Dr. Kyle Metz, PhD in Molecular Microbiology & Immunology | Patent Agent at Cooley LLP

In this episode, we discuss the role of mentorship in Kyle’s decision to pursue a PhD in Molecular Microbiology & Immunology at Johns Hopkins, how he combined his scientific background with the entrepreneurial and business acumen he gained from pursuing an MBA to land a role working in patent law, and his advice for the importance of networking to help discover your career possibilities.

Hosted by Brooklyn Arroyo

To connect with Kyle and to learn more about his story, visit his page on the PHutures #100AlumniVoices Project website.

Transcript

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Brooklyn Arroyo

Hello. I'm cohost Brooklyn Arroyo and this is 100 Alumni Voices podcast, stories that inspire, where we explore the personal and professional journeys of a diverse group of 100 doctoral alumni from Johns Hopkins University. Today we're joined by Kyle Metz, PhD in molecular microbiology and immunology and currently working as a patent agent at the Cooley law firm. Welcome to The PHutures podcast. I'm really excited to be able to work with you today. So, tell me a little bit about your experiences leading up into your PhD and if there was any major pivotal moments or pivotal parts of your life that led you to study molecular biology and immunology.

Kyle Metz

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I think some of the pivotal things that happened that led me to wanting to pursue a PhD at the School of Public Health mostly stem from some of my undergraduate work. I was fortunate to work with a professor who was studying a parasite that affected predominantly people in tropical countries, and so she really just turned me on to wanting to study public health because it was just a really different way of thinking, where if you are able to make an impact on something that affects a lot of people just a little bit, you can affect and touch a lot of lives. So that got me really excited about this path of research and public health and a PhD, and she was also a graduate of Johns Hopkins on undergrad. And so, I was coming from a small town in Iowa, so, and I was going to undergrad at Iowa State, so I never really considered going out to like the East or West Coast, but she was very pivotal in helping me to navigate that application process. And so that's really kind of how she was able to bring me to Hopkins.

Brooklyn Arroyo

So, you really were led by I think something that a lot of people experience a little bit throughout life, but you have a pretty major one of experiencing mentorship and and that sort of thing. And I would love to just pry into that and and in what ways did she really support you and and how has that still affected you now?

Kyle Metz

Ohh, she was such an amazing person and just really came at like a pivotal time. And because I remember she, I didn't even really have a resume when I started working in the lab. And so, she, you know, literally built me from the ground up, I would say. And so, she worked with me on a resume. She worked with me on, like, the personal statement. In addition to, you know, like all the hands on, like, learning about what it is in a lab, how to do, you know the simple techniques to do more sophisticated analyses, to you know how you even begin to tell your story of what is your research project and how to make it interesting. And yeah, she's been great. We kept in touch all throughout my PhD and we still keep in touch from time to time. And yeah, she's just really great. And it was so fun, especially when I was at Hopkins, she would come. She came back for a couple of alumni things, and so it's just really fun. And then she introduced me to her friends. And so, I was like, it was, that was also really inspiring because you got to see where all of her friends are from, you know, back in the day. And just to see how they are doing these really cool things too. So, it's just nice to see all those different layers of and then it was fun to talk that she would talk about how much Hopkins has changed since she's been there, how much Baltimore has changed. So yeah, it was just really fun experience for that.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Definitely, and it is building that network and widening your your views on what we can do with science and just life in general. It's all really amazing things. So, within your PhD and you experience meeting these new people with your mentorship, but also just within your own individual experience. What were some of the biggest areas of growth for you throughout your PhD?

Kyle Metz

Biggest areas of growth during my PhD. I don't know where to even begin. There's so many. I think one of the biggest areas of growth are just really come from standing up for if you have like a result for something and learning how to defend it in a you know, a very cogent manner. So, you know, again, coming from a small town in Iowa, we're not the most assertive people. We're not the most. I don't know. Some of my friends have called me a door mat, and so I think going from that to, you know, be able to like, hey, we got these results and defending them. And I think that is just for me was a very big development. Another one is I think just time management and learning how you know, like when you're in class and then, you know, having to balance doing lab and figuring out like, OK, I have like a 8:30 AM class. So, like if I get to school, I can start a Western, have that run while I go to class and then be able to be that much further ahead in the day. And so just a lot of those little logistical things of becoming more autonomous like that.

