The Path To Professor

Gatley Stone 0:01
Welcome everyone. Back to another episode. Today. I'm with maybe, perhaps, the most awarded professor at NC State, Dr Barrangou. Did I pronounce that right? Barrangou? Barrangou, he's been inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of inventors and the Natio- National Inventors Hall of Fame. If you're interested how impressive that is, go on NC State's websites and their awards section, and then try and find another professor that's in just two of those. And also, maybe most impressively and importantly, he got his master's and his PhD from NC State. So true. Wolf Packer. So we'll start off with what is your job title and how long have you been teaching at NC State?

Rodolphe Barrangou 0:54
I am the Todd R Klaenhammer, distinguished professor in probiotics research here at NC State. My own department is food bioprocessing, Nutrition Sciences. That's where I'm faculty of though I have affiliations in six different programs and departments, and this resides within CALS, the College of Ag and Life Sciences. And I've been at NC State Since 2013 so I've been here for 11 years in my capacity as a professor.

Gatley Stone 1:27
So some background questions, when you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Rodolphe Barrangou 1:32
I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, when I was a child, and I think I wasn't sure what I was going to do when I was going to grow up, even as a student, and as a matter of fact, that's why I went to school a number of times in different kinds of majors, because it took me a while to really figure out what I was most passionate about, most excited about. And some people, even today in my life, either in my lab or at home, might be unsure as to where I may be headed next stay at NC State. You know, I'm married to an institution in many, many different ways, but professionally in terms of defining, you know, what I'm going to do, what I'm going to focus on, and how I'm going to balance different sets of activities, is yet to be determined. That's one thing I really like about my career, is that kind of reserve the right to change my mind, change my direction, as science changes and technologies arise and opportunities to translate research, science and technology into real applications evolve in a very dynamic context, in a dynamic manner.

Gatley Stone 2:47
Did your parents both graduate from college?

Rodolphe Barrangou 2:52
Yes and no. So my dad did graduate from college, but as a later onset adult, and then my mom only has an associate's degree, I guess, the equivalent thereof in Europe. So it's not quite seen perceived as a college degree, per se, but I guess they both got some college education, very limited. And my mother was midwife. And then, and then my dad is more into law to some extent, but they're not really in the scientific or engineering realm whatsoever.

Gatley Stone 3:29
Was, did you consider going taking a different path, path than going to college? Or did you did you know that you were going to go to college for a long time?

Rodolphe Barrangou 3:41
I mean I always thought I had an appetite for learning, for sure. So going to college repeatedly and over a long period of time, I think, was always in the cards for me, because I'm a curious person by nature. I like to learn about things and whether you're going to get a degree or not. I guess it's practically irrelevant, but it's not really the main point. I consider myself a lifelong learner, and so I went to school a number of times again, different institutions, different majors, we get into that in a minute, and and I always had that appetite for curiosity and learning new things. So, you know, college is a great way to do that, but it's not the only way to do that, necessarily.

Gatley Stone 4:23
So when you you finally decided that you were going to go to college, how did you end up choosing your major? So I

