Dr. Nicolás Andrés Löffler-Pérez, PhD in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering | Data Scientist at Swissmedic

In this episode, we discuss how Nicolás unexpectedly discovered the field of biomedical engineering after pursuing a degree a physics in Chile, how he leveraged both his network and his multidisciplinary background to find a career that combines his diverse interests and expertise as a data scientist at Swissmedic, and his take on the power of intentionally seeking out new connections and learning from their diverse perspectives and experiences.

Hosted by Brooklyn Arroyo

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

Transcript

Brooklyn Arroyo

Hello I'm co-host 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 Nicolás Andrés Löffler-Pérez, PhD in chemical and biomolecular engineering, working as a data scientist at Swiss medical. So welcome to the Phutures Podcast. I'm so excited to work with you today. Glad it's Friday. Let's get started.

Nicolás Andrés Löffler-Pérez

Happy to be here.

Brooklyn Arroyo

So, I just want to know really your your back story, what led you into studying your PhD in chemical and Biomolecular engineering and and what did that journey look like for you?

Nicolás Andrés Löffler-Pérez

So, in spite of the fact that I would love to say that it was all planned, the the truth is that is more randomness that sometimes we would like to accept. I originally so I come originally from Chile and there I studied physics and I always had a passion for medicine and I thought about studying medicine. But there, like in other South American countries, you don't choose more generic majors. Rather, you go for a specific degree right away. So, you're 17, you have to choose a degree. I chose physics. But at the end of the the four years I thought I am still having this urge to study something related with medicine, and I evaluated studying medicine and I was already a, I would say a resourceful person. So, I sent, I don't know, 100 emails to people that I thought that could give me an answer. And a bunch of people answered. I would say like a significant percentage and the most impactful was the Dean of the medical school from my university back in Chile. He answered and he told me like, I'll give you half an hour to talk. And when I came in, he told me I normally do not talk with students. It's just not something I do. But your case was so weird. He told me it was strange, that a physics student would reach out because he wanted to study medicine. And he told me I mostly wanted to talk with you because you probably don't know this field of biomedical engineering, but it's a new field that exists in 20 years. And in Chile does not exist yet. So, if this is something you would like to do, you might be one of the 1st. And I got super excited. I started reaching out to other people and I found out that there were quite a few professors in Chile that wanted to get the field started there, but they were still in sort of like research groups. There was no degree, no program, no nothing. And I got in contact with one of them, with whom I ended up doing a masters in a biomedical engineering group. And in that process, again complete randomness, he offered a few projects, one of them that I liked very much, and he told me in the end, hey, if you take this one, when I have to be in contact with this other professor who's doing really cool work and who can get us connected to data and so we can do something really cool with him. That professor he ended up being my PI in Hopkins. So, for me it was complete randomness.

Brooklyn Arroyo

But it just sounds like even with the randomness, it sounded almost strategic. In each phase you you were actively reaching out and actively searching for something, and it may not have necessarily been the specific subject area, but it was definitely a powerful journey throughout each phase and and it seems like you had powerful people and influential people always sort of there and and having that mentorship opportunity and I I think that it's interesting to also point out that you seem to have been one of the pioneers of bringing this really new field to Chile and and to your country and and what has that looked like now for you and taking your experience within your PhD and sort of continuing to build on its framework?

