BRENDAN KEEGAN: Great. So welcome, everyone. Welcome to ThinkResearch. So we're here to talk about a new initiative at Harvard Medical School called The MIND Project, and I'm joined by four of the members of the project. So I'm just going to ask you all to go around and introduce yourselves, and talk a little bit about how you're affiliated with The MIND Project, and what role you have, and what field you are in outside. So maybe, Walid, if you want to start us off. WALID YASSINE: Yeah. Hi, Brendan. First, thank you for having us. And I just want to [INAUDIBLE] here a little bit about how collaborative Harvard is which allowed us to allow the MIND project to become a reality. And that we are currently functioning under the Harvard Brain Science Initiative, and hopefully we will become more independent in the future. So my name is Walid. I'm a fellow at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and I founded the MIND project about a year ago. And I'm happy to share more about this later. BRENDAN KEEGAN: Right, and why don't we go next to Fatima. I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly. OK, Fatima. OK, thank you. Great, thank you. Great. PATRICK: All right, and I'm the last one. Hi, I'm Patrick, and thanks for having us today. So I'm a postdoc. I'm at HMS at the Department of Genetics. I'm mainly stationed at the Wyss Institute. Outside of the MIND project, I also work with organoids. I used to do a lot of work with neurodevelopmental work, modeling Down syndrome using brain organoids. Now I've switched more to doing tissue engineering, trying to create organoids that are more physiologically relevant. So in The MIND Project I'm working in the faculty-wide group. So I'm working with two other people in the group, and we're trying to engage with faculty within or across Harvard to get involved in the different initiatives we have. So far that's been quite successful, I would say. We'll talk more about the different programs we have that we're doing within The MIND Project, but we hope to have a bigger outreach moving forward. So thanks. BRENDAN KEEGAN: Great. Well, thank you all for introducing yourselves and for joining us again. So, just to start off, what is The MIND Project? WALID YASSINE: So maybe I'll go first here. So The MIND Project is a space for-- first, it's constructed around mental illness and neurodevelopmental disorders. And the mission is really to work towards tackling the scientific and the quality of life challenges of those individuals impacted by these disorders. It is a space to facilitate collaboration between different scientists at different levels. That includes fellows, graduate and undergraduate students, as well as faculty, of course. However, the central idea of The MIND Project is centered around the fellows, nurturing the fellows, and giving them what academia has not given them much, which is leadership and roles that prepare them to become more of a PI or prepare them for industry, as well. So there it is BRENDAN KEEGAN: Yeah. Go ahead, Patrick. PATRICK: Just to add something. Yeah, I guess what I really like about and why I probably joined The MIND Project, what makes it special, is that we're not bound by one particular place or institute within Harvard. So we can quickly facilitate or find people to work with us on specific programs. That makes it so diverse and interesting. So instead of just being bound within our institute looking for people to work with us, I guess what we're trying to do is trying to get people with a very diverse background together very quickly to tackle interesting questions. And I think that's what makes it quite special. BRENDAN KEEGAN: And so you mentioned kind of giving fellows things that they weren't getting, like leadership, mentorship maybe. Could you talk a little bit about how the idea for the project came about? Was it like a personal situation that prompted you to do this, or conversations with colleagues? You also mentioned that you started about a year ago, so that would be-- its June right now-- so you started this June 2020 or thereabouts, like in the middle of the height of the pandemic. So maybe just talk about the impetus for the idea and how it came about. WALID YASSINE: Absolutely. So the idea-- when we started the construction, I would say, in September of 2020. The idea I came about when [INTERPOSING VOICES] I think the pandemic kind of quote unquote, "helped," in the sense that everybody was confined into their own lab, and to find ways to facilitate these kind of roles between different disciplines was more defined during the pandemic. It became more real. And that's one part of the idea about bringing everybody on board to tackle mental illness because in different disciplines people read papers differently, and they present work differently. And when you bring them together to have a conversation about like, for example, a particular disease of interest, then they would learn from each other about what your field can contribute towards helping a cure or improve the treatment for a particular disorder. So that's