Debbie Jakubowski is a PhD student at the University of Illinois at Chicago who credits her career in biostatistics partially to her start in the community college system. After obtaining a degree in mathematics from UC-Berkeley, Debbie got an MPH and began working at a biotech company as a statistician. She tells me the benefits and draw of working in industry, and why she will continue her work there after her PhD graduation. We also discuss her polish last name, her new @WildBoarEpi twitter account, selfies with the brain, her cat's speech impediment, and more!
Debbie Jakubowski is a PhD student at the University of Illinois at Chicago who credits her career in biostatistics partially to her start in the community college system. After obtaining a degree in mathematics from UC-Berkeley, Debbie got an MPH and began working at a biotech company as a statistician. She tells me the benefits and draw of working in industry, and why she will continue her work there after her PhD graduation. We also discuss her polish last name, her new @WildBoarEpi twitter account, selfies with the brain, her cat's speech impediment, and more!
Debbie Jakubowski:
Do we have separate soundtracks, so if I take a drink of wine and there's a gulp sound-
Lisa Bodnar:
Yes. Yeah. I will edit those separately, and then yeah, if I put down a glass, if I fart, then yeah, we take that out.
Debbie Jakubowski:
No Giulianis. No Giulianis. If I fart, you're going to keep it in, right?
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay. That's fair.
Lisa Bodnar:
Welcome back to Shiny Epi People. I'm Lisa Bodnar. If this is your first time here, I'm glad to have you. Go back and listen to previous episodes. I personally think there isn't a clunker in the bunch. Thank you to the seven listeners who became patrons just in the past week. Wow. I appreciate your support so much. If you would like to donate to my Patreon, you can find us at patreon.com/shinyepipeople. But if you don't want to donate or you can't, just keep listening. It all works for me. You can find the show on Twitter and Instagram at @ShinyEpiPeople. You know, I started a podcast page on Facebook and then I was like, "What the hell am I doing? I hate Facebook."
Lisa Bodnar:
Today, you'll hear my conversation with Debbie Jakubowski. She's currently a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, Chicago, but concurrent with her doctoral studies, Debbie works full time as principal biostatistician at Exact Sciences, which is a molecular diagnostics company. She's interested in study design and methodology for observational research with an emphasis on cancer genomics. Debbie started out in the California community college system, which is what we spend a good bit of time talking about today. We thought it was especially timely, given Dr. Jill Biden choosing to maintain her career teaching English at a local community college. Debbie talks about the importance of community college and allowing her to find her footing, and how much she values her time there. We also talk about Debbie's experience working for over a decade in the biotech and pharma industry, and why she wants to stay in this line of work after she finishes her degree. I hope you enjoy this chat. Hi.
Debbie Jakubowski:
Hi.
Lisa Bodnar:
It's so nice to see your face in live action.
Debbie Jakubowski:
Yeah, same.
Lisa Bodnar:
All right. Cheers friend.
Debbie Jakubowski:
Cheers.
Lisa Bodnar:
So Debbie, one of the things that you wanted to talk about was your experience in the community college system. It's either rare among academics, or people don't talk about it.
Debbie Jakubowski:
Yeah, and it's funny, because I do think that there is an element of fear of talking about it. I remember after I transferred to UC Berkeley, I was bartending. So there was this student at the bar, and we were chatting and I made some comment like, "I just transferred here from Lake Tahoe Community College," and he scoffed at me and said, "I mean, I also transferred from community college, but I would never tell someone that." I was like, "What? Why not? I don't understand." So I've actually been quite vocal that I did go to community college, and I've heard sometimes people are like, "What? But you're so smart." I'm like, "Does not preclude you from starting out in community college." But I've also had a lot of people that have responded, "I think some of the smartest people I've ever met have come from a community college." I'm like, "Well, that's a lovely thing to hear. So thank you."
Debbie Jakubowski:
So academics were not a focus in my house growing up. The main focus for my parents was when you turn 18, you should be able to support yourself. So I started working at 15, saving money, and it was really in anticipation that at 18 or shortly after turning 18, I was going to move out and support myself. I grew up in Lake Tahoe, which the nature of work that's available to somebody that lives in a place like Lake Tahoe is tourism, right? So it's a lot of minimum wage workers, shift working, and seasonal work. So summer time and winter time are the core seasons, and then fall time, spring time, you're not really making any money and just hoping to get by. So most of my friends, we all sort of went through the community college route. For me, it wasn't even with an intention of doing anything with college. I didn't have any purpose other than this is something that I had been used to. I've been going to school since I was in kindergarten, and so it just makes sense to keep doing that.