Rodolphe Barrangou 4:31
always liked biological sciences, so to speak, but I was really mesmerized by organic chemistry when I was in high school. So I did my first degree, my first undergrad, kind of in chemistry and organic chemistry. And I loved, you know, the beauty of the Periodic Table of Elements. I love organic chemistry. It's kind of perfect in many ways, and rational and intriguing and beautiful. And practical to some extent. But for career development, career management, career trajectory is very limited. So I kind of decided, after my undergrad in chemistry, to go into grad school for an engineering degree, because engineering is very broad, very applicable, very relevant, very translatable in a number of professional avenues and pursuits. And I think of myself as an engineer, many ways, again, a trained engineer, biological engineering, chemical engineering as a master's degree. But I always found the dogmatic part of engineering, very restrictive, and they were limited. You know, there's a rule for that, yeah, there's equation for that. There's a model for that. And I thought it was, it was, in many ways missing or lacking, some ambiguity, some degrees of freedom and some creativity, yeah. And so after I did my master's in engineering, I came to NC State to do a master's in food science, food microbiology in particular. And, you know, looking into microscopes and getting exposure to biotechnology and molecular biology, I was just fascinated by the mystery of the living. When you look to microscope, you see things you can't see with the naked eye. You can unravel a whole new world. And then at a time when manipulating the DNA content, their genome, the genetics to rewrite the code of nature and change organisms that are living in real time, in real life. That was a very mysterious, very mesmerizing, very exciting, very adventurous. And then I decided then to do my PhD in genetics and genomics at a time, you know, late 90s, early 2000 you know, there was a golden era in using sequencing to determine the genetic content of the human genome amongst other things, and bacteria and viruses and the like. So I decided to do my PhD in genetics, and I would consider myself like a geneticist, probably more than anything else. Though I'm an engineer and organic chemist and a food scientist, and I have no degree in microbiology, consider myself a microbial geneticist. And then after that, will talk about that in a minute, but I went to to the real world industry. In the midst of that, I decided to go back to school part time, weekends and nights, and to do an MBA, to kind of learn about business, you know, learn about decision making, learn about leadership, learn about finance and marketing, operations and the like. And so I always, you know, found that going to school and entering into a new major to complement your knowledge, learn new things, discover new things, and appreciate the world through a different prism, was always something that I thought was important to me. So I think I'm done for schooling for the time being, but you never know what the future holds. And and that curiosity to kind of change majors over time helped me, you know, kind of have different viewpoints in the world, whether it's again, chemistry or physics or engineering or math to some extent, and computer programming and the like. So, you know, there's a lot of different curricula, lots of different classes that have a lot to offer. And I think, I think, complement each other, as opposed to one dimensional, get your undergrad and your master's and your PhD and your postdoc in one discipline, and then gotta stick to it. I never had that love of one particular discipline per se. You know, it's more limiting, it's more limited. And I like the broad spectrum complementary additions inherent to learning, different majors, different classes, different professors, different institutions, different teaching methods, different teaching metrics, different teaching types and different testing types. So I think a broad education in that sense, is much more preferable.

Gatley Stone 9:05
How did you decide? So you went to undergrad in France, and how did you decide to get a master's degree in the US? Did you consider getting a master's degree or PhD in France.

Rodolphe Barrangou 9:16
Absolutely, absolutely. Yes, I do have my first master's from Europe as well. Yes, and I changed the institution from Paris, you know, to the north of France, so to speak. And what I decided to to get another masters. I wasn't quite ready to commit to a PhD after my first masters, because I knew I was going to go overseas. I think I applied to 27 different institutions in like, 15 different countries

Gatley Stone 9:41
or something. Why were you set on going, going abroad?

Rodolphe Barrangou 9:45
Change your perspective, literally, right? Broaden your horizons, yeah. So

Gatley Stone 9:49
it's like, the same thing as, like, changing majors, changing locations, you know, really exactly, trying to get the full breadth of

Rodolphe Barrangou 9:55
absolutely so, you know, I was born, and raised in Paris to some extent. So Big City, you know, I wanted to go someplace that had no subway. It was small enough where there was no subway.

Gatley Stone 10:04
Interesting, right? That was such an interesting criteria.

Rodolphe Barrangou 10:09
We had to have an international airport and go somewhere international directly. So big enough, you have that, but small enough, it wouldn't have a subway, and then it would not be a French speaking country, you know. So like, not Switzerland, not Canada, Brazil, Quebec, and a few parts of the world that still speak French from colonialism, English was preferred, right? So the same limitation is, there's a lot of part of Europe where you can, even if English is not the primary language, you can get an education in English.

Gatley Stone 10:42
Is that because, like most, or like a lot of research papers are published in English, and you're trying to or perfect your English? Well,