where the collaborative and interdisciplinary idea came from. And centering around the fellows came about when I became a fellow, and I saw there are these fellows that have outstanding skills, and they have this great intellectual capital, but at the same time, most of the fellows are in-- the utilization of the fellows is more of like a skill utilization. Like we want to use your skills, that's why we hire you. However, the postdoc level came about as a training position. It's like they're preparing you to reach something. It's not like as it's being used right now. And most of this training, what postdocs want to learn is how do I become a PI? Or, for example, if I want to go to industry how do I deal with the industry realm? So this is something that we're providing that we're not really getting as a postdoc community. BRENDAN KEEGAN: Does anybody else want to-- is that a sentiment that you all share? PATRICK: Levels, but we're heavily mentored by-- we currently have five advisors which are all high level faculty across Harvard. So faculty is heavily involved across all of the things that we do. So we have the two main programs. You can see those on the website. So we have TMP32. This is a clever play on the famous T32 grant, which is a trainee mentorship program, and that's heavily involved with faculty and postdocs. And that, again, is not constrained by one institute where the postdoc has to join either within your own PI or the PI across that institute, so that allows you to find interesting projects with people that you probably would never connect with otherwise. And we also have MIND MATCH, which also is heavily involved with faculty, but then it also goes down to where postdocs can search for undergrads or graduate students that they can lead projects with. So we're not primarily postdocs driving the whole thing by ourselves. We do have a very strong influence [INTERPOSING VOICES] with our constant mentorship with very high level of faculty that helps us disseminate all these ideas and graduate programs. FATIMA: And then later as postdocs, with this idea of, if it's a big group of people, collaborating with one another, trying [INTERPOSING VOICES] WALID YASSINE: Yeah, and just adding to what Fatima just said. Now the organizers [INTERPOSING VOICES] are interviewing new organizers and are kind of mentoring the students. So all of these skills that you would have as a PI, they're doing now at this stage. So that is covered in and [INTERPOSING VOICES] small business PATRICK: Yeah, I'll just mention a few, and then you can jump in, Fatima. BRENDAN KEEGAN: Yeah, feel free to jump in. PATRICK: When TMP32 initially launched, we already had, I think, oversight and those were quite broad across the range purely neuropsychiatric [INTERPOSING VOICES] There was even one that was already looking at using brain organoids for certain neurodevelopmental disorders. So it's quite broad in terms of what people are suggesting to look at. MIND Match is great. We just recently launched that. That also allows the postdoc on their own to try and look for undergrads, and this doesn't necessarily have to be for a thesis project. It could be developing skills for undergrads or grads within areas that they wouldn't necessarily work with. So, Fatima, do you want to join in? BRENDAN KEEGAN: Yeah, you mentioned that one of the things about The MIND Project is that it's all run by postdocs, and I wonder if you could talk about how that affects what you are able to do, and maybe that spirit of experimentation that it sounds like you're fostering? MICHAL LIPINSKI: Hi, my name is Michal Lipinski. I am a post-doctoral scholar at the Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology Department at Harvard and Stanley Center at the Broad Institute. Outside of The MIND Project, I'm most interested in modeling different psychiatric diseases using brain organoids. And I am also at The MIND Project involved with a community engagement group, together with Fatima. And, yeah, we are just trying to make this thing work and make it as well seen by all the fellows and all the members of the of The MIND Project trying to engage people [INTERPOSING VOICES] BRENDAN KEEGAN: So with the MIND MATCH tool, you're actually kind of reaching out and connecting people through some of these tools. Talk a little bit about some of the projects that have come out of this collaboration, and maybe give an example or two. FATIMA: Do you want to-- yeah, go ahead. PATRICK: I think I'd also like to add that during the pandemic, it's also just been nice to connect with people in an environment where-- we couldn't go outside, and just randomly start talking to people. And this allowed us, it facilitated us to meet new people and make new friendships, and whatever happens after this, we've made connections that hopefully will last for a long time. So I think that's also been kind of invaluable to have that environment to talk and share ideas and get something like this going. That's been pretty special, especially during a pandemic. FATIMA: Sure. I think that what I would add is