Nicolás Andrés Löffler-Pérez

So, during the like you said I think that I had a lot of good mentors. This also, I had a lot of luck. At the end of my PhD, I often came back to these thoughts of man, I've had a lot of luck. It just it's just been a lot of luck. And talking with a friend of mine, a Spanish post doc that I had met in Hopkins, he was telling me, yeah, Nico, I see your point, but luck is for those that look for it. Keep in mind that if you're looking so much at some point, you're gonna hit something lucky. And I guess that if you look through my past, most of what I've done has been heavily informed by others’ experience. So, at the end of my PhD. So, my PhD was chemical and biomolecular engineering. I worked in the Institute for Nanobiotechnology in Hopkins. I was there my entire PhD. A wonderful experience and my PhD was basically focusing 3 different areas that were combined. On the one hand, I was doing more experimental work. And on the other hand, I was doing a lot of theoretical computational work, and that practical work that experimental work was divided in two. That's why I talk about three parts, the microchip design and creation. So, we were fabricating microchips. These are not like typical computer microchips, but rather microfluidics chips. This is for biological samples. And I was doing a lot of micro microbiology or biology in general. A lot of experiments, testing cells and figuring out biophysics of the cell, basically. And the third pillar was this, this other full component that was much more theoretical and much more computational. When I got to my last year, I decided that I could not make the decision of what to do next alone, so I started querying so to speak my environment and I started asking pretty much everyone I knew at Hopkins. I would ask for coffee and I would go have lunch with people I knew and I would ask them. I have these three paths in front of me. I'm very passionate about everything and I'm not sure what's a good move to to to do next. What should I what where should I move on? And considering these three options, a lot of my friends told me and a lot of the postdocs that I talked to people more experienced than I was, a lot of them told me, you do a lot of biology right now. You do a lot of experiments and you do a lot of work with the microscope. And Nico, you are not a biologist. You cannot compete with other biologists. You're just not at the level that they are. They are fantastic at what they do. If you talk about genomics, they're better than you. If you talk about the they just they're not multidisciplinary like you are. But what they do, they do it at a really high performance. So, it's gonna be hard for you to compete if you want to stay in that in that field; you can, but it's gonna be hard. If you stay in the microfluidics field, which is very cool, if anyone is interested in really cool stuff, they can look at micro micro organs, microchips for organ development. That field is fantastic. There's a lot of a lot of possibilities and you can develop yourself very well in a very interesting field. But what what often happens is that there's one or two really bright places to work on per city. Maybe that's wrong in some places, but often it happens that there are limited opportunities per place, which means that if you want to make a career there long term, you're gonna have to be prepared to move with your family because staying in one city is going to be rather hard. And the third option, which is mixing software in the, let's say the medical field in healthcare or in life sciences, this is something that is exploding and there's so much new stuff and there's so few people with this mixed background of life sciences plus software engineering. If you if you go there, there's going to be a lot of place to like a lot of space to play. And I I decided to follow that advice because I liked it very much and I continued there. I did an internship in my last year and then I was also very thankful for my PI. He allowed me to, well, I actually had two PI, so both of them were in agreement with them. I was allowed to go to do an internship in Switzerland and I made very good connections there. I tested this hypothesis. If I could work on this area with software that worked out very well, and then I came back. So now it's been about four years that I've been living in Switzerland and and I stayed in that path. So, kind of like if I could go back, I would talk with my wife and old people that gave me the advice and I would say actually like I followed your advice.

Brooklyn Arroyo

And I I think that that that to quote you on the part where you spoke on that luck is is for those that look for it, I think that's a really interesting thing to highlight and and your journey really shows that and I think that's an important advice or a lesson that others can learn from too, that you know, sometimes we feel like we may be really unlucky in certain parts and and it may just come down to looking for things in different areas or looking maybe we're stuck in one area and we need to move and search for a different spot. And to find that luck. And so, what what other pieces of advice would you have for people who may feel that they're sort of hitting a brick wall. They're out of luck. And and you've mentioned how you strategically reach out to people in certain instances. You go have coffee with everyone you know and that sort of thing. But what other ways do you have for people who feel like they're not really getting anywhere in their career?

