Dr. Casey Daniels, PhD in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology | Senior Scientist at AstraZeneca

In this episode, we discuss Casey’s pathway into the pharmaceutical industry and her PhD in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, how grounding herself in supportive communities empowered her to take career risks, and her advice for leaning into what you’re passionate about in the moment for enhancing productivity and finding balance in all that life encompasses.

Hosted by Lois Dankwa

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

Transcript

Lois Dankwa

Hi! I'm co-host Lois Dankwa. And this is the 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 Casey Daniels, PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology and current Associate director at AstraZeneca. Hi Casey. 

Casey Daniels

Hi. 

Lois Dankwa

How are you today?

Casey Daniels

I'm great.

Lois Dankwa

So, thanks for joining us. I'm excited to learn a little bit about your story and yeah, dive in. So, I'd love to first start by hearing about kind of what made you want to pursue a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology, and just hear more about what your graduate experience at Hopkins was like.

Casey Daniels

Sure. So, I did an undergraduate at UMBC in biology, and while I was there, I did some internships in pharma and I worked on campus at a in an organic chemistry lab, and also at the School of Medicine University of Maryland School of Pharmacy actually, working on PK studies. So, I had this biology and chemistry, and I got an appreciation that in biology there are no rules. Everything you've learned there are exceptions to, and it's actually quite messy. And there's a lot we don't know. But in physics and chemistry there's a lot of rules, and and those are actual rules that we can rely on. So, I gained an appreciation that that you can use the tools from physics and chemistry to interrogate biology. And that's what I wanted to do. When I went to Hopkins I actually the the lab that I joined, Anthony Leon at the School of Public Health, he hadn't started at a at a Hopkins when I started. So, he came in the spring, and we did rotations 5 rotations at the time, and I heard about his research. I was really excited about some of his ideas and what he was working on. I reached out to him, and I managed to get his fifth rotation, which was the only one he was available for, and he was doing mass spectrometry, and I knew that he was using that to interrogate RNA Biology. And it was just, it was a great, it was a great match. So, I wanted that opportunity. So, when I heard about Anthony's research and and the idea he had for my dissertation, it seemed to fit this, this model that I had of using chemistry to interrogate biology. So, Anthony did his postdoc with Phil Sharp at MIT, and Shaun Ong was doing his postdoc with Steve Carr at the Broad Institute at the time, and they were, they had an idea for a PhD students work. And they both got their associate professor assignments at the same time, Anthony at Hopkins, Shaun at University of Washington, and so I was fortunate to be the first student in either of their labs. For the first 2 years I was the only student, and I got to take this idea they had for characterizing protein ADP revasciliation sites by mass spec, which wasn't being done at the time. So, 80 pair of oscillation is a glyco like modification. So, it's a very complex polymer and parp inhibitors are a new class of chemotherapeutics that regulate this post protein modification, and when I started my PhD, we didn't have a way to to identify the sites of correlation. And they came up with this mass spec-based method. And I was the one that got to work with both of them to to get it working and to patent it and to, you know, get a few publications on that. And so, my Postdoc work, actually moving on from that, so, I developed this method as a PhD student, and then I took it with me when I went to NIH NIAID and used it to interrogate innate immune cell signaling in the laboratory of immune systems biology which is headed by Ron Germaine and I worked with Alexanderita Lazar there, and I was able to to apply by chemical-based method to to the biology of innate immune cell signaling.

Lois Dankwa

That's pretty cool. So, it sounds like you've had a a chance to work with people who seems to really know the field and know the area really well. I think something that that stuck out to me from what you were talking about was how you were almost you were applying how kind of people think about physics, to how people do biology. And it was almost interdisciplinary work. And I'm I'm curious what really drew you to interdisciplinary work, and what was exciting about that for you.

Casey Daniels

Sure. So, I think again, going back to my mentors Anthony and Shaun. So, Anthony is a biologist who is really excited about all of the New Biology and all of the new methods and techniques out there for for interrogating it and the pursuit of science that can bring medicine to patients. And Shaun is also excited about that. But he's really an incredible method development person, so he really thinks about what the right approach is for for answering the questions. Anthony's very good at identifying the questions, and I would say, Shaun is very good at finding an elegant analytical design to answer that question the most powerful way, which isn't necessarily using the most sexy new techniques or technologies, but is really just finding the right method and and and reducing the number of steps so that you can get there in the most clear way. And so I think the combined, the combination of Anthony and Shaun really was everything that I was looking for in terms of of taking simple, powerful methods and then interrogating really important biology.