Rodolphe Barrangou 10:51
absolutely. So I thought, I hope my English was good enough at the time. It wasn't perfect, evidently, but most scientists use English as their primary research language. And this scientific community communicates primarily in English. So if you look at powerhouse like China today, who's producing a lot of scientific research, right? The bulk of what they publish is in English. When they present, present in English, when they write, they report, they opine, they communicate, is mostly in English. And though that is the truth today, I thought it was already the truth in the 1990s Yeah, right, at a time when, you know, most scientific journals publish, you know, in English, you can publish some in French, but who's gonna read that the French and the Canadians, right? So I thought that was, that was obvious. So, you know, there was a few cultural criteria, linguistic criteria, scientific criteria, the type of institution, the type of country, and then in the end, you know, I had a number of options to come to universities in the US and Raleigh, which is special, right? You know, the weather people, the institution, you know, couldn't be too cold, too small, it couldn't be too big. You know, it had to have a good engineering school. because that's where I came from and was valuing a lot, so it checked all the boxes and then, and then visiting. It was just, you know, like a, like a literal life changing experience. I remember coming out of terminal three when it existed, been torn down ever since, but in 1998 when I came down, I remember coming out of the terminal and smelling the pines and feeling home

Gatley Stone 12:34
here. You know, it's like crazy. Your life

Rodolphe Barrangou 12:36
flashes before your eyes upon the first breath this very hot, you know, it's very humid. That was nothing used to that whatsoever. But I had the sense of belonging when the door was open. I remember, like vividly, the moment when the door was open, you know, take that first breath. And I kind of knew back then that was going to be special, but I didn't know at the time whatsoever that I was gonna be here for a long time, let alone that meet my wife, job and, you know, a couple years ago to go YouTube and move on.

Gatley Stone 13:10
So after you, after you got your PhD, how you ended up eventually you worked at a dairy company, sort of like a research firm in Denmark, how long? What was the time between you graduating and you going to work there?

Rodolphe Barrangou 13:25
Zero. Okay, so

Gatley Stone 13:27
you went immediately, yeah, so and so. How? So my first question is, how did you decide that you wanted to go into the private industry? And then how did you decide to come back?

Rodolphe Barrangou 13:41
So I always knew. I had to drive to what's called translational research. And what do you translate my data, my knowledge, my expertise, products that I work on, technologies that are working on, into the real world. And as a matter of fact, my PhD was partially funded by that company. That's cool. So I knew those people. I knew their products. I knew what they were doing. I knew what they were working on, though, at the time, it was a French company, the name has changed, you know, many a time, as a matter of fact, over the years. You know, shortly after I was there, they were acquired by DuPont so fortune, 50 companies. It's now IFF international flavors and fragrances. Before that, it was Rhodia and Rhône-Poulenc and again different names they've had over time, changing dynamic. Where I was You were ready to work in industry, work on real problems and real products to make a real difference in the real world. And that was the case when I left, you know, my PhD to go get a job, there nine long winners in Wisconsin with his advantages and caveats, for sure. And then I knew that, that I really wanted to do a lot more science than they allowed me to do there, even as, as a global R&D director for a whole division. Wow, large team and large budget, large portfolio, lots of resources, I felt limited in my ability to really advance the science and the technology in ways that were going to serve more than just one set of shareholders and stakeholders. Were they

Gatley Stone 15:14
had they begun asking you to like, do? Were you still doing research? Was it the research was too focused, or they had kind of begun to ask you to do the same thing over. It wasn't redundant.

Rodolphe Barrangou 15:26
It was it was changing. Because if it was too boring over, I've left it. But they were very focused on on one corporate agenda, right? So one set of products, one set of customers, one set of solutions. And there was some of the innovation was sizable and interesting and relevant. A lot of it was incremental, yeah, and risk management and risk taking and more adventurous part of disruptive innovation, you had a limited appetite for that. They did some of that. We did some of that very well, as matter of fact. But the realm in which it was applied and the scale at which it was deployed was somewhat limited. And I had a couple 100 people reporting to me build a lab in Shanghai, China. I did France team in Denmark, team in Finland, couple of team in the US. So it was very enjoyable, very productive, very fruitful, very engaging and interesting from a research and development standpoint, but I felt limited in my ability to truly explore the science and develop the tech and then pursue interests that went beyond what the one corporation was focused on, and that's one of the reasons I came back to NC State to run my own lab here, and then also focus and deploy my expertise, my knowledge, my know how and that of The lab in the institution to tackle almost bigger, grander, more challenging issues and problems, the grand challenges that fall before us here to feed the world and cure disease and have sustainable forestry, and I mean grandiose things that not any one corporation can do and then have a bigger impact. And I felt as though my ability to be impactful practically was relevant for one commercial entity, but it was limited in scope, whereas being having the freedom to operate as a faculty member who's tenure at NC State, and I can, you know, pursue whatever I want to pursue, as long as I can secure funding for and compel people to work on it with me. Yeah, collaborate and, you know, hire the students and the trainees and the workforce that we need to do that behoove them and compel them to work on that is exciting, is a task at times, nonetheless, but I felt as though I could do a lot more than than than meet the scope of expectations of any one corporation with one corporate agenda, mostly short term. So