Nicolás Andrés Löffler-Pérez

I talked about this reaching out. I have the feeling that the more that you talk with others, the more through someone else's eyes. If you let's say you’re a PhD student or even you're an undergraduate student or a master’s student, you go talk with a professor and you ask them, what do you think I should do? The professor will most likely tell you like to do a master’s, do a PhD. Ohh I can recommend you to a postdoc. Have you seen the research in this institute? They will see your life and the possibilities that you have through their own eyes. If you talk with a European instead of an American, they will offer a complete different perspective. Same question. If you talk with someone from South America, they will tell you such a different perspective of not even like just the work, but other perspectives of life. How could you live the next years? And so, I see that one of the best ways that I've realized that you can make progress is through seeing your life by using someone else's perspective. And so, these strategic step that you were saying maybe when I moved or when I make that decision and and where I wanted to continue for my studies after physics, I realized that, yes, at those points where like hike peaks where you send like 100 emails or I contacted everyone I knew with the same question, but this is something that I talked about with some of my colleagues and I've made it sort of like a rule that maybe like once a week or every two weeks, I try to have coffee with someone that I don't know that well. And this is something that I started during the PhD in Hopkins and it's something that I often describe as I learned this in the states. I mean, I felt like a lot of the American friends that I knew were so proactive about exploring the future, about exploring mixtures of the future. Not because I'm a lawyer, I need to talk with a lawyer, but rather I can talk with this person that I just met. And it’s been kind of crazy to me that most of the good things that have happened in my life are due to this sort of like serendipity, serendipity that I find by just regularly meeting people that I don't know that well. So, an advice is maybe starting these sort like random sampling in any way that's possible. Getting out a little bit of the shell and talking with people that you know less. My institute had about 200 people. I didn't meet all of them, but I knew quite a few of them and I feel they that opened a lot of doors. Often when I had, for example, in an experiment I needed to do something very specific. If I didn't talk with anyone else, the only ones that I could ask for advice were in my group. So, I'm limited to maybe a network of seven people. Maybe my PI tells me go to with this professor because he might have a good idea. Now I have 8, but if I was well connected in my institute now I also have an extra 50 heads that I can explore. One of them may tell me have you tried this other machine? Have you tried this other approach? Did you know that in the medical school there's a group that does exactly what you're looking for? So, trying to build oneself up, I understand it's important, but expanding your your network by, without stress, meeting regularly other people, I I find that the the treasure that it is is just unbelievable.

Brooklyn Arroyo

And that that strategic or strategic networking and and meeting new people in the way that you you brought up how it's really about like diversifying the level of perspectives you experience. And and it's almost like a a treat because you have no idea people are really surprising. And so, the amount of experiences and opportunities and and new thoughts and ideas we can learn from each other, that that's definitely one of the biggest points and and success. And I've heard throughout a lot of different interviews people who have felt like they've gotten really lucky in their careers or have developed to have really successful and and pride in what they do. They all mentioned how they've had opportunities of working with people that they didn't necessarily know that they were going to work with. It sort of just happened unintentionally. And so, I think that that's definitely a pattern that I've been seeing and it's great advice for for all others who are currently working in their career or or have just entered. And so what sort of surprise is like in the work that you do now do you think that your past self would would be seeing? Do you think that there is you talked about how you kind of didn't really have a linear plan, you didn't necessarily know where you wanted to go and so viewing the work that you do now, what is some of the surprises to to that work and and and what interests have you gone into that you didn't necessarily anticipate yourself going into?

Nicolás Andrés Löffler-Pérez

Things that I didn't anticipate myself going into. I guess that the so today I work in SWISSMEDIC and Swissmedic is it's not there's no mapping that is one to one. But to understand that rather easy is basically the equivalent of the FDA in Switzerland. The mapping is not one to one because for example Swissmedic doesn’t approve medical devices, right. So, there are some differences and they're important. But the FDA comes very close to what Swissmedic does. That's why it's it's sort of like an easy way to understand where I work now. So Regulatory agency from the Swiss government and it's played important roles in the last few years also as I was still not working there, right. So, I've been there for two years. And today I'm working there. I do a lot of data science with a myriad of data sets. I try to work with the experts inside of different departments and I've become an expert on machine learning and life sciences with developed systems and we deployment into production. And so today, my day-to-day life has a lot to do with software development, with agile work between multidisciplinary teams. And so, if you had told me that I would not be working in a lab five years ago, I would have thought, wait, what? This is what I mostly do today. I'm in a lab doing experiments, writing code to analyze the data and trying to get trying to make sense out of it. And five years later, I'm an expert on machine learning and AI in this kind of environment, it's it's rather surprising. So, this is something that I would definitely be surprised. I think that my past self would not quite believe that it's it's it's happening. But the fact that we embrace these changes I think allows us to discover new sides of ourselves. Like I said before there's not many profiles that mix both. So, the area of life sciences that kind of work that you understand very well how clinical data works or that you understand very well how biological data works, how does a biologist think or how does a doctor think? And that you can bring all of these background from engineering and mix them, it's not quite common. And so, it's brought a lot of value.

Brooklyn Arroyo

And the level of intersectionality of your work and and what you're doing now, I think that it's sort of is an accumulation of all the things that you've done. And I think that can be sometimes rare because usually the results are the fruits of people's labor can be like one thing that they found to be their favorite or their the thing that they're best at and really, you're working in a way that highlights all sorts of things you've learned from. And I think that that's really important to to look at for others who are trying to see just how much they can step into the field that they're interested in, and just how deep into niche areas because oftentimes we think you can only become, you know, a lab professional work in academia. And those are really the only options out there and so if there is a next phase for you, what would the next phase of your career look like?

Nicolás Andrés Löffler-Pérez

I think that I'm going to be querying the field again. I'll probably talk again with a lot of people in my surroundings and I go back to something you asked before about so like what kind of advice could someone get from my experience? And I was thinking that, even today, I have often online coffee breaks with my colleagues from Hopkins, so I'm still in close contact with people that I studied with and colleagues that I work with. When we visit each other cities we're in contact. I have friends from Hopkins that moved to Europe and now I'm in Berne in the capital of Switzerland, so I'm rather in a central point and we get to see each other. And we catch up and we keep sharing our path. We keep asking each other. Well, what do you think that this path could look could look like? So, my friends tell me, like, oh, I'll put you in contact with someone that knows a little bit more about that field. So, I was gonna go back to that because I think that this questioning of what do you do next? It doesn't go away. The feeling of am I on the right path? It just doesn't go away. In the case of like doing masters and finishing Masters or finishing a PhD, I think often there's quite a lot of pressure on I need to make the right decision. I need to do this right because it's kind of like my last point to define well my career and with the years I've I've kind of like observed that it's just not at all the case. I get a lot more chances later on to find new paths. I would like to say that in five years I'm being that this this field because I love what I'm doing. I really love what I'm doing. I actually talk with a few of my friends and colleagues here in in Bern. And this someone tells you like Nico, it's just so annoying that you're so happy doing this because sometimes it's hard to deal with the difficulties of the job day-to-day. But we meet for a beer in the evening and you're always so happy. So, I hope that I stay here.

Brooklyn Arroyo

And like you said with with all the connections and and perspectives that you experience, if you end up somewhere else, it's probably going to be because it makes you even happier or even better, or it's even more interesting and and intellectually stimulating. And so really when we're working with other people and we're not really focused on upholding a linear path or only ourselves, then that's how you end up working in a position where you are just happy all the time. And and everybody complains about how you're happy all the time. But so yeah, I really, I really loved hearing your story. And I think that it's a a true testament to how important it is to network with other people and and progress in that way. And so, our finale of each episode is, is one question that I'm interested how you answer it, but that is what inspires you right now?

Nicolás Andrés Löffler-Pérez

To me, there are several things that I could say, but in the core, I would say that it's family. The the, the most inspiring thing that I can I can look at is my my closest circle. I got married recently. We're thinking of the future. Now we have two families that coexist together. The Austrians, that is the side of my my wife, and the Chileans. We've had trips together and there's a there's 2 cultures mixing and colliding and it it's a such a wonderful thing. And so, when I when I go to work, when I go to do my things, I I often think of them. I think my parents, I think my brother. I think of my bigger family now, and I just I'm excited for what comes in life. It's almost like I keep telling people around me how excited I am that today is the first day of the rest of my life and it's I'm so pumped. I cannot imagine what's coming.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Wow. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. That is, that's a big one. I think that everyone should hear that and and that's a really powerful message. And I'm equally inspired and congratulations to your recent marriage. So, thank you again, coming to the PHutures podcast and and speaking with me today.

Nicolás Andrés Löffler-Pérez

Thank you. It was really lovely talking with you.