Lois Dankwa

I love that. So, when, then when we're thinking about kind of how you learned from your mentors the very specific skills that they were bestowing you with, how did that really inform the type of employment that you were thinking about for yourself, but also, what you wanted to do both in your PhD but then afterwards professionally?

Casey Daniels

Sure. So, I had a feeling from early on that I wanted to do drug development. I did internships first at Siegfried Pharmaceuticals as an undergrad, and then Wyeth, which was purchased by Pfizer Pharmaceuticals later. And I had an interest in in understanding drugs. I always have. So, but I also knew that when I when I got my PhD that I wanted to learn immunology, and then anything that you do, any disease that you study, any medicine that you want to understand, you have to understand the human’s immune response. And so I was missing that even though school, the school public health at Hopkins has an incredible microbiology and my molecular immunology program, I didn't I didn't get that immunology training there. I actually got it later at NIAID. So, I was looking to get into drug development. That was always in the back of my mind. I actually was pre-pharm when I was an undergrad, and then ended up going for the PhD instead of the PharmD, because I realized that actually, I really wanted to do research, and that was the best degree for that. But yeah, I was always I, and I knew that AstraZeneca was If if you were going to be in pharma and you were going to be in the Maryland area, AstraZeneca was, was a great place to be. It's a huge company and we're doing all kinds of cutting-edge research. So that was always kind of there, and and all of my decisions to go to Hopkins, to go to NIH, and then to go to AstraZeneca, were all keeping me local. So, at each stage I had opportunities to go abroad, to take, you know, Postdocs abroad, or in other parts of the country that were great. But I love my community, I love my family that I have here, my friends, and and I feel very grounded by all of my my community and my network here in the area. So, every time I got an opportunity to stay local, but also do exciting work, I took it. That was a clear, a clear decision for me.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, that makes sense. And that's it's such an important thing to remember, right, the the community that's around us, whether it's physically or just, we create it and we pull on people from different States and stuff. It's really essential for the type of work and the pressure cooker that we're in both during our doctorate but afterwards as well.

Casey Daniels

Yeah, absolutely. I've always felt that I was grounded and safe because I have my my community and my family nearby. And that allows me to take, you know, risks and do scary things in my career because I have that foundation that I've I've prioritized kind of keeping that.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, I get it. So, actually, something that I wanna I wanna dig into more then. So, you said it makes you feel kind of empowered to do scary things and take risks and stuff. I'd love to hear from you, and the advice that you had you'd have for people about when you were in a moment where you were like oh, let me do this scary thing, and how how did you do it? Why did you do it? And what supports did you lean on in that moment?

Casey Daniels

Well, I'd say the first thing was just going to Hopkins at all right. So, I was, I had a little bit of imposter syndrome. I was from a small town in Pennsylvania, and going to UMBC just that first jump down to Baltimore was a big jump for me. And I wasn't, you know, I got my my bartending degree when I was in high school as a backup, just in case, you know, it didn't work out, and so I had a bit of imposter syndrome, but I I knew that I knew that I wanted to do Research. And then, when I got the opportunity from Hopkins, it it was an obvious yes, but I I definitely carried that imposter syndrome with me. And I would say that I never really shook that until I passed my qualifying exam. I think there was a part of me that all the way through the first 2 and a half years of graduate school I felt like, Okay, this is great. I'm having a great time, and learning a ton. Let me get the most out of it, because once I hit that qualifying exam it, it might all be over, and that did happen to some of my peers. They actually didn't make it through the qualifying exam. That's a real thing. But I did pass it, and after that everything changed for me. I thought about my future differently, and it was it transcended my PhD. Or it gives my whole outlook, my whole attitude. I think I just felt like, okay, I'm on a path that makes sense for me. And I can do this. And now let me see how far I can go with it. So again, having having the support at home, and having my dance community that I could go to and and really immerse myself in that there's nothing better than going and just dancing all night, and and you know you're completely in the moment on the dance floor. Having those things really help me just get through all of that.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, well, so a couple of a a couple of things. So, as someone that wanted to get a bartending license years ago, and still hasn't I with that was a choice I made. But I of course there's it's not too late.

Casey Daniels

Not too late!

Lois Dankwa

So, you've provided some inspiration. But then also I love that you had a like a dance community where it was something completely different from the PhD that was something you could still invest your energy into, and it was something you could challenge yourself with, and all of that, and I think that's so important just to help balance things, you know. 

