Alix Pham's Quick takes

Last Wednesday, I joined a panel at the 2024 iGEM Grand Jamboree on "Youth & Education for Biosecurity, Biosafety, and Global Policy" within the Responsibility Conference. It took me some time to reflect on what message I wanted to pass on to the diverse audience (team members, sponsors, governments, academia and industry people, etc.).

Here is what I said:

So here we are, at the Responsibility Conference: let’s talk about responsibility. I believe each and everyone of you, whatever your age, origin, background, skin color, gender… can embody this responsibility, first not to do harm, but also to proactively contribute to this world that we’re building together, and make it better.

From there, there are many possible paths ahead, especially when one thinks about what it means for their career, and I think there are two structuring questions one can use to explore them.

First: how can I contribute? What are am I good at? What do I enjoy doing on a day-to-day basis?

And second: what am I driven by? What will bring me longterm motivation? What will bring me a feeling of fulfillment?

If I take my own story as an example, I have a scientific background, but I regularly found myself asking this question: will I find longterm motivation in researching e.g. some specific bacterial pathogen? People around me empowered me to think I could contribute more. And because contributing more, having more impact, is a driver for me, it was essential that I surround myself with aligned people and understand, with their help, how I could do that.

I realized that I believe that biotechnologies come with real, concrete, potentially large scale risks, and enabling the extraordinary benefits of biology while preventing those risks was a strong motivator for me. I hope I can contribute to a future in which the world is safe from biological threats.

However, when we are students or even young professionals, we tend to follow the path that have been laid down before us by others. Usually it means keeping the steering wheel straight, and go deeper in one domain of expertise. I get it, I started doing a Ph.D. because science is fascinating and that’s the natural next step, right? But is the mission driving me? It’s a tough question, it’s uncomfortable and at times overwhelming, but one day maybe Future You might thank you for doing the work.

Another point I would like to get across is: there are options beyond the duality of academia and industry for scientists. I’ve been there, when I was in uni it’s the choice I was told I had. But scientists can contribute in other ways, as some of my fellow panelists are also examples of, where the core of the job is not technical, but understanding the technicalities is still very important. 

Let’s talk about one of those options: policy. There aren’t that many obvious ways to transition from science to policy, and I wanted to talk about my own bumpy road to here.

When I was asking myself hard what I was driven by, I realized two things: research is fascinating, but I want collaboration and building strong connections to be a big part of my job, rather than pushing the intellectual frontier. Second, I’m less excited about being at the forefront of innovation, and more about optimizing how our discoveries can be applied to improve lives at scale and have real-world impact.

At some point and after dozens of conversations with friends or strangers whose jobs I was inspired by, I really felt drawn to the policy world. It seemed like a way to follow the motivation I mentioned earlier: enabling the extraordinary benefits of biotech while preventing potential risks.

I’m not gonna say it was easy, and it required me to build resistance to rejection, but at some point stars will align. I found the Talos Fellowship, which trains young professionals to contribute to emerging tech policy through a reading group and then a 6-month placement in a think tank. While mostly focused on advanced AI, you probably know that AI has a huge potential in enabling biotechnologies, and there is a lot to work on at the interface of the two. I’m grateful for the opportunity I got at Talos to skill up, and now be placed at the Simon Institute for Longterm Governance, a think tank working on international and multilateral AI governance. My goal is to leverage the skills I’m building in bio, AI, and policy, to contribute to make the future safer for everyone.

What I want you to takeaway from here is the following:

• Two questions: how can you contribute, and what is driving you

Also, there is more to what you can see for yourself. It takes exploring and considering unusual ideas seriously. Be bold, reach out, talk to people you’re inspired by, seek the difficult feedback that will allow you to make better decisions:

• Dare to diverge from the path, the only thing you need is to step away and make a turn. Find the people that will empower you to do that.

By doing this, you also unlock the potential of doing more and better, which you might feel a responsibility for:

• Scientists can, and should, contribute beyond science.

Why does nobody use the term "eutopia"? From Greek etymology, dystopia means "bad place", and utopia means... "non-place" - like an unachievable place, while eutopia means "lucky place". Shouldn't we use a word pointing toward something that we can hope for?

Wikipedia mentions that the fact that both utopia and eutopia are pronounced identically might have given rise to a change of meaning. But I think the difference in meaning is important - should we deliberately use - and thus mispronounce - eutopia /ɘːˈtoʊpiə/?