there are, at least to me, collaborations on a bigger scale, like when you look at working within academia with professors. There's the TMP32 and there's the MIND MATCH that puts in students and postdocs with faculty. Or I think we found a few students for some faculty who are interested in this undergrad and graduate, or undergrad and postdoc level. But it's also, on the industry side, we've also had collaborations, or at least have one collaboration confirmed with Sunovion, within the industry on-- they came to us. We talked to them. There were a bunch of meetings, and we now are at the stage that they're interested in hearing our side of what we have to add as scientists with them in the industry. So I think, to me at least, it's a two-layer thing. You're looking at industry and academia in terms of the collaborations. WALID YASSINE: Yeah, and just to add to that, the Sunovion collaboration has already reached a more concrete phase right now, where we are discussing things like a grant for The MIND Project that would be provided by Sunovion, as well as other projects that we would love to keep for now and then launch them at the appropriate time. MICHAL LIPINSKI: So I also think the beauty of The MIND Project environment is that the fellows are all postdocs, and there are no stupid ideas, you know? You can just come up with something. You can just propose it, and people understand where you're coming from. People understand what is your mindset, even though your experience is completely different. As Patrick mentioned before, we each have a very different background, so we might chime in with something very different for [INTERPOSING VOICES] ideas. But there is no pressure to be always perfect, and you're allowed to make mistakes, which is easier. It's just [INTERPOSING VOICES] allows for early crazy ideas to come up, and maybe we'll be able to make them happen. BRENDAN KEEGAN: Beginnings of this project that you hope to move into more of a kind of defined entity, from a project to-- I don't know. What would you call it? A Center? How do you see this moving forward? You mentioned a grant that could help fund some of the activities. So how do you see this progressing? FATIMA: I can start, and then people can jump in. So, so far, we're hoping, like, we've been in the process of trying to become an independent and forming to become an initiative within the Harvard Medical School. We're putting together the application for that. So I think, a year from now, we would have that independence. We would have grants from the industry. We would hopefully have some more concrete collaborations and projects going on with the faculty and sourced by the postdocs for both undergraduate and graduate mentorship At least, that's how I see it for the next year. I am surprised, or I am glad, that we moved so fast given that we just launched in January, and I joined the group in January, how fast we moved on certain things. And I think if we keep up with it, I would be very happy to see what we could achieve next year with the same speed and the same dedication. BRENDAN KEEGAN: Yeah, talk a little bit about what it's been like launching this initiative, and you mentioned moving quickly. I don't know how quickly things like this typically form or progress, but how has it felt launching this project and building it? WALID YASSINE: So I think it's assumed that all of the fellows are quite busy with their own work, and, at the same time, finding the right connections and finding the right tools in order to create something like The MIND Project takes time. Everybody who is coming on board is really passionate about the project and really wants to make this work. So with that sort of dedication and with the, I would say, quote unquote, "fertile soil," which is Harvard, as well as the Harvard Catalyst, and the Harvard [INTERPOSING VOICES] They have been immensely helpful. [INTERPOSING VOICES] The faculty within Harvard. We haven't had any rejection for any of our requests yet. The deans at Harvard are very supportive. It's just such a supportive environment that it's hard [INTERPOSING VOICES] for something to fail. I think all of that, you know, collectively have contributed to the pace that were doing but [INTERPOSING VOICES] until now. Because it's really not just our team, but it's the whole environment that includes everybody within the Harvard system that helped us reach where we are now. FATIMA: I think one of the other things that was really interesting in getting involved with this was, as Michal said, we all suddenly found out that there's so many other people in different levels-- we have people who just became postdocs, people who've been postdocs for a while-- who are thinking about the same things, and who are quite understanding of what fellows go through during their time. When I come up and say, oh, I can't do this. I'm, like, buried under writing papers and grants and whatnot, everyone is like, oh yeah, we get that. No one is expecting you to kill yourself over doing stuff. It's quite an understanding, quite a friendly environment, and