I said before, I think it’s just a complete waste of time. It’s just bogus. That’s just my personal opinion. I respectfully disagree with people that say it’s worth something. The GRE doesn’t really reflect on how well or how terrible you’re gonna do in graduate 00:28:00school. It just doesn’t. My GRE was pretty average, if not below average, and I think I did pretty well in graduate school and my scientific career, just to put that out there. I think what goes on with the GPA is people, they’ll say, oh, I have a 2.8, for instance, and the professor or the school would be like, oh, no you can’t apply at all. They’ll just shut them out or say, don’t even try to apply because you’re not gonna get in. I think by doing that, that limits them a lot on what they could do. If you allow them to, at least, put their application in and look at their entire piece of work and see what they’ve gone through and see what they’ve tried to do over the years in undergraduate, then it could tell a different picture. 00:29:00If you’re telling them right off the bat, where if they have a 2.8 or 2.9, you can’t apply because it’s not a 3.0; you shouldn’t apply at all, I think it’s gonna limit a lot of underserved groups. Especially if they get off to a rough start, like you said. They could come from schools where they don’t really prepare them for college. They just kinda teach them how to take tests and graduate, but they don’t really teach them how to study and how to work in college and how to take notes. It could take them a year or two to figure that out. But, that year or two, that’s where you’re taking the bulk of your classes, and if you get to year three and four and you don’t have too many classes left, but they’re all advanced courses, so they’re even tougher classes, it’s kinda set up for you to not do as well as you could. 00:30:00Korin: So, as you transitioned from undergraduate to graduate school, what was that like? Was that also more of a mentality shift for you, or did this feel more like something that you were used to and prepared for, and you just jumped right into it?

Kevin: At the beginning of graduate school, I think the schoolwork, or the coursework, was similar for me from undergraduate to graduate school because I kinda taught myself how to study and how to work in school towards the end of my undergraduate. So, I kinda knew how to study and knew what to do to prepare for exams, so the coursework wasn’t that much of a problem, to my surprise. I thought that was gonna be an issue for me, but I guess me adapting and learning how to study in my undergraduate helped me propel in graduate school. 00:31:00The only thing that was kind of a jump for me in graduate school was the reading--the literature reviews, all these papers, getting to know all these terms. That was a bit of a jump for me, trying to figure out how to read a scientific paper the correct way. That was probably the biggest hurdle for me. I’d say, maybe personally, the biggest hurdle on the personal end was probably trying to raise a family and go to graduate school. With my undergraduate, I was still living with my parents. Graduate school, I had my wife and my daughter, and we were in the middle of Texas where there’s no family for miles. So, it was definitely…I think that was the biggest change for me, trying to figure out how to balance work-life balance in graduate school.

Korin: How was Texan culture, 00:32:00given that you weren’t from that area originally?

Kevin: So, when people say that Texas is its own country, I totally get it now. I thought people were just tripping, or they were just saying. Like, oh, come on; whatever. But, Texas is its own country. I mean, overall, I had a pretty good experience with Texas; I loved being there, I loved interacting with people. Yeah, they had their spots, where like I was like, okay, yeah, this is Texas, but that’s with every state. I had an overall good experience. I know some people may say more or less about that, but just me, personally, I didn’t have too much of a bad experience with Texas. Yes, 00:33:00the hot weather, the hot summers, they got annoying. But, I like heat; I don’t like the cold weather, so that worked out for me. The food there--Tex-Mex--I miss going to any restaurant and getting very good, satisfying Mexican food or a breakfast taco at whatever hour in the morning. I think the biggest thing was it’s a lot of rural area. I was used to being in St. Louis where a lot of stuff was urban. Granted, I was in a college town, but that area was small, so as soon as you got out that, it was nothing out there. Overall, I had a good experience down there in Texas.

Korin: How many conferences did you attend, if you attended them, and what was that experience like? 00:34:00Kevin: Yeah. Conferences--they were easily one of my favorite parts about graduate school. Honestly, I don’t know how many conferences I attended. I think it was five maybe? If I were to think back. My second year I went to the American Society of Plant Biologists [ASPB] annual meeting twice, and I went to the International Conference on Arabidopsis Research one year, and I went to China another year for a molecular plant biology conference, and I think there was one more somewhere. So, yeah, I think it was five conferences, and those were easily one of my favorite things to do 00:35:00as a graduate student because, for one, you get to travel somewhere for pretty much free. You get paid for everything and get to see the city and travel places, but also I love meeting different people. I think going to conferences kind of helped rout me out of my introverted shell a little bit more. At the time, I was a little bit more on the introvert side. I still am a little, but I’m not as much as I was when I started graduate school. It helped me talk to different people and meet different people. One story that I share is that--it was my first conference, it was an ASPB conference in Minneapolis. I was just giving a poster presentation, and I met this 00:36:00woman who stopped by my poster, and we just started chatting about science. To this day, we’re close friends. We still talk to each other every time we see each other at conferences where we all hit each other up and whatnot. So, I got other stories about that…other stories that are related to that. Going to conferences allows you to build those networks that you wouldn’t be able to do, if you just stayed at your university. That’s kinda one reason that I’m excited to go back into these in-person conferences, hopefully when COVID-19 blows over and whatnot. Because I think it’s a critical part of your graduate career--is to not only present your work to the public and to your peers, but to also meet the people in your field, the people that you read about every day and to make new 00:37:00connections to people that are in the same career level as you, but you get to follow them throughout your entire scientific journey. I love going to conferences.