Debbie Jakubowski:
It was a social thing to continue seeing some of my friends or making new friends as I'm moving or transitioning into adulthood in this new, independent life. I was supporting myself and I had two jobs. I was working at two different restaurants, which I had been doing through the senior year of high school. Throughout my education, I was always really inclined towards mathematics. I would get Cs in my math classes, but it was because I never did the homework assignments, and I would just show up for the exams and ace the exams. When I got to the community college, I just needed to take care of some requirements. So I actually enrolled in the lowest level math class that I could. I started thinking maybe I should become a psychology major, so I started taking off the requirements for an associate's degree in psychology. One of the very last classes I had to take was statistics, and I remember thinking to myself, "This is the last math class I'm ever going to have to take."
Lisa Bodnar:
Famous last words.
Debbie Jakubowski:
Yeah, exactly. Every math class was like, one, it's easy, and two, it's so boring. Why do I care? Tom has a wall that's 10 feet tall and 15 feet wide. How many cans of paint does Tom need? Who fucking cares? Who cares? Yeah. I enrolled and the instructor ended up being one of my lifelong mentors. His name is Larry Green. He is the head of the math department at Lake Tahoe Community College. I don't know what it was. Suddenly it was the first time in my life where it became so clear what you could actually do with mathematics and how it could be applied. But this was the first time I was excited to go home and do homework assignments. I would get nervous and butterflies going to class because I was just like, "I'm going to learn something new in this statistics class." I just sell head over heels in love with statistics.
Debbie Jakubowski:
Yeah. A couple of weeks in, I went to office hours and asked him, "I'm thinking of changing my major to mathematics. What do you think? I don't know." He encouraged me, and he consistently kept reaching out and poking me with this. Like, "Are you going to register for calculus?" He encouraged me to sign up for, there were some undergraduate math conferences. So he just opened up all of these doors that I was like, "Oh my God, I didn't even know that those existed." It really helped me to understand that I was worthy of going in this direction, but also what I needed to do, because that was beyond me also.
Lisa Bodnar:
So after that, you transferred to Berkeley. Was your major math?
Debbie Jakubowski:
It was, yeah. I majored in math. That was a shift. I really feel like I was set up well at the community college, but those lower level math classes and then going to Berkeley, pure mathematics, it's crazy and really lonely. That was one of the big things that I found myself ... That's so funny. You're like, "Yes, yes, aw." I think it wasn't Berkeley, but it was pure mathematics. Pure mathematics is a very lonely and disconnected subject, and I had a roommate, she came home one day and she was like, "I think you should look into this bio stats course. I think you would really like it." It was categorical data analysis was my first exposure, and then I took survival analysis. Survival analysis was taught by Mark van der Laan, who is incredibly smart man, but he taught it in this very, very, very theoretical framework. Not really understanding what the application was for what I was learning, I really struggled with trying to come up with that.
Debbie Jakubowski:
I actually have this really embarrassing, for that class, he asked for you to do a final project and present your analysis. I had no idea what I was, no idea what I was doing. I think I'd found some data online or something and just fit a bunch of distributions to the data, and I just plotted all of these graphs. I was like, "I don't know what I'm doing. Here we go. Here's like a poster that I put together." Mark came by and was like, "Have you taken many statistics courses?" And I was like, "No, not yet." And he said, "That's okay. You can learn." And that was it. He didn't belittle anything. He didn't embarrass me. He didn't poke and ask a bunch of questions of why didn't you do this or that. It was just he saw the reality of the situation and very kindly like, "It's okay. You can get there."
Lisa Bodnar:
Wow, cool.
Debbie Jakubowski:
I was working during the day and I found this program at California State University, East Bay that was catered towards working students, and it was a statistics department that had a biostat emphasis that you could choose to do. So it wasn't nested in a school of public health or anything. It wasn't a research-based program. It was really just about teaching students statistical methodology. It's another one of those things that sometimes I'm like, "Should I have applied to a more prestigious university for my Master's degree?" But I think similar to some of the taboo nature around community colleges, it's like you're learning the same concepts. I feel like we sometimes get too caught up in this idea of graduating from the top and the best and all of this. We're all learning the same thing. I actually found at Cal State East Bay, because it wasn't a research university, there's total focus on teaching. So the attention that we got from faculty was amazing. I feel like I came out of that program with just a wonderful understanding of theoretical statistics and biostatistical applications. I was like, "I'm good. I am good."
Debbie Jakubowski:
The pandemic was stretching resources at universities, and I saw this Twitter post that said something along the lines of, "We need to be nice to our colleagues. They may have to take a position at a community college or something. Don't judge them for that." I remember getting really upset over that, because it was like, you should be so lucky to have the opportunity to have such a profound impact on students that really need mentorship. I think it's a beautiful thing to work at a community college, and to choose to put your energy towards a group of disadvantaged students that don't really know what they're doing and it's a mess.
Debbie Jakubowski:
So I taught at community college for about three years. It's a mess. You have a group of students that range from similar to where I was, have no idea what they're doing in the classroom or what their purpose is in life and they're just trying to figure it out, to professional students who are trying to build their skillset and need to take a statistics class in order to get a promotion at work or whatever. You have to teach to this whole range of very young to very old, first generation to already has an MBA and just needs to take, you know. How do you cater to that?
Lisa Bodnar:
How do you?
Debbie Jakubowski:
You strike a balance. You find it. You try to teach towards something that is understandable and accessible, and you create a safe space for people to ask questions and don't allow anyone to take that away.
Lisa Bodnar:
How do you do that?
Debbie Jakubowski:
As the instructor, you set the tone. If you are, from the very beginning, just patient with everybody in the class, it carries through. I think that if you yourself aren't willing to take a step back and really hear the questions that are coming from students, and I think this is sometimes a problem, is professors will anticipate what questions they're going to get. So when they get a question, they just automatically categorize it as something. But especially with students that they're still learning how to be students and figuring it all out, they haven't yet learned how to frame a question that gets to what their question is. Reminding yourself of that and taking a step back, and trying to tease out the question if you don't understand it, which I think takes a set of skills that I have not yet perfected, but it was these things that I was always trying to work on in the classroom.
Debbie Jakubowski:
And making it very clear that my office hours are for the students to come and have these conversations. So I did have some students that were not quite as comfortable asking questions in class, but creating a safe space that they could come and ask those questions in private, or offering up tutoring sessions, which I did with a couple of students. Which I know it takes extra time, but it just felt ... For me, teaching at the community college was I was paying it forward, so I was more than willing to put in that time. I felt like it was owed to the universe because I had gotten that same treatment, and it was a pivotal moment in my life.
Lisa Bodnar:
One of the things that you wanted to talk about today was working in industry.
Debbie Jakubowski:
You have this sense about pharmaceutical industry as this slimy, sketchy space, right? Bad things happen and the science isn't good. They're just trying to suck away all of our money and all of it. I can't speak to the money side of things, but the science side of things, I remember having a conversation with back to Larry Green, my original instructor in statistics, saying, "I'm a little bit nervous about going into industry, because what if they ask me to do something that isn't ethical?" He replied, "Well, then you say no. You don't do it." He encouraged me to give it a shot, and so I did, and I learned that the scientists in pharma and biotech are actually amazing scientists. They're doing the best that they can to put out products that are going to make people's lives easier.
Debbie Jakubowski:
I had an opportunity present itself from a colleague that I had worked with at this company that did molecular diagnostics for cancer patients. He reached out and said, "We're looking for a statistician, somebody who has some of the methodological understanding and is a good communicator." I've been there now for the last six years, and it's been an amazing career defining position for me.
Lisa Bodnar:
What do you love about it?
Debbie Jakubowski:
The space that I work in, it's called medical affairs. Through the course of the product life cycle, there reaches a point where you need to engage with the clinical audience that is going to be utilizing either of the drug that you're promoting or medical device or diagnostic or whatever it is. So the medical affairs organization is really aimed at that engagement, and bridging the gap between the pharmaceutical research and development and the actual clinical use of that product.
Debbie Jakubowski:
One of the things that I really love about it is a lot of the partnerships that we create outside of the company are with researchers. They're MDs or PhDs who are trying to do research and really trying to fill data gaps around the product. So when you're going through that research and development, and for diagnostics, it's not quite the same as for pharmaceuticals. So you don't have the classic phase one through phase three trials. But we all know that there's limitations in those randomized trials in terms of the external validity and generalizability, and what populations are you actually enrolling into these trials? Once a product gets to market, how do you fill all of those gaps to better understand how the product serves across the entire spectrum of individuals who are suffering from a specific disease?
Lisa Bodnar:
Your plan, right Debbie, is staying within industry after you're done with your PhD.
