University of Michigan's Dr. Cynthia Chestek

In this episode, Mallory chats with Dr. Cynthia Chestek, Associate Chair for Research in Biomedical Engineering and Associate Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan. Dr. Chestek highlights the differences of practicing science in industry vs. academia, her career journey overall and her exciting research that aims to one day allow paralyzed patients to control prosthetics limbs!

What is Women in Science and Medicine Podcast?

The Women in Science and Medicine podcast features discussions with female scientists within West Virginia University and other institutions. In this series, we’ll share the achievements and insights from some of the country’s top female scientists and learn from their experiences to understand how they came to be passionate about science and overcame any obstacles in their paths. This podcast is offered by West Virginia University’s Office of Research and Graduate Education.

Welcome to West Virginia University's Women in Science and Medicine Podcast, brought to you by the Health Sciences Center's Office of Research and Graduate Education. We talk to women with careers in these fields, gaining their insight into what it's like operating in roles that are still mostly dominated by men.

I'm your host, Mallory Weaver, and today my guest is Dr. Cynthia Chestek, associate chair of research in biomedical engineering and associate professor in biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan. Welcome Dr. Chestek, and thank you so much for chatting with me today. Thank you for having me. Yes. So, um, I always, my first two questions are always the same for my guests.

Uh, can you first just, um, briefly familiarize our listeners with your educational journey and subsequent path to your role? Okay, so let's see. So I actually, let's see. Let me go all the way back to high school. I think in high school I really wanted to do musical theater and I did mostly sort of like music stuff in, in high school.

By the time I got to college, I kind of figured I should lean on the fact that I was also pretty good at math. Um, and so I sort of floundered it around and I eventually sort of landed on physics, um, because I was, you know, went to various events with cool astrophysics and then stuff like that. Um, so I started in physics.

I stayed with that for I think a year and a half, maybe two years. Um, at some point I realized I wasn't gonna be an astrophysicist when I grew up . Um, and I sort of went to electrical engineering as something that was actually one step easier on the. Than physics. Um, and, you know, involved a lot more sort of practical building things.

I had always sort of, you know, enjoyed circuits and things like that. Um, so I went to electrical engineering and I also spent a little bit of time in industry doing internships and I really liked circuits at that point. Um, I then was trying to get involved in research because like things were going pretty well as like my grades and, and things like that.

Um, so people were advising me that I should think about grad school and PhDs, right? And, and things like that. Um, in fact, there was like one conversation in particular where somebody just told me to do it. My, it was my undergraduate advisor. Um, he said, your grades are really good. You should go join a research lab.

Um, and so I, I went and I, for the summer, I ended up in a neuroscience lab where it turns out that they love electrical engineers like, Love them. Um, because they can work all of the equipment, they can do all the experiments, they can write all the code, right. Um, and so I was very happy and at that point I realized I was never gonna walk out of a lab again.

Right. Um, so then I decided to go to PhD programs and. I ended up on, um, brain machine interfaces at first because it's sort of like the average of neuroscience and electrical engineering, . It is the area where they overlap. Mm-hmm. . Um, so that's what got me into it. I decided, you know, I, I did my PhD and I decided to stay in that because it's a super exciting time.

There are so many things that are happening. It's a field that moves so quickly. Sure. Um, and I realized that like, uh, once I've done something this interesting, I just. Can't go do something less interesting. Sure, right. It would just be, I would know that that was out happening in the world and I was not a part of it.

And so at that point, I decided to become a professor. Um, and then I, uh, got my, I moved directly from, you know, uh, Stanford and to, uh, start my lab at the University of Michigan, um, this time in biomedical engineering, um, and robotics. Um, and yeah, I've been a professor since, uh, 20. That is great. So my next question, you pretty much answered it, what initially inspired you as a young woman or a girl to pursue a career in science?

And so that you pretty much covered that. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I dunno. I mean, I, I could, I could say a few more words about that. Sure. Um, so. So, I mean, I think that like, so when I was a kid, I made stuff right? And I, I actually think there's a link between, uh, being crafty and being an engineer that people probably don't appreciate.

I think that the, the women that are like, you know, crafts masters, those are a lot of the world's missing engineers. I think creativity and. In general. Yeah, yeah. Sure. Yeah. Completely agreed. So, so that was what I was like as a kid. I was somebody that was always making stuff. Um, and so, you know, at, at the time, like I, I think, you know, at some point I realized that that should point me at engineering.