Korin: I really like that. And a follow-up for all of the other introverts out there that are terrified of going to conferences and talking to people that they don’t know, do you have any advice to ease yourself in or make that experience a bit more comfortable or just figuring out how to network?

Kevin: Yeah. So, one thing I would say first is if you’re going with, let’s say, a couple of people in your lab or somebody you know from the university, buddy up with them for a little bit and start meeting other people. So, that way, when you talk to people, you have that somebody next to you that you know, and you’re comfortable with. That’s 00:38:00what I did at first because my first conferences, I think five of us from the lab had went, so I stayed with them for the first part of that conference and talked to people until I was comfortable enough to talk on my own. If you don’t have anybody to go with in a lab or to go with to a conference, one thing I would say is just start--in those break sessions after a talk is done, go up to a crowd of people and just start talking, just work your way in. I’m not saying be rude and interrupt their conversation or anything, but just walk in and join and see what they’re talking about. Most people, they’re more than happy to welcome you into their conversations. Normally, I haven’t had an issue with that at all. I try to go after people 00:39:00that I know are around my career stage, instead of trying to talk to principal investigators; they might be talking about something serious, and I don’t want to intrude on that, but people around my career stage, I try to go in and have a conversation. If I’m in line getting coffee, and there’s people behind me just chit-chatting, I may join them for a conversation after we get coffee or something. And that’s the same thing for the poster sessions. If you go around, and you see a poster of somebody that’s doing similar research that you’re doing, strike up a conversation with them. Just talk. The more you practice that, the easier it gets. And I still have to practice that myself to this day. I’m not some social guru or anything. It makes it a whole lot easier the more you work at it, the more you practice it. 00:40:00Korin: I think that’s really nice to hear and really useful. Trying to decide…I’ll go with this one. You went to a conference in China?

Kevin: Yeah. It was a plant-microbe international conference. They have it every two years or something, and it varies between location to location. I think this conference was in 2017. Yeah, it was in 2017. The summer of 2017--in August. I had just published a paper that prior year, that May, and my advisor was like, yo, you should really try to come to this conference and present your work; I think that’ll be really cool; that will be really beneficial for your career, 00:41:00and you can meet some people, and plus, it’s a really cool conference; it’s right up your alley. And it also worked out that I had a fellowship that had travel funds with it. So, she was just like, you would be stupid not to go to this. She didn’t tell me that, but I could kind of tell like, come on, you gotta go. Plus, my Ph.D. advisor, she was Chinese. I was in a predominantly Chinese lab. So, she thought it would be kind of cool if I went over there and she could show me around. And I had friends in China to meet. I went there; I presented my work. It was cool. It was a big conference; it was a huge conference. It was a little bit overwhelming, to be honest, because it was talks nonstop from sunup to sundown. But, it was great. And 00:42:00that’s where I met my future postdoc advisor--at that conference. So, it was great!

Korin: That’s really cool. Did you get your picture taken just as you were walking around? Non-conference related.

Kevin: Yeah. I had to think about what you meant there. Yeah. So, I got to China, I think, a few days before the conference to do some sightseeing and to go see the Great Wall and go to Tiananmen Square--just do a bunch of sightseeing in Beijing. And I tell you, I was with a group of friends that I already knew from my Ph.D. lab that they just went back to China to pursue their job opportunities, but they took some time out of their day to show me around and spend some time with me. I 00:43:00tell you, I got so many looks, so many people trying to discreetly take selfies and whatnot. It was kind of hilarious. But, yeah; that happened quite a bit.

Korin: I know you were only there for a short time, but I don’t typically get to ask people this. How would you describe the Black experience of being in China? Because it’s a bit different than here, right?

Kevin: Yeah. I don’t know. I was just kind of there, to be honest. I just thought people were just taking pictures of me because they knew I was an American; they knew I was English-speaking. I didn’t really get a different experience besides the fact that I got treated a celebrity. 00:44:00I don’t have anything else about that. I wasn’t there for that long, and it didn’t really come off to me that I got treated really differently besides the fact that they knew I was an American, and I was English-speaking.

