This is an interview I did with one of the biologists I collaborate with, Tau-Mu Yi. He has had a very interesting career, being at the heart of some of the major developments in the field of biology in the last 30 years. Tau-Mu did his PhD at MIT with Eric Lander, who is famous for leading the public effort to sequence the human genome. After that, Tau-Mu went to Caltech for his postdoctoral work. There, he worked with Hiroaki Kitano, one of the founders of the field of systems biology. Ever since DNA was discovered it has been an enticing thought that once we simply knew the human genome sequence we would know everything there was to know about human biology. This, of course, turned out not to be true. A more nuanced picture emerged that looked at biology from a systems perspective. This “systems” biology was characterized mostly by combining quantitative methods from mathematics, engineering and physics with more traditional biological techniques. I never thought coming into graduate school that I would enjoy doing biological research. It always seemed too wishy-washy to me coming from a mathematics background. But I stumbled into this project modeling polarization in yeast cells in collaboration with Tau-Mu, discovered systems biology and have never looked back. I really do think it is the most fascinating area to be doing research in right now.

In this interview, we talk a little bit about what it meant at the time for systems biology to become a field of it’s own and why it was important that systems biology was taking a new view on biological research. We ramble on a bit about the pros and cons of interdisciplinary research in general and how funding for basic science is important. It was a pleasure to do this interview and I hope you enjoy it. Lastly, I will note that it is no accident that this podcast is structured after Sam Harris’ Waking Up podcast. I think it is really one of the best podcasts out there and particularly for intelligent conversations with experts from many fields. So, I tried in vain to replicate some of that and I hope it was to some degree effective.