Um, and then I did have sort of a series of like, I mean, it's just. , the occasional conversation along the way. Um, it probably really didn't start until I was in college. Like I, I had done a whole bunch of math like in eighth grade, um, and had done well at that. Like there was a math competition, , things like that, that, um, but you know, really it was in college that I really got into the, uh, you know, the stem.

Gotcha. Um, I wanted to touch on this. Our, our graduate students are very interested in learning about non-academic careers. In fact, they actually just hosted, um, a non-academic career symposium earlier this week. Um, I saw that you had some industry experience at both what is now Boston Scientific and Phillips, um, medical systems.

How would you compare the experience of practicing science and industry versus academic? Okay, so I, so strangely, I was happy in all of my industry positions. Like, you know, they were, they were super fun. I loved, you know, like building circuits, testing. Um, I, I was, after a while I was always in the research divisions, right?

So we were trying to build like the next thing. Um, and it was, it was a lot of fun. Um, but I noticed pretty early on that. Whatever you get good at, they ask you to do over and over again. Mm-hmm. And that's the rational response to industry. Um, and so my, my personality test for industry versus academia is, If you like feeling good at your job and being complimented for how good you are at your job, go to industry.

Mm-hmm. Right? That's a place where that is very well appreciated. There's some very, that's fascinating. Comfortable engineers in industry. Um, and they do, you know, they can do the same thing over and over again for decades if they want, and everyone thinks it's magic, right? Um, so that's, that's industry.

Whereas if you are easily bored, um, and don't need to feel good at your job, go do research. Yeah, we talk about that a lot here as far as like it, it's, you know, especially if you're a researcher and you're trying to pull in grants, it's just like the constant nose, right? I mean, you have to have some real resilience there, to be you do in that sort of environment.

Yeah, you have to have a competitive spirit. Right. And I, I for wouldn't believe that women absolutely have competitive spirits. Like yes ma'am, right? Like they're, they're very competitive and so I don't think that's a problem. Yeah, absolutely. Another cool thing I saw on your CV is that you have two patents, so could you walk us through that process?

I think that would also be a little bit more interesting for our grad students as. Okay, so my mind is actually going through, okay. What are the issued patents, what are the patents still pending? I think I know what the two patents are. Okay. Um, so one of the patents was, um, an algorithm for, uh, brain machine interfaces.

And this was, you know, both of these patents are a huge team group effort that it was privileged to be a part of. Um, but there was an algorithmic tweak. Um, that led to a, you know, so this is, uh, if you're imagining controlling a cursor with brain activity Hmm. And how well can you move that cursor around with your mind?

Um, there was an algorithmic tweak that caused a doubling of performance overnight. Right. Um, it's called like a, a refit, it's a two-step training procedure. Oh, wow. Um, and my, my colleagues, uh, Vaka, Gilia, Paul Niki, and really the brain child, it was really the brainchild of them, but it was a privilege to be a part of the whole project.

Um, but that was, yeah, that doubling of performance overnight was the first patent. Um, the second patent is, um, you know, so from my time as a professor, um, we, you know, in collaboration with, uh, plastic surgery, we developed a way to take. Uh, tiny nerve signals, um, which are too small to use to control a prosthetic hand and make them big by attaching a layer of muscle around the outside of them.

Um, so this amplifies the signal. And the, the patent is actually for a method of amplifying nerve signal, so a surgery can't be patented. But if you put a wire like an electrode into the muscle, you are using our method for amplifying nerve signals, and that's the second patent. Um, so that, and right now we're running a clinical trial on nerve controlled prosthetic cans.

That's sci-fi. And that leads perfectly into my next question. I, I told you before we began recording, I don't typically delve deeply into research on the pro on the podcast, mainly to maintain a broader audience. But your research aims to quote, eventually develop clinically viable systems to enable those that are paralyzed to control their own, as well as prosthetic limbs using functional electrical stimulation and assistive exoskeletons.

That's a mouthful. Drew that from your profile on your University of Michigan website to many of that sounds. So sci-fi is to be almost an impossible thing. So, yeah. Um, can you tell our listeners a little bit about this potential technology in as layman terms as possible, and provide us an estimate of how soon you think we could actually see this in a clinical setting?

Yeah. Okay. So, so just to sort of like, you know, explain what that that means. So there's a lot of like output devices there, but the bottom line is we want to. Tiny wires into the nervous system, and we want to understand and interpret the signals that we record and use them to control some kind of assistive technology.

So prosthetic hand stimulation of paralyzed limbs, exoskeleton with a, with paralyzed limbs. Um, so. I think that, again, I, I stayed in this field because I think it's happening right? There is a first inhuman example of everything I just said. Right? Right. And there's things that are starting, you know, they are better than what you can get in the clinic today already.

