The Crick’s new Director and CEO shares ten lessons from a life in science, spanning curiosity, courage, coffee and the secrets of our genetic code.
Edith Heard, described by the Financial Times as "the epitome of a European scientist", talks to Roger Highfield.
As a scientist, that can be incredibly helpful because there's so much to know, and one can never know everything. I was born in London to a Greek mother and a British father, my first language was Greek, and for the first few years of my life I really couldn't understand much of what was going on outside of my home environment. I found I could overcome it by hard work and being receptive. My life philosophy probably stems from that: everything is out there to be understood.
Our house was packed with the sick (there were a lot of Greek people coming to London to get treated), or people who were in exile because it was the time of the junta or Regime of the Colonels (a right-wing military dictatorship that controlled Greece from 1967 to 1974). That made me understand that freedom matters.
When I became a scientist, I realised that that is one of the wonderful things about science – it can facilitate freedom. People are encouraged to think openly, encouraged to cross frontiers, to work in different countries. That is also why I am involved in the PAUSE programme, or Programme d'accueil en urgence des scientifiques et artistes en exil, a French national programme that supports scientists and artists in exile, who come from countries where they are at risk of being imprisoned or bombed, or receiving death threats and facing many other hardships.
"Scientists should always challenge dogmas, but you have to be brave and resilient."
In biology, most of the time we take things apart. We crush up cells to look at their DNA or we dissociate things and believe that if you can rebuild them, you can understand them. But if you can integrate the physics and the chemistry of molecules and biological processes, you can really start to better understand what drives life.
I was lucky that I went to a girls’ school where I was encouraged to do what I wanted, and we were encouraged to do science. I realised that I like to understand how things work. I had an analytical mind, so it was natural for me to end up becoming more scientific.
I originally went to university to do astronomy. Instead, I fell in love with looking down a microscope at cells and the tiniest things, but I could have equally been as interested in looking at planets, galaxies and the largest things.
A step out of my comfort zone was moving from the UK to France, where I could not speak the language, where I fell in love with the science I was working on.
I was lucky enough to work in another temple of biology, Cold Spring Harbour (CSH) for one year and that was transformative for both my career and my personal life. I followed my partner, as he went there for a sabbatical, and I went as a visiting scientist, along with our two kids. I worked in the lab of David Spector. That year at CSH was amazing. It opened up my eyes and launched many new areas of research and collaboration for me. When we came back to France, I set up my own lab at the Curie.
Another big step was moving to EMBL where I went from running my lab and department in the comfortable environment of the Institut Curie, to running six institutes in five different countries, with 30 member states. There were challenges not just about language but a whole different way of doing things, working with multiple stakeholders.
Over the years, I've realised that one should always try to ask the big questions. I am not frightened of challenges, and I would say that's one of the reasons I took on the leadership role at EMBL, which is capable of answering some very big questions. The same goes for the Crick.
For me, it has been important to be a spokesperson for my field, epigenetics. When asked what epigenetics is about, the first thing I always say is what do you mean by epigenetics? The term is used in many different ways. Even when you go to an epigenetics meeting, you realise that different scientists are not actually talking about the same thing. I work on X-chromosome inactivation which is considered a classic epigenetic process as it involves stable silencing of the genes on one of the two X chromosomes during female development. The question is how do you stably shut down one X chromosome, even when it is identical at the DNA sequence level, to the second copy? When the genome got sequenced scientists realised that genes don’t tell the whole story. Then everyone suddenly got excited about the idea that epigenetic changes – which can be easily reversed or modulated, unlike genetic mutations – might be key to explaining life.
I wanted to understand an essential process, X inactivation, yet for the first five to ten years of my career, first as a postdoc, and then as a group leader, many of the things that I was stumbling on people said: “No, no, that can't be true. It doesn't fit, doesn't fit with the dogma.” As a result, I did not publish in high-profile journals. But these were some of my best papers and I was committed to publishing our findings and making people understand that what we were seeing was valid, even if it did not fit with existing models and dogmas.