Korin: It’s just cool to hear. I spent some time over there, but most people that I have talked to, the few that I get to ask this question to, the connotation is usually positive, which it seems like that’s what you’re saying?

Kevin: Yeah, it was a positive experience for sure. I had people that were coming up to me trying to try out the English for a little bit. I would try my Chinese, even though I would butcher it all the time. But, it was cool; you felt like you were a little celebrity there, 00:45:00which…it was a little awkward. But, I kinda got used to it, after a day or two.

Korin: Now, going back a little bit to the publishing of papers. What was that pressure like within your lab and also within the department, with the other graduate students, too?

Kevin: In our Ph.D. department, there really wasn’t a requirement to have a publication in order to graduate. They left that up to the advisor’s or the principal investigator’s discretion, on a lab, principal investigator by principal investigator basis to whether they would want you to have a publication or not, but there was no written requirement for that. My advisor, she was very, very adamant where she wouldn’t let her students graduate without a publication, and I understood that because having a publication, 00:46:00before you graduate, it helps your career. It helps jumpstart your career. That’s something that she told me day one--was that, I really try to strive to have my students have a publication either published or is in revision or in review, before I let them graduate just to let you know what you’re getting into. I understood that. I kinda started feeling the pressure a lot, when I was in my third and fourth year. Because at the time, I had passed my preliminary exams already, I was just doing research, and it was just a matter of finishing these experiments, so I could actually publish a paper, and I thought I was never gonna get there. I thought I was just gonna stay in the same rut to where I just do experiments, they don’t work, I try something else, it doesn’t work, and just keep on this little cycle to where I 00:47:00drag it out to my sixth or seventh year or something like that. It was pressure in that. And then, trying to write, and do experiments as well, that was tough for me. There was, at one point, where had I struggled to balance doing experiments and writing, that during our weekly meeting--because we met every two weeks with our advisor to share what we’re doing--for that two weeks, I didn’t have anything for experiments because I was just burnt out by trying to do both of them. My advisor, she got on me saying, look, you can’t do that. I know it’s a lot, but if you keep this effort, you’re gonna be stuck in this little rut that you keep going in. So, with that, I had to kind of push through that, had to figure out a way to balance my work-life a little bit more. 00:48:00The way I figured it out was I just tried to manage my time more efficiently. I tried to make sure I got to the lab as soon as I dropped my daughter off at school, get there, do as much as I can. When I had to come home, grab her and spend time family, and it was that time, after they went to bed--my daughter and my wife, they were asleep--I went back to the lab, and did what I had to do. That was stuff that I had to do to make it work to where I could still get my work done, but also make sure I’m still spending time with my family as well. So, it was tough, but I’m glad that I went through that because it taught me how to write papers. It taught me how to write more quickly, and how to balance my time more efficiently.

Korin: What would you say the publishing pressure is like for you now in your current position?

Kevin: I’m starting to feel it a little bit more now 00:49:00because of the pandemic, and it pretty much took away a year and a half of my postdoc. And now, I’m kinda getting closer and closer to where I need to start looking for faculty positions, and I have publications, but I don’t have any publications from my main project ready to go just yet. So, I’m starting to feel the pressure of that--of if I’m ever gonna produce data to have a publication to get a job. Yeah. I mean, it just doesn’t go away, for some reason; I don’t know why. I wish I could have a better synopsis of that, but it just doesn’t go away. You always have this pressure of, I need to publish, I need to publish, I need to publish. I think what you gotta do is you have to realize that you’re doing the best you can. You’re doing enough. 00:50:00And in time, that will come. That paper will come; that manuscript will come; the data will come, and you’ll move on. It’s kinda hard for me to block out that, hey, I need to really get this published, so I can move on. That’s always there for me, in the back of my mind.

Korin: Now, you said you’re looking for a faculty position. Does that mean that you are set on staying in academia? And if so, why? Not in a judgmental why, but a lot of people seem to either love or hate academia. So, I’m just curious why that was your choice.

Kevin: Yeah, so I have a passion for mentoring students. I really get a joy out of mentoring students and sharing my passion for science with them. And I also love having the freedom in 00:51:00doing whatever science project I want to. Throughout my graduate school, I think after my first year--so I think from my second year until I graduated--I had an undergraduate student that I was mentoring every semester, and I enjoyed doing that. I love seeing them start off as this person who doesn’t know how to pipette or can barely pipette without me standing over them to where I give them something, and I just walk off and take care of something else. I just love seeing that. I love teaching them, showing them the little tricks and methods and seeing them just develop their own little career path. I think that what keeps me in academia is the mentoring aspect of mentoring students, mentoring trainees, and training the next generation of scientists and figuring out what works for them because stuff 00:52:00that works for me is not necessarily going to work for you, for instance, or for anybody else, but if I can bring that potential out of you, that’s gonna be the best thing for me.