Um, we're still very far from able-bodied control or, or things like that. But, um, there's also been tremendous, uh, commercial interest just in the past few years. Um, of actually taking some of these things that have been demonstrated in academia and bringing it out to a commercial system. And it has been super fun to, to see all this stuff that, you know, I saw starting as a young graduate student and a young professor, and now it's actually making its way out in the world.

Um, that time process is very long. I've now realized it's like it's a decades long now that I'm sort of in my second decade. Mm-hmm. , but it happens and, you know, we had no idea. Like, you know, being the grad students working on this, like how big and how important it was gonna get eventually. And so that's so exciting.

And as you know, when I initially reached out to you, um, to do, uh, the show, um, you know, West Virginia has one of the highest rates of disability in the country. And so it's, it's not just cool, it's super relevant, as you said, to the human condition just in general. Yeah. Uh, I watched a presentation that you gave virtual virtually for E M B S or engineering and medicine and biology, so society at the University of Illinois and Chicago, and that was titled neuroprosthetic Control of Finger Movements.

In it, you stress how important your clinical collaborators in areas like neurosurgery and plastic surgery are to research, given you clearly utilize and appreciate interdisciplinary research. How do you think institutions can better foster that sort of collaboration between investigators? Yeah. So this is, this is really important.

And I think behind any big translational effort that takes a technology from the lab and moves it into people, there is, you know, at least like an engineer MD pair. Sure. Right. And that, you know, relationship is critical and, you know, and that, you know, those two people are, are, you know, have to work very closely together.

So ways that universities can support this. There is a bit of a problem in academia where it's, you know, I won't say big man, but like the big person , right? Like, they kind of wanna tell a story about a person and they sometimes get confused when it's multiple people. Sure. Um, and so, you know, I, I think of these collaborations as completely win-win.

I think that, you know, I can go to my engineering conferences and they know that the engineers are the brains of the operation and they appreciate what I did. The MDs can go to their, you know, surgical conferences and they know that the MDs are the brains of the operations and. You know, it's a very, like, everybody can get full credit, I think, from their communities.

Um, you know, because it's like, it's a, there's no way to do it without both and both are, you know, very complex , uh, you know, it takes a lot of effort, of course. Um, and so I think that I, I think in particular the MD engineering, uh, collaborations are really, I. . Yeah, we, um, it's, it's funny, we, uh, did sort of an I R B approved, um, re research project in our office on our own faculty and our graduate students ran them two separate times and it was a survey and it was around psychological safety, um, sort of resilience and connectivity in the health sciences center and what we found that trended both in.

Our graduate student population and our lab-based faculty population was, um, lack of awareness outside of your lab. Of what sort of other people are doing. Sure. And um, so we have several events around this to try to sort of bring, um, clinicians, le, you know, bench scientists all together and sort of get those conversations happening in our organic way because, and we hear in the chatter at a lot of these events in the networking pieces, sort of, well, I need this and that's in your lab and, you know, so on and so forth.

So it really is, um, Necessary and certainly, like you said, a win-win. Sure thing. Um, Many of my guests and I, I told you this before we begin re uh, recording as well, have reported encountering bias or just a general expectation that they are unable or unexpected to study science when they're younger. I myself don't ever really remember my younger, you know, in my younger years, educators sort of pulling aside young girls that consistently did well in math or science and sort of encouraging them, um, to go into STEM fields.

Have you. Experienced situations like this, like bias, and if so, can you share what they were and how they impacted your career? So, I don't think I ever experienced, um, bias in terms of, you know, somebody not believing in me when they should have. Right? Sure. And then, you know, the people that I had, like my mentors, things like that, like that, you know, that that all went really well.

Um, that said, you know, having been all the way through, particularly electrical engineering departments, um, there's a lot of, you know, very forbidding things about that culture, right? Mm-hmm. , which are just sort of hard to wrap your mind around and. To, and um, so, you know, I remember thinking by the time I was a junior and this or senior that if I could go back in time and tell myself one thing, Hmm.

It would be that the guys are all talk. You know what I mean? Like well, cause there's this culture, right? I mean, like in our culture, yeah. They're expected to be for sure. I think men, you know, consistently present themselves as like 5% having less trouble than they are. Right. And women on the other hand also prevent, present themselves as like 5% more humble than they are.

Absolutely right. Mm-hmm. . And if you put that together in a pressure cook, Yeah. Right. It feels terrible, right? Like it feels like everybody knows. So like, just to put perspective on it, like I was, I was a straight A student. and I always felt like I was doing worse than the people I was sitting next to and talking to.