Since I started my lab, we’ve come up with many new hypotheses, published on them, then in some cases we have gone on to kill a hypothesis because the data told us to. That's what science is about. Being rigorous and being brave and not being frightened of being challenged, even challenging one's own science.
I find it frustrating when people are not fairly treated, or if someone comes up with a hypothesis that is different to what people are thinking about and it gets ignored. I can be brave enough to speak up when others don't necessarily. I look around and think: “Well, why didn't anyone else say it? It's so obvious.” Having said that, I choose my battles carefully.
I don't feel I've often been challenged because I'm a woman, only on scientific issues. However, there are occasions, particularly in my most recent job, where I could tell that if I had been a guy wearing a suit and tie, some people would probably have talked to me in a very different way, or listened more attentively. I have found that in some contexts, as a woman in a senior leadership position, one has to talk ten times louder and ten times longer.
I don't get enough of it. If I don't get my caffeine first thing in the morning, I'm completely dysfunctional. I used to carry caffeine tablets because if I go into the day or a meeting without having had my early caffeine shot, the whole day is gone. Recently my lab even gave me a portable, mini-espresso machine as a Christmas present.
To relax in our current family base in Paris, I listen to music or go to the cinema. I could watch three films in a day. In fact there’s no limit to how much cinema I can watch or music I can listen to. My secret passions are playing the piano and drawing. I'm not good at either and I have neglected them as a scientist and leader. But I hope one day I'll be able to do more.
It’s kitsch but I do think it's amazing to have children. Having my children was a personal high point. It’s almost like a drug – everything they do I find fascinating maybe because I'm a scientist and I am rather analytical about things. I watch their decisions in life and I think, “Oh my God, and now they did this!”. I do have a bit of an addiction to my kids. I can never see enough of them. Having said that, I could also imagine my life as a scientist without children. In my particular case, and given the incredible partner I have, I think it was the right choice – and they provide balance.
I've never had to deal with as many crises as in the last five years. When it comes to my toughest period professionally, it has to be these past few years dealing first with the pandemic, then with what's happened with Ukraine, the Middle East, and the recent geopolitics. None of these were of my doing, but I ended up in a position of leadership where I had to confront them and navigate many challenges for EMBL, while ensuring the organisation continues to deliver its multiple missions of research, service provision, and training.
The pandemic was something scientists knew was coming, and could come, but when it hit us, it was still a shock. How naive could the world be? The first lesson I learned was we really should have been better prepared. As the Director General of an intergovernmental organisation, I saw five different countries dealing with it in different ways, for better or for worse. So I learnt a lot about what it must take to govern a country through a medical crisis. I also learnt a lot about values, what is valued in a country, what is valued in an institution.
EMBL was in the process of negotiating our budget during the pandemic along with our new programme for the next five years. It was actually much easier for me to explain the relevance of EMBL’s work and our new programme to ministries who normally would give us only five minutes. For example our Hamburg site was dealing with the BioNTech vaccine tests. I found that the member states listened to us.
Came from my PhD supervisor Mike Fried: you need mentors, especially as a woman. I can still picture us having coffee together and him telling me this in his Bronx accent. He did not really mean the kind of mentor we talk about today – someone you meet with regularly on a fixed basis. He meant finding people who will look out for you, especially at difficult moments. I have always tried to keep in touch with people who I trust and respect. The further you go in your career, especially in leadership positions, the lonelier it can become. All it takes is one or two conversations with people you trust to make you realise certain things, or to make you think again.
Aside from my kids, a high point is being able to follow the course of the people who've come through my lab. I'm more proud of them than even the science that I did or I'm doing. The scientists I'm most enamoured of, or respectful of, or impressed by, are the ones who also have produced great scientists, who encouraged and supported their colleagues.