Korin: A follow-up to that. What type of institution are you targeting, or are you targeting a specific type? A research I [R1] university, research II [R2] university, or primarily-undergrad?

Kevin: I’m pretty open, to be honest, right now. If you told me to pick one right on the spot, it’ll be R1 because it gives me the best opportunity to do research and recruit students, but I’m pretty open right now. I gotta go wherever that opportunity takes me. If that sends me to an R1, then cool. If it sends me to a primarily-undergraduate institution, I mean, it’ll put me around a bunch of undergraduates that I can 00:53:00mentor and help get their career started. That would be cool. If you put me at an HBCU [historically Black colleges and universities], that would be cool, too, because then I’m helping fuel the next generation of scientists that look like me. So, I’m just open to whatever right now. I’m not trying to limit my options. But, if you had to kind of restrict me to something--right now if you need an answer, it will be an R1, but I’m keeping my options open, until I get offers in front of me.

Korin: That’s cool. Because I haven’t asked you about this yet, and I want to cover this, could you tell me a bit about your streaming?

Kevin: Yeah, so my streaming is a hobby right now. So…I guess I gotta go back a little bit. So, the way it kinda got started--I have this online persona, online character called Bioguy--alter 00:54:00ego or whatever you wanna call it. The way it kinda got started was I love to play video games all the time. I love playing video games. And when you’re playing video games online with other people, you need a little-- a character name or some type of name. And I would always cycle through a bunch of names, and I’d end up forgetting them because I wasn’t online as much all the time. So, when I was in my undergraduate, I was playing some game, and I just came up with a name to where it was Bio--I was a biology major--and guy because I was a guy. So, I just called it Bioguy. Not the most creative name but whatever. It’s something I can remember. It works for me, so let’s roll with it. So, that’s where Bioguy came from, me 00:55:00playing video games, and I just needed some type of name that I could remember easily. And it just stuck with me. With streaming, what I do is I use it as a hobby to play video games that are either hot right now or games that I love. And what that allows me to do is it allows me to kick back and relax, but it also allows people to know me as a person. It humanizes me in a way. So, a compliment that I get all the time is like, oh, he’s a scientist, but he’s like, really, really cool! He’s not like one of these weird scientists or whatever. I kinda laugh at that because I’m like, well, there’s a whole lot of people that are as cool as me that are scientists as well. But, it’s just like people--they don’t know that; they look at these Hollywood films, and they assume that we’re scientists--we’re hunchbacks; we’re controlled 00:56:00by the government or something. I don’t know--that we were just like anti-social. It humanizes me, when I stream and show like, hey, I’m just an actual person. I just happened to be a guy that does science and knows science. So, that’s where the streaming comes in, and I do that like two or three times a night, and I just play games and talk to people.

Korin: Yeah, I think that’s really cool. That’s why I wanted it to be part of this. It’s nice to see somebody sort of expanding what a scientist is or looks like, or how a scientist is supposed to act. I think that’s really cool. Is there anything that you would like to, specifically, say or add to this before the interview ends?

Kevin: I guess one thing I’ll point out is… 00:57:00to add on to the Bioguy persona, that led me towards my science communication on my YouTube videos. So, my YouTube channel was around for a while, and I never really messed around with it. I would put vlogs up or random videos of me doing whatever. But, when COVID got started, there was a lot of misconception going around; it was a lot of conspiracy theories. It was a lot of misinformation. And I started making videos addressing COVID and discussing the facts and what was true and what was not true. And a reason why I started doing that is because I kind of feel that the next generation of scientists, a lot of us are gonna have to start really finding ways to not only do science, but also communicate our science to the public. That’s 00:58:00the only way that we’re gonna kinda get our trust back with the public--that scientists, we’re not evil people trying to take over the world or anything. That’s why I have a passion in science communication; that’s where that comes from. So, the Bioguy persona, it works out pretty well because now, I have this name that goes with talking about science, but also playing video games.

Korin: That’s really cool. I guess one final question. Is there any advice that you would give to a high school student that’s not sure if they belong in science or whether that’s something that they should be pursuing?

Kevin: Yes. So, I would tell them to…if they’re taking a science class right now, and they’re 00:59:00not sure if this is for them or not, I would encourage them to start looking for internships. Just look for internships or volunteer opportunities to be in a lab for a summer. I know at the Danforth Center right now, we have a couple of high school interns that are there for eight weeks. They only work twenty hours, and they get paid. It helps them know, hey, is this something I wanna do for the rest my life or something that--oh, that’s cool, there’s people who do that, but it’s not for me, but I’m glad that there’s people out there that do that, and I appreciate them for it? So, I would just encourage them to find internships or find a mentor that they can talk to that’s in the sciences.

Korin: All right, well, thank you so much for your time. It’s been a pleasure, and with that, I will end this interview. 01:00:00[End of Interview] Ms2024-000; Cox; Page 2