Debbie Jakubowski:
Correct.
Lisa Bodnar:
What is it about an academic position that doesn't feel right for you?
Debbie Jakubowski:
Where do I start? For a lot of people, they have this idea of what it means to work for industry, that meaning that you're giving up some sort of creative rights to the research that you do, or some control over the research that you do, and giving up that work-life balance. Our work is largely dictated by commercial needs. I am able to go in, and if I'm not able to propose the exact research that we're doing, I'm able to propose study designs to answer specific questions or different methodological approaches that we can take to answer those questions. So I do feel like I get the opportunity to flex that creative muscle in terms of how I'm approaching my work.
Debbie Jakubowski:
Sometimes it's very clear exactly what you need to do, but there are some more complicated and nuanced problems that we have to solve, and I think that there's a space for that academic mindset, if you will, in industry. On the flip side, I would say I don't have to write grants. I don't have to try to find the money to support things, because the companies have the money. There are times where we do have to bring forward to our internal teams like, "Hey, I have this proposal for a study, or I interacted with somebody at a conference who has this idea and I think that it might help us fill this data gap." We still have to defend the research that we want to invest in, but it's not the same thing as writing a grant. I don't think I would enjoy that.
Debbie Jakubowski:
And then in terms of work-life balance, I think that's up to you and finding the work environment that you want. There are companies that exist that would expect me to work 50 hours per week or more. They would expect me to be online in the evenings or present in the office every day. That's not something I'm looking for, and so during the interview process, I have these conversations. I think a lot of people forget that, yes, the company is interviewing you, but you are also interviewing the company. You're trying to figure out if this is a good fit. Are you going to get the career development that you're looking for? Are you going to be doing the research that you want to be doing? Are you going to have the flexibility, or maybe you're okay with no flexibility? There's always something that you're specifically looking for. Asking about that is important, and making sure that you're going into some place, whether it's in academia or government or industry, that is catering to that life that you want to build.
Debbie Jakubowski:
I feel like I'm having a very successful career to this point, but I'm also very happy in my life. I take the time and I have boundaries. I communicate my boundaries. This is something else that has been integral to me being successful as a PhD student who is also working. Working in industry, going back to the original question that Lisa asked me, I see it as a very, it's lucrative. I get paid well. But in terms of the science being done, it's legitimate science and it's fun. It's a great group of people to work with, and I don't know. I highly recommend it for anyone who's not thinking of academia.
Lisa Bodnar:
That is so wonderful. What a great endorsement. Did you take your husband's last name, or is this your-
Debbie Jakubowski:
I did.
Lisa Bodnar:
It's pretty easy to pronounce.
Debbie Jakubowski:
I don't know. Tell me. Bonus points if you can say it with an Eastern European-
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay, that's throwing me off.
Debbie Jakubowski:
Okay, no.
Lisa Bodnar:
I'm going to say it regularly. That's it. Jakubowski.
Debbie Jakubowski:
Yeah, that's beautiful.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay. I mean, it's very phonetic. Jakubowski. Yeah. That was my Eastern European version. That was my Polish.
Debbie Jakubowski:
So it is a Polish name, and it is Jakubowski, which I'm probably saying horrifically. If my Polish aunt were to hear it, she would be like, "What? No, you're not in the family anymore."
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay. Polish listeners, sorry.
Debbie Jakubowski:
Sorry.
Lisa Bodnar:
Okay, and what does it mean?
Debbie Jakubowski:
I have no idea.
Lisa Bodnar:
My last name is Hungarian and it means barrel maker.
Debbie Jakubowski:
Barrel maker. Do you know how to make a barrel? Okay. I'm looking up Jakubowski name meaning. Habitational name for someone from Jakubov. All places named with Jacob. My maiden name is[Mccullough, and I just looked it up, and this name means wild boar. Just putting it out there.
Lisa Bodnar:
That's what your Twitter handle should be, right? Like @wildboarepi?
Debbie Jakubowski:
Wild boar epi. Or maybe I'll start @wildboarepi as my fun account.
Lisa Bodnar:
Exactly, and no one will know that it's you. I'm telling you what. And then put all sorts of shit on there.
Debbie Jakubowski:
It's going to be all the worst epi advice ever. Wild boar epi. It's what not to do.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You should totally be like, "Non-differential misclassification bias towards the knoll." Say all the things that, "Matching in a case or study takes care of compounding." Say all of the things, and then I think scoop it up.
Debbie Jakubowski:
No results for @wildboarepi.
Lisa Bodnar:
You know, think about it. Wildboarepi69?
Debbie Jakubowski:
Just really, really wild. This boar is wild in ways that you did not even anticipate.
Lisa Bodnar:
I love it. Would you rather have free coffee at your favorite coffee shop for life, or free Netflix for life?
Debbie Jakubowski:
I would probably say free Netflix for life. I make coffee at home, but also I'm very sensitive to coffee, so I only have one cup per day. I have strict rules around it. My rules are I have one cup as soon as I wake up. It helps to keep me regular too.
Lisa Bodnar:
Yes. I hear that.
Debbie Jakubowski:
And no coffee after noon. Never ever, ever, ever.
Lisa Bodnar:
Would you rather watch a horror film or romcom?
Debbie Jakubowski:
Romcom, 100%. I do not do well with horror films, especially if it's things that actually happened to people, and I don't mind blood. Actually, one of the jobs that I had early on in my career, I was a research assistant and they needed somebody to support brain dissections.
Lisa Bodnar:
That's not at all where I thought you were going with this.
Debbie Jakubowski:
The first brain dissection I was able to participate in, first thing, I walked in and was like, "Can I please hold the brain?" How often do you get to a human brain?
Lisa Bodnar:
So you put it in your hands like it was a baby raccoon?
Debbie Jakubowski:
Yeah. Just I assume that a baby raccoon is about the size of a human brain.
Lisa Bodnar:
Baby raccoon. I could have said a baby kitten. Why did I say baby raccoon?
Debbie Jakubowski:
I don't know.
Lisa Bodnar:
I don't know.
Debbie Jakubowski:
I actually love you more for saying baby raccoon.
Lisa Bodnar:
Oh my God. Okay. Anyway, you were holding the brain.
Debbie Jakubowski:
I was holding the brain, and it's an amazing brain.
Lisa Bodnar:
Were you afraid you were going to drop it?
Debbie Jakubowski:
No, that never crossed my mind. I wasn't-
Lisa Bodnar:
Throwing it above your head, right?
Debbie Jakubowski:
Tossing it up in the air.
Lisa Bodnar:
But did you take a selfie with it?
Debbie Jakubowski:
I did not take a selfie with the brain. This was also before major selfie culture, so-
Lisa Bodnar:
[crosstalk 00:27:00] I hear you. Today you would have done it.
Debbie Jakubowski:
Today, absolutely. I would have been one hand gripping the brain, taking a selfie with it.
Lisa Bodnar:
Do you have a pet?
Debbie Jakubowski:
I have a cat. He is a quirky motherfucker. He was a stray cat that I adopted, and it took him about three months for him to warm up to me, but the moment, he did it was zero to 100. He went from hiding under the couch to I always need to be on top of you when you're around.
Lisa Bodnar:
That's sweet.
Debbie Jakubowski:
Okay. Yeah, maybe. There's times where I'm like, "Oh my God, dude, can you give me some space? I just need some space." He also has a little bit of a speech impediment, so he has a really difficult time meowing. It comes out frequently you'll see he's trying, but he can't get his vocal chords to work.
Lisa Bodnar:
So can you imitate your cat, please?
Debbie Jakubowski:
But sometimes it's like, "My throat! Do you have a lozenge?"
Lisa Bodnar:
Do you believe in aliens?
Debbie Jakubowski:
So I think I believe that there is life outside of the planet. I don't know that there is intelligent life outside of the planet. So my philosophy of the universe is that with infinite time and infinite space, anything becomes possible.
Lisa Bodnar:
I can tell the wine's kicking in.
Debbie Jakubowski:
Yeah.
Lisa Bodnar:
I'm just kidding. I'm totally kidding, I'm totally kidding.
Debbie Jakubowski:
I would say this sober to Lisa.
Lisa Bodnar:
I know you would.
Debbie Jakubowski:
There's been an infinite amount of time. Any series of situations are going to occur at some point, right? It's just-
Lisa Bodnar:
Statistics.
Debbie Jakubowski:
Statistics, guys. Come on.
Lisa Bodnar:
Debbie, this was so much fun.
Debbie Jakubowski:
It was lovely. I want to know where my other community college people are at.
Lisa Bodnar:
Maybe it should be #CCEpi.
Debbie Jakubowski:
Yeah, I love that.
Lisa Bodnar:
We'll pretend that I didn't originate it, but it should originate from at-
Debbie Jakubowski:
Wildboar69epi? No?