Hmm. And it took me years to figure out that my, my grades were better . Right. Like, so I must be right. I must be good at it. Right. And so it, but that takes years and you can very easily drop out like during that early process, you know, because I think the problem with, you know, very quantitative engineering is you can be.

Doing very well, but it doesn't feel like you're doing very well , right? Mm-hmm. , because getting to the end of the homework is a plus a hundred percent. You win everything. Right? You know, whereas like, you know, you can write an 80th percentile essay and never know at the moment you turn it in, right? Right.

And so I think engineering just constantly feels worse. And then you add that to like systemic gender culture and that's a problem. So I love, um, So relevant, your reference to women's generalized difficulty in owning our excellence. This comes up a lot. There's a separate podcast, um, sort of related event that I host out of our office titled Women, uh, or it's Women at Work.

It's the Harvard Business Review podcast, and we just listen to it as a group and then, um, have discussion. And that comes up repeatedly, repeatedly, that there is data to show that women do. Own our excellence, the way men are sort of brought up to do so. And I mean, you know, they, they've done studies where, you know, a, a woman will apply to a job if she has all of the qualifications.

a man will apply to the job if he has Yes. Some of the qualifications we've had that exact conversation. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's just something where, you know, you have to like, I really, again, I really don't believe there's any fundamental difference. I think it's all cultural. I think that, you know, you could absolutely have a culture where, you know, women also felt very comfortable applying for jobs that they're only slightly qualified for

Right? Yeah. It's a matter of confidence. Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with you. Yeah. Um, . So you've worked with graduate students, undergraduate students, and postdocs throughout your career. How important do you think the mentoring relationship is? What gives it strength? And do you, you, yourself, have a notable mentor or mentors that influence your career path in positive ways?

Yeah, I mean, so mentorship is absolutely critical and I think it, that's also a major part of why I stayed in academia, right? Mm-hmm. , um, academia and academic research is very much. Baton passing it's person to person, you know, doing projects that are gonna take lifetimes in the end, right? Sure. Like to build, you know, detailed interfaces to the human body in all these ways.

Right? And I enjoyed those relationships like so much more than like employee employer relationships. Like I started out as mostly a mentee, but really early on, like by the time. Anyone younger than you in the lab, you are also a mentor. Mm-hmm. Right. And so, you know, so yeah, there was some, and I had some amazing mentors along the way.

Um, so the, the man who got me into science was Hillel Chill. Um, he ran the neuroscience lab and he would talk to me for hours, like as an undergraduate about, you know, neuroscience and, you know, science in general and press. That's awesome. And so he was great. Um, my PhD advisor, Krishna Chinoy, um, I think the way my labate put it, I asked him like, so how's Krishna as an advisor?

Like when I was just getting started and he says, I'm pretty sure he's the best advisor in the whole department, . So. Oh, that's great. Yeah, that was exactly my experience. So many of us stayed in science cuz we loved it. Um, and then on the other hand, like I, I just got back from a conference where I could finally like, uh, see some of my alumni, um, that I haven't seen in years.

So these are lifetime relationships where like, you know, um, this, on this, the kind of thing only happens through, you know, PhD programs. You do a five year app apprenticeship. Mm-hmm. . Right? And that's what a PhD is. Right? And that's just a really important, you know, baton. Yeah, and it's a long haul. And so I think too, when the relationships are strong, it's just so much easier and probably more productive.

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, we are nearing the end, uh, Dr. Chestek. I have one final question for you, and it is also the same for every guest. What is the most important advice you think, um, you could give to young girls or women who are interested in pursuing a career in science? Let's see. Let me think about that for a second.

Back to what I said before, engineering is, More about what you can do with it. It's like, you know, it doesn't ever feel like it's easy and you know what you're doing and you know, um, but the, the things that you realize you can do along the way are just so powerful, , right? And you eventually sort of realize, you know, you're, you're always gonna be able to follow your.

Right. And do the things you wanna do. And I, what I want for young girls is that feeling of power. Right? Right. That for them to sort of, you know, have that moment where they realize they can, you know, do huge numbers of things and go where they wanna go and sort of be the master of their own fate.

Absolutely. I love that. Uh, I think certainly too, a healthy dose of curiosity. Can cure anything, right? I mean if you're curious enough, you can kind of pedal through anything . Sure thing. Alright, Dr. Chestek, that's all I have for you today. Thank you so much for joining me on the Women in Science and Medicine Podcast.

Thank you.