Brooklyn Arroyo

And so now you're working within a law firm. And how do you think that your PhD has applied to this? Because I don't think we oftentimes see such intersectionality between STEM and law. And so how does that look like for you?

Kyle Metz

Oh, it is. It translates like I use it every day, like literally everything I'm doing is involved with a lot of things I've learned in my PhD, just like the basic science. Like today I was on a call with client and we were talking about, you know, how do we present data to the USPTO and wanted to make sure that every the integrity of the data is good because when we go to tell our story, we write the application. It's very important for that, you know, that goes right back to I think our first year we take like the data ethics or something similar to that. So just little things like that and then even to the higher perspective of where we just different talks that you went to and just knowing all these little facets about certain areas of science and then you need to be able to build that into some of your applications. So, and I think it's something I had no idea about patent law when I was doing my PhD. I obviously knew what a patent, well not I mean, but just I say I knew it, but like, do I really know? No, probably not. But we all heard of patents, but. When I think about, I had no idea that technical background would be important in a patent or not even a patent or just a general law firm and. So that was a really rewarding discovery to find that there are people that really value just your science education. They're willing to pay you pretty well. They're willing to send you to more school to become an attorney, a patent attorney. And so, it's just really nice that people value every aspect of what you're doing. And so, I think, yeah, having that and it, it all goes back to the PhD because if you don't have your PhD, you really can't do what we're doing because it it's a such a sophisticated and high level of scientific knowledge that you have to have.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Well, I just, even on a personal level, I definitely appreciate and strive for having that perspective of both STEM and sciences as well as using that to implement on law or anything like those areas. And so, I find that it's interesting that you have been able to do that and near the end of your PhD or after your PhD was that something that you planned to do to bring those two areas together? Or was it something that happened almost by accident? What did that look like for you?

Kyle Metz

Absolutely by accident. I knew when I was finishing my PhD, you know, I really love science, but I didn't, I didn't really know what you know, my career was going to look like. And so, I decided like I would I was gonna stick in academia for just a little bit longer after I finished. And so, I was really lucky that I found this professor who was just finishing this post doc coming from the Brode and I applied for a position with him and lucky enough to get it. And he was like, OK, well, if you come, you know, with me, you're gonna be the first person we hire. But you're gonna have to, like, help build the lab from bare shelves to fully functioning lab. And so, that kind of got me really interested in some of the economics behind just you know, how does a lab run? Because if you can figure out a couple ways to save some money here and there, you can buy a much more expensive piece of equipment that gives you much better data, and that's very valuable. So that was at Northwestern and one of the perks at Northwestern was they allow you to pursue a separate degree at a discount, and so I just looked at a couple of different the degree options and I found that the biggest ROI was an MBA. So, I applied to that. Was lucky enough to get into there, and then as I started taking some of the courses there clearly gravitated toward the entrepreneurship and healthcare classes as opposed to, like, you know, accounting. But there was just like a common theme about all the entrepreneur and anything related to healthcare and it all goes back to patents. So, if you have strong patent portfolio, you're just going to have a higher likelihood of attracting venture capital money and then that allows you to actually just really breathe in life to some of these discoveries. And so, after after I finished my MBA, I was able to kind of make that connection from some people that there are law firms that would be actually willing to have you be able to use your education in STEM and business to be able to help their clients. And so, it was all, I think, by accident how I was able to land on this role, because I had no idea, you know, during my PhD when I was at Northwestern and MBA. So, it's just all very fortuitous that how it all worked out.

Brooklyn Arroyo

And that's arguably some of the greatest payoff of academia is that you really do discover a lot of yourself and what it is you actually want to do that you didn't even realize beforehand going into it. So, what have been some of the biggest surprises for you in both the work you're doing now and the work that you were doing throughout your PhD?

Kyle Metz

When I was doing my PhD, it felt like the science was moving a lot slower and I don't know if that was because I was necessarily the one doing it, but I think the really cool thing to kind of look back now and especially the work I'm doing is just how many more discoveries it seems that there are. And I think it's you know, when I started my PhD, there wasn't CRISPR. When I started my PhD, they also didn't have like a lot of the different immunotherapies. Like I remember when we did one of the immunotherapies for when they were just making like one of the like the T cell car or something like that. Like, oh, this is never going to work, but luckily it did. And so those are some of the technologies I get to work on and it's just really cool to be able to see all the different ideas and discoveries that the clients come up with. And so, I think that's I think just the really cool thing to discover about how much more rapidly things are evolving and again, it makes me feel very fortunate, like I guess when I did my PhD that I was able to kind of be there when some of these things came about. So, I was able to learn it kind of first hand and do that.