Casey Daniels

It is, and I appreciate this whole. I read the article about what you guys are doing at Hopkins, and I love it because when I was going through my my undergrad at my grad school. So, I was you know the president of the ballroom dance club at UMBC. I was the captain of the formation team. I did ballroom dance growing up and then I found West Coast swing, which is my current community, while I was at UMBC, and then, while I was at Johns Hopkins I was still involved at the community, but I always felt like it was something that that was a distraction from my science, and so I did it, but it was a guilty pleasure. It was like, you know, I felt like I couldn't really talk to people at work about it. And and you know it was just something that I could do when I was done with my school work, then I could let myself go do that. But my perception, my my perspective on that, has really changed you know, now that I'm I'm here in industry, I've realized so, my my boyfriend, Dave Moldover, runs Dance Jam Production. So, this is a company that he started from scratch, and we run weekly dances in the area. We have annual events, that are, we bring over a 1,000 people together, you know, for a weekend party where we do competitions and workshops and and parties, and, you know, bring all these people together for 4 nights. And you know my experience working with him supporting these events and supporting the business has produced very real skills that I can bring to my science. You know I know how to organize meetings. I know how to advertise and promote. I figured out graphic design, for you know, supporting our website. You know, when I was at NIH, I generated a large database of the 80 pair of oscillation sites that I measured in immune cells, and then we put that on a website, you know, and I was familiar with building websites because of my work with Dance Jam Productions, and obviously all the work I do to make Powerpoints and to sell my science is all marketing. It's all business, and and setting up the lab with Anthony, again, I was the first student. When I started working with him, we didn't even have a lab. They were literally building it. So, you know, inventorying, setting up the systems, all of that was very similar to what I do with Dave, and growing up my my family owned a swimming pool business called Northeast Pool supply, and I you know, did inventory and and worked at the shop, and you know helped with my family business, and the ballroom dance studio that I worked for as a teenager was also a small family business, so I have all of this experience with entrepreneurs and with business. And I've realized in the last few years that that is part of what has made me so successful in science. And it's not something that is a, you know, a hobby that that I shouldn't, you know, show or tell right. It's something that that makes me better at everything.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, and it's such an important thing to remember that the things that we're good at, apart from whatever thing we're studying for our PhD or whatever doctorate degree, that it like our interest in our skills outside of that, they are things that can be applied and used within our doctoral work or used as we applied the skills we learned from our doctoral program, right? For you, you learned so many awesome things from your ballroom dancing, which I could have an hour conversation with you about that separately, because that's so cool. But I love how you were able to apply it, boiling it down like oh, making Powerpoints! That's marketing things. I do that in both worlds. It's valuable. And even if they're not even necessarily tangibly the same types of things, where you can attach to one thing or the other, it's still creating a form of peace, and I'm glad that you really highlight the value of that because it can so it can be so easy to get down on ourselves about like wasting our time, not working on our project, or like, how will this benefit me professionally? But we all have our things that we're good at, right? Like I love talking to people. I'm doing interviews in my dissertation because I like to talk to people. And yeah, it's about remembering our strengths, knowing that the PhD is a moment where we question our strengths so aggressively.

Casey Daniels

Yeah, I think you know my whole career has been trying to figure out you know what value can I bring, and and to to find out what skills I have and develop them, and then find ways to apply them to to help make things happen and and create things. And we're going to find that in our work and our science. But we're also going to find that in the outside world, and it's important to to be holistic about, you know, assessing our our skills and and our value. And I, it was a kind of a breakthrough for me a few years ago, when I added my bandstand productions to my Linkedin profile, and I realized, you know what I've got a list of skills that I can add to LinkedIn if I put this on there and and there was no pushback. I think there there was interest. It came up in some of my interviews, you know. And and yeah, I'm feeling feeling like everything has come together for me, and and my life is kind of feels complete now.

Lois Dankwa

Oh, I'm well, I love that for you. But then also something I'm curious about. And I guess you started talking about how your dancing comes up in interviews sometimes, but how do you and if it's someone's interest is about dancing or volunteering, or cooking, how do you tie that not immediately relevant seeming interest into your story and the narrative that you tell about yourself when it's specifically a professional opportunity unrelated looking?

Casey Daniels

Yeah, so I wouldn't usually bring it up. Again, now that it's on my LinkedIn profile. I don't have it on my CV. That that would be the next thing. I haven't gone that far, but I I it is on my LinkedIn profile. So, it's there, and sometimes they ask you, you know, what do you do for fun? And that that's an opening to talk about it, and I have other things that I do for fun as well. We go boating and kayaking, and I have lots of hobbies. I don't have kids. I will say that I I will be the first to recognize that if I had children all of this would be harder, you know. So, we've made that choice, but I do have I have lots of hobbies including cooking, that you listed. So, yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't force it. I don't bring it up, but often it comes up naturally.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah, that makes sense and that's the thing. It's we can often lean into our our fun things, and then it'll come up naturally in conversation like it did today.

Casey Daniels

Right, right.

Lois Dankwa

I'm curious then. So, we talked about advice already, but then I'm curious what advice you'd have for someone who is interested in a career that looks like yours, but then also interested in continuing to lean into what's authentic to them beyond their their studies.

Casey Daniels

Sure, so in terms of breaking into this career, switching from academia to industry, I tell people to be patient and be persistent. Industry tends to look for other people who already know how industry is and and how it works, because not everybody is happy here. It's different than academia, so you really have to prove yourself before you get taken seriously and that can take some time to find that opening. And the other half of that advice is, once you find the opening, take it, even if it's not exactly what you think you want to be doing. If it's even remotely close, when you get in, you will have opportunities to demonstrate what you can do and what you want to do, and you can bring that value you get. If you bring value to projects, people are going to want more of it, and you can carve out your space, and then, you know, maybe a job title or promotion will come to catch up eventually. But the important thing is that you get in there, and you find ways to bring value to the teams that you're on, and then you will end up somewhere where you can you can do you know what what it is that you are meant to be doing. So, you know, be open minded, be patient, and be persistent in terms of breaking into industry. And the other question about, you know, pursuing your your hobbies, so personally for me, it's I stay very flexible. I think of you know people you hear work-life balance. Well for me it's all it's all just life, right. I have all of these passion projects, and when you're good at what you do, everything's a passion project, because they let you work on the things you want to work on. And so I have passion projects for Dance Jam Productions, for AstraZeneca, we’re remodeling our house, you know, we're looking at boats. And we're, you know, just all kinds of personal dance things I'm working on. All of these passion projects, and I tend to try to listen and and only work on the things that I'm excited about in that moment, and and the reality is sometimes you have a deadline, and you have to just just set into it. But most of the time I'm not worried about deadlines because I tend to get things done because I work on them when I'm feeling passionate. So, there's a a poem by Charles Bkowski, called “So you want to be a writer” that I love because it talks about, you know. Don't! Don't sit there and stare at your computer. If it's not roaring out of you, it's not worth putting on paper, you know, and if if it's not coming out, if you go do something else, and when it's ready, it will come out, and if it doesn't come out, it never it was never meant to be, you know, and and so you you, and maybe the thing that you really want to do at that moment is take a nap, and that's great with the flexible working environment that we have these days. You know, I I allow myself naps. I allow myself to go for a walk, to walk the dog, to go you know do what it is I feel like I need in that moment, and often when I need what I feel is is the passion for that work. And and that's what I'm doing in that moment. I'm working on that presentation you know where I'm putting together that abstract, you know, I, just when it's there, it comes out. So, I guess that that flexibility that all of us, I think, have a little bit more of these days is is what allows me to do all of that.

Lois Dankwa

Yeah. And that's I love how you'd mentioned that we're like work-life balance. It's just life and all of the stuff is in between.

Casey Daniels

Yeah.

Lois Dankwa

And so many things can be passion projects if you're doing all the things that you really enjoy.

Casey Daniels

Right.

Lois Dankwa

So, as my last question, I'm curious what inspires you right now.

Casey Daniels

I think my community or my communities. I think it's always been that way. I've always kind of stepped into community leader roles and and had, you know, some people dread team meetings and they don't, they don't want to go. I love team meetings. I love seeing people come together and create together, and I think with the pandemic easing, you know, people are eager to get back out and reconnect and create together, and we see it in the dance community for sure. Our numbers are astronomical. We have, you know, people finding us on Google who've never danced before, and just showing up at our lessons. You know, in work we can feel it you know, people wanting to connect coming on site even though things are still a little bit flexible. They're here. They're in the meeting rooms, and that's always energized me.

Lois Dankwa

As someone that loves to volunteer and community, I understand the inspiration that being a part of community and contributing to your community, really create. So, I appreciate that that response for sure. Well, Casey, it's been so wonderful to chat with you today, and just hear a little bit about your story and learn from you.

Casey Daniels

Thank you. This has been fun.