Gatley Stone 18:07
I watched a documentary online about it was about CRISPR and about your work. So there was a big CRISPR paper that your you and your team published while you were at that company. And that sort of seems like that paper sort of opened up the field. Was CRISPR known before that paper? And what did that paper do to really popularize CRISPR?

Rodolphe Barrangou 18:32
So, so CRISPR was known, but nobody knew what it did. Okay, so it had been observed. It had been detected, It had been visualized. It had been baptized, it had been discovered. But what we did was discover the function of CRISPR, demonstrate its biological activity in the real world, and then uncover critical parts of how it works and how it can be used and applied. So that kind of, you know, kind of established the field in many ways. It allowed us and a lot of other people to commercialize the CRISPR system, the CRISPR CAS immune system, the CRISPR molecular machine, so to speak. And we also discovered a famous enzyme that subsequently was named CAS nine, which has revolutionized the world and that enabled other people to repurpose it and develop it as a very useful technology. So I think the work that we did in the early to mid 2000s was very foundational and very fundamental and very useful and led to a lot of applications, but it did not at the time have the grandiose impact that he had subsequently, because other people came in and complemented our knowledge, our expertise, our know how our insights, and really developed the tech in a more revolutionary way than we did. Mm, hmm, and that is what democratized that technology and change the world. Yeah,

Gatley Stone 20:05
I saw so I think that your paper came out in 2007 and Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, if that's pronounced, right, they had a paper in 2011 and they have recently got the Nobel Prize for that. So I was pretty shocked to learn that your paper came out before their paper, which, I mean, I'm not, I'm a civil engineer, so I don't know much about the field. Do you think there's a Nobel Prize in your future? Or No,

Rodolphe Barrangou 20:40
probably not, no. I mean, you know how it's described and how it's decided how it plays out. It's out of my control, and out of my jurisdiction, for sure. But I think Nobel Prizes recognize people, and Jennifer undoubtedly, unquestionably, is a remarkable individual, remarkable scientist, a remarkable person, and has made remarkable contributions to the world. And so she used some of the, you know, tech and knowledge and foundational and fundamental insights that we developed, but she revolutionized that by having a critical invention that changed the world, democratized the technology, and was evidently worthy of her consideration for a big prize, like the Nobel right? So that's fantastic in her and I think that was it for CRISPR, right? Like in the future, you know, they can give more to other remarkable people if they make remarkable contributions. Are worthy of this, but it's hard to speculate. And I think, and I hope that in the realm of human medicine, they will, because there's a lot of great MDs that are developing gene therapies that are saving lives and curing disease. And now we're at the kind of the end of the beginning of the CRISPR craze, where and when the FDA, you know, has approved, you know, the first generation CRISPR drug, which is the first in a series of drugs that will cure disease and change and save the lives of patients. So you've had to speculate and look forward to the future and going to foretell, foreshadow, forecast. What is next. I hope that in due time, the Nobel Committee, or committees, will consider some of those MDs that are saving lives you know, of patients that are otherwise dying because they're the ones you know, executing the miracles of science on a daily basis in changing the world. And I think that those people would be more remarkable, more worthy, more impactful, and more more amenable and arguably defendable, right and defensible for those kind of awards, I haven't saved a life at all. I have doses single patient change the world. That's,

Gatley Stone 23:06
I mean, technically, but your work is the foundation for those things that came after, yeah?