Brooklyn Arroyo

So, what advice would you have for someone who is currently on the path of pursuing a Ph D in STEM or in their PhD in STEM, and they're not really sure how they want to work in the field, they're not sure what field to even pursue, and they're sort of stuck in this limbo?

Kyle Metz

I think one of the biggest pieces of that advice and I didn't learn this really until I went to Business School and it was how willing people are to talk to you. So, if and specifically like with networking and so that's one of the things I wish I would have known a little bit more during my PhD is how easy it is to network with people. So, you know, you can just get on LinkedIn. And you know, if there is alumni that are from your program, from your school, even if they're not connected with you whatsoever, just add them, send them a message, and there is just ways to be able to just talk to you about that. And so, I think that is the best way I think to find out you know all the different career paths that there are out there to kind of like steer you in one way because. There, there's just so many different things you can do, I think. And again, like I didn't know about any of these really when I was there and like, I have friends that work at the State Department, they get to travel to all these incredible countries and, you know, friends in consulting and, you know, law and some of them are entrepreneurs. So, there's just so many different paths out there, but it really helps if you can connect with people and find you know, what did they do to get to where they are. So, you don't have to completely reinvent the wheel.

Brooklyn Arroyo

And I think that you've highlighted this throughout the the podcast really that networking and mentorship have really just been the backbone of a lot of people’s success and they can really benefit you growing as an individual as well as a professional. So, yeah, I think that that is all super important. So, if you have any idea right now, you may not, but what would the next phase of your career look like for you?

Kyle Metz

Oh yeah, that's probably fairly decided I would say. So, I'm in law school right now. Fortunate enough that I'm I'm able to work during the day and my law firm pays for me to go to law school at night and so I will eventually become a patent attorney in a couple of years. And I think that is just going to be the next phase. It's going to be really cool, I think because I have I just have really amazing colleagues that I get to work with, like just to see some of the the work that they get to do and the clients, how they are able to guide them. Like they will take like they just create these new fields and it's just really amazing. So, I guess if I can be like my colleagues and probably won't be as successful as they are cause they're that much more amazing than I am. But I guess yeah, just help clients that begin to create these entire new markets, create new fields, and just really bring these new products and really help to transform a lot of people's lives.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Wow, that's amazing that you are able to be able to work as well as going to school at night. I think that that for one is amazing. And I just wanna say, do not sell yourself too short. I'm sure you're working with amazing people. But the fact that you are someone who has so much knowledge on a wide variety of things I find is personally, extremely inspiring and I know that many other people will as well. So, you can achieve just as much if not more than everyone you're working with and that sort of leads directly into our grand finale question for everyone and that is, what inspires you right now?

Kyle Metz

What inspires me right now? Well, that's a very good question. I don't know. I think one of the things that inspires me I think just seeing all the innovation and just being in like seeing every. When you get to work with like all the different clients and everything like that, they're always coming up with something new. They're always like coming up with solutions to the world's problems. And so, I think, you know, sometimes people can be sometimes pessimistic about the world, but I think when you're in patent law, it allows you to be a little bit more optimistic about everything because you can see what's coming down the pipeline. So, I think that really helps with that. And I think I'm also what inspires me also just being in law school like I see. Like some of my colleagues at my law firm are in law school. I obviously have a lot of classmates and just to see like how much they all the hope they have for the future and everything that they want to do and accomplish. It's just very inspiring I think. So, I think that's what really brings, yeah, my inspiration to keep checking plugging away that.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Yeah, people are people extremely inspiring and and you've proved that today through our PHutures podcast. So, thank you again for coming and speaking with us and sharing all of your expertise and knowledge. And I guess the final thing is, do you have anything else you would like to share or any advice that we didn't get to speak on?

Kyle Metz

No, I think I've we've covered a lot of everything, but I think it's just again important to really reiterate, you know, especially to some of those you know the PhD students that you know in your whatever year you are like, don't ever hesitate to try to reach out to somebody through LinkedIn or whatever. Don't feel if they don't reply back, don't take it personally. Just reach out to somebody else and they just might be busy and they'll respond again at some later time.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Well, thank you again. I've really appreciated speaking with you today.

Kyle Metz

Well, thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure.