#005 - How to build a spinal cord

In this episode, we are chatting with Professor Stephanie Willerth. She is a Full Professor and Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Victoria. Over the years Professor Willerth has held many distinguished positions. This includes being the President Canadian Biomaterials Society.

Professor Willerth did her undergraduate at MIT and completed her Phd at Washington University in St. Louis. She is a published author and has over 4500 citations. 

In addition to sharing her experiences, Professor Willerth will share with us some of her favourite books and why they made an impact on her life. 

The interesting thing for the episode :

In this episode, we discuss about application chatGPT. Recently the journal Nature published an article discussing how chatGPT was utilised to create abstracts for journal articles. The abstracts that were created (in some cases) were able to fool humans into thinking its the real deal. Click for the full article here.

We celebrate, as humans, we have been able to create something extraordinary. However, there are concerns about using chatGPT such as privacy, biases that maybe included in the model and various other questions. 

Accompanying article available here

The main content of the week

Professor Willerth discusses her childhood and the importance parents and guardians play in encouraging children, especially girls, to experiment and be different. Furthermore, she talks about her focus and goals all the way through high school, university and PhD. In addition, Professor Willerth, speaks about the importance of discussion, collaboration, and building relationships. There are many golden nuggets of advice to Phd students, Postdocs and other academics. 

Universities and research centres discussed

• MIT - Read more
• University of Washington in St Louis - Read more
• UC DAVIS - Read more
• Stanford University - Read more
• University of Victoria - Read more

Advice to PhD Students 

• Are you doing a PhD? Watch out for these common problems. Click here to read more
• Should you go into industry or Do a Phd ? 9 questions to ask yourself when deciding if to do a PhD or go into industry? Click here to read more.

Books that made an impact

• The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank - Learn more
• Ring of Fire: The Inside Story of Valentino Rossi and MotoGP - Learn more
• The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race -