Rodolphe Barrangou 23:11
I mean, it's important. It's important breaking the foundation for sure, yeah, the NC State brick imagery here, right? We'll have you our part, yeah. So certainly we've built that foundation. But it does take a village. I think people also understand, in the eras of evolution of science, it takes multiple iterations, multiple people, multiple rounds of innovation, to kind of bring something to fruition. And you know, sometimes people who started it, sometimes people who ended it, sometimes people who did the hard work in between, get recognized. And there's some ambiguity. There's some argument into who deserves, you know what, when and where and how, by whom. But I think so far, people like Jennifer have very deservingly received accolades that have been bestowed many and substantial, and again, earned and deserved. But I do hope the MDS, in time, get some more recognition for the work they do in medicine, which I'm not, I mean involved in, but front and center, and then conversely, I think a lot of the things that really matter to me right now, in food and ag and forestry and sustainability don't lend themselves whatsoever to those kinds of awards or recognition because we don't meet the criteria or we're not in the scope of physics or chemistry or medicine or economy, literature, right? So, so I think you know, what we are focusing on right now is different and distinct in scope and scale. I think it is remarkable. I think it is worthy of recognition and accolades, but I don't think it lends itself whatsoever to a Nobel per se. And I think what we've done in the past, you know, has been looked at and deemed not, either the work but the people deemed unworthy. And I think also it's important to kind of figure out like, you know, crediting people for work and or working for for credit. And I think a lot of a lot of people kind of misjudge that, mismanage that, misappreciate that, misunderstand that, misvalue that. And I've gotten to your point, plenty of awards in my life, plenty of recognition, some would argue, more than I deserve. Enough. It's not mine to assess necessarily this point in time, but I've gotten my fair share for sure, of recognition, rewards, of accolades from my peers, which is what really matters. My colleagues is usually what matters. But in the end, I'm going to measure my success according to the impact that we have and our ability to translate that great science and technology into real results. And I would argue, what we did, you know, 2002 1005, and up until 2010 and 12, maybe 13, depending on how you count, that has had an impact and was great and was worthy of a lot of consideration, but was not translational and transformational as much as other people's work was. And I also think that what we're working on right now in forestry and food and ag in general, and NC State in particular, but some of the startups that I'm involved in and working on is really going to have a much bigger impact in the future. And, you know, ask me the question again, in 2050 you know, we'll see where things stand. But I think we're trying to tackle problems right now in sustainable agriculture and sustainable forestry that can take us a long time to get to, a lot of time and effort to solve them, and we won't be able to gage until much later on, how successful we've been and how remarkable or not our contributions have been so long term right now, and time will tell,

Gatley Stone 27:12
if you could give like approximately one minute answer to this Question, How did you decide to start a startup instead of just continuing solely being an academic researcher?

Rodolphe Barrangou 27:27
If you really want to have have an impact, you have to have the wisdom and the courage to take your ideas, your technology and your science into the real world. Sometimes the best way to do that is to license it to partners that can take it. Sometimes the best way to do that is to give it away, let other people do it. And sometimes the best way to do that is to do it yourself. Yeah, and for me, in the startup world, I've realized that more often than not, you know, I have a role to play in the commercialization of the technologies that I developed, helping other people take their technology to the real world as well, when I'm a co founder, or taking the technology and ideas and vision that I have out of my own lab, my own mind, my own hands, into the real world, and doing the startup in my case, is the easiest, the most enjoyable, the most entertaining, the most impactful means to do that. And that's what I've done. A few of those, a handful of them. That's why I keep doing it until it's not fun anymore. Of course, you

Gatley Stone 28:29
are, yeah, because it turns it into an actual product that can be used in industry or something. So last question, if you had to give one piece of advice to a PhD student, that's maybe considering becoming a professor, what piece of advice would you give them?

Rodolphe Barrangou 28:50
You have to learn to synergize and collaborate with others, because there's only so much you can do on your own, no matter how much you know, how good you are, how smart you are, how creative, innovative, motivated, hardworking you are, you're going to need to work well and synergize with so many other people to advance the science, advance the technology, manufacture it, strategize it, patent it, scale it up. Make it profitable, make it profitable, make it affordable, make it accessible, make it clinically relevant, make it industrially a reality. And you're gonna have to work with fellow scientists, non scientists and lawyers and business people and clinicians or farmers or patients or advocacy groups or foresters to be able to take it to the real world, and the earlier you learn that, the better off you're going to

Gatley Stone 29:46
be. That's good. Thank you.

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