it's nice to know that people are supportive, and whatever we're working on, we're working on it together. WALID YASSINE: Absolutely. BRENDAN KEEGAN: Sure, yeah. Yeah, we'll link to the website. It's kind of got a long URL, so I won't recite it, but it's within the Harvard Brain Science Initiative, and we'll put a link on our page. MICHAL LIPINSKI: We cannot, or maybe we couldn't, meet in person so far, so everything was happening in the virtual environment that we created, and definitely the things will progress. [INTERPOSING VOICES] BRENDAN KEEGAN: Yeah, maybe talk a little bit about-- we're getting close to time, but talk a little bit about your personal experience. You mentioned, Michal, that [INTERPOSING VOICES] it's been a tremendous experience for you, and with the pandemic helping to foster collaboration and meet people. But if anybody wants to share sort of a personal anecdote of what being involved with the project has meant for them personally, or with your work, feel free. [INTERPOSING VOICES] FATIMA: Just getting to know people outside of the project and whatever, collaborations and stuff that we do. [INTERPOSING VOICES] Just getting to know people, hanging out with them. And also, within my field of research, the style of discussions, and the way that you address questions or talk about your topic is quite different than the style of communication in their own, how they approach their research. So it was nice to see other styles and to learn how to really communicate with people who are not necessarily in my field, and who are not used to talking about topics, or just questioning whether or not they're valid, and having a more friendly approach towards things, so to say. I really benefited from that. And I just think of it is some of the outside even outside of the TMP, some of these relationships I think have become more of a friendship that could go into the future. BRENDAN KEEGAN: Is it nice to be working or collaborating with people that are not in your lab, or that you don't see every day? MICHAL LIPINSKI: So I wanted to say something. And it's kind of a perfect question for what I was going to say anyway. For example, I am a neuroscientist. I am a molecular biologist, and I work with psychiatric disorders. Funny thing, I work with psychiatric disorders, but there is no psychiatrist here in my lab. So talking with someone who is actually an MD, talking with Walid who is a neuropsychiatrist about [INTERPOSING VOICES] psychiatric disorders is just immensely beneficial for my own work. So definitely these different backgrounds, these different trainings that we get, can benefit the science, not only our interpersonal relationships. PATRICK: [INTERPOSING VOICES] Towards what we actually are doing to try to bring different people from different disciplines to the same space for conversation. BRENDAN KEEGAN: That's great. So I just want to see. I guess, to kind of wrap up, we touched on what you feel or what you're hoping for in the next year. But maybe you could talk about what you would like to see happen with The MIND Project, both in terms of the collaborations, but maybe thinking bigger. What could the success of something like this do for [INTERPOSING VOICES] the postdoc [INTERPOSING VOICES] just the atmosphere. Michal talked about not having a psychiatrist in his psychiatric disorders lab. Could it spark more change about the types of teams that people are forming, or who is leading these efforts, and maybe getting faculty and leaders to think differently about how postdoctoral fellowships are organized? That's a big question, but-- WALID YASSINE: Absolutely. So that's a great question. And I just want to correct something, that I'm from a neuropsychology background. The neuropsychiatry is [INTERPOSING VOICES] BRENDAN KEEGAN: Ah. Psychology, yeah. WALID YASSINE: But nonetheless, what I had in mind is that it's about freeing science, really. It's about these scientists who have ideas that are not constrained by the current academic system where you are at this level, you only do this. But we are all scientists at whatever level, and we are all creative in our own right. So what I was thinking about, really, in the future when this becomes a center or an independent entity on its own, is where people would be inside the space, collaborating independent of their title, or what is the title constraint that are on them. It would only be a free science, really. So hopefully we will reach that state in the future. BRENDAN KEEGAN: That's great. Well, Michal, Fatima, Walid, and Patrick, thank you all so much for joining us, and it was a pleasure to have this conversation with you. WALID YASSINE: Thank you so much, Brendan, for having us. MICHAL LIPINSKI: Thank you. BRENDAN KEEGAN: Perfect. Nobody wanted to jump on Walid's answer there at the end. [LAUGHS] WALID YASSINE: No, we were just-- it's a perfect answer. BRENDAN KEEGAN: Yeah. There you go. Cool. MICHAL LIPINSKI: Yeah, I think also Walid and us had a conversation before this meeting about, let's just be a little PC about what we are going to say. BRENDAN KEEGAN: OK. Right. Yeah, I got that. I could feel that. I wasn't trying to push you too much in the disrupter angle. MICHAL LIPINSKI: Yeah, you know, that's exactly what I said in our conversation a few weeks ago, and I was like, I don't think probably that would be a good point to a broader audience. BRENDAN KEEGAN: Yeah. I wonder if maybe we could kind of go back and get-- one question I didn't ask was what's the mission of The MIND Project. Could we get, like, an elevator pitch, just a short sentence or two about if you were meeting a faculty member to pitch them on becoming involved, what would you say? WALID YASSINE: I think we would say that the mission of The MIND Project is really to just tackle the scientific and life challenges of psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. This is something that I probably missed to mention at the beginning, but we are also not trained on doing something other than write papers. But what I also had in mind is that, if we are able to create products [INTERPOSING VOICES] that could help the quality of life of those individuals impacted by these disorders, then that would also be something that we would be happy to incorporate within The MIND Project. BRENDAN KEEGAN: And we didn't talk a lot about the faculty that you work with, and what role they have and what they bring. Maybe you could talk about the faculty that are involved and what they bring to the collaborations. WALID YASSINE: Absolutely. So there are several involvements of the faculty. One, as others mentioned, the TMP32-- I think Patrick mentioned that-- where the faculty initiates the collaboration through that program. Another involvement of the faculty is where we have something called MIND MATCH, where the faculty can also initiate a collaboration and get students, grads and undergrads from Harvard, to join that program that they initiate. Otherwise, we have an advisory board. And these individuals, we kind of go for them. We have this idea, where do you advise us to go with it? Can you shape this into a more concrete idea from your experience? And we didn't only tackle a faculty that are academic, but we've also tackled more of industries. So, for example, Patrick Fortune, who is vice president [INTERPOSING VOICES] And so these industry people also have a different mindset that we would benefit from, so it's a really all-encompassing faculty involvement in different parts of the [INTERPOSING VOICES] MICHAL LIPINSKI: And I just wanted to also mention one more thing, which is that we are also trying to be inclusive in The MIND Project overall, and in the advisory board. So we have two female members also on the advisory board. This is one of our core beliefs, also, to be inclusive and make sure that everyone is represented. WALID YASSINE: Yeah, we're definitely hoping for a gender balanced advisory board, as well as faculty involvement. And even the organizers, we are almost half male, half female, as well. So we're hoping to have minority involvement, as well. BRENDAN KEEGAN: And, lastly, how can people get involved? If they want to get involved with The MIND Project or are interested in learning more about opportunities, how can they get in touch? MICHAL LIPINSKI: Yeah, so first of all, I think the best way is to go to the website. That's mind.brain.harvard.edu. That's a lot of dots, but kind of easy to remember. And there you can find the contact, there is a contact form. You can also send us an email-- and I am so sorry. I don't remember what's the email address at the moment. BRENDAN KEEGAN: I think it's here. Is it themindproject.harvard@gmail? MICHAL LIPINSKI: Yes. WALID YASSINE: themindproject@brain.harvard.edu BRENDAN KEEGAN: OK. Well, we'll put the contact info on there, on the site. MICHAL LIPINSKI: Sorry, we have a couple of emails, and I didn't know which one it was. BRENDAN KEEGAN: That's OK. I'm sure there's like aliases bouncing around and redirecting. MICHAL LIPINSKI: Yeah, definitely. We are trying to get more involved in the Harvard community, but also Harvard Brain Science Initiative is being extremely generous in how they are supporting us. They managed to get us a domain specific for us, and they are getting us a very specific Harvard email address, which is, as I said, it's very generous of them. But this also creates a little bit of a confusion at the moment. WALID YASSINE: Yeah, thank you for mentioning that, Michal. I probably missed to mention what the HBI has offered, but they've offered us a lot. So, yeah, of course. Thank you, Michal. The Twitter handle is tmp_hbi. So for the MIND MATCH, we usually post the opportunities for Research on Twitter or on LinkedIn, but once the students fill out the application form on the website, graduate and undergraduate students, then they can directly get the opportunities to their email. BRENDAN KEEGAN: Great. Yeah, I'm just looking at your Twitter page. It looks like you do post a lot of opportunities there. So for anybody interested, the Twitter handle is @tmp_hbi. Thank you all again, and I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us.