Juan Calderon
“Don’t think you have to do everything alone; collaborate, share your experiment, share your result, show your data to people that are going to give you meaningful feedback and actually selfless feedback.”
School of Medicine
Human Genetics, PhD 2014
Associate Professor at Universidad del Desarrollo
Juan‘s Podcast Episode
In this episode, we discuss how Juan navigated the challenges of pursuing his doctorate at Johns Hopkins as an international student, the ways he’s had to pivot the direction of his research after returning to his home country of Chile, and his take on the importance of finding balance and supportive mentors for pursuing a career in academia.
Learn More About Juan‘s Story
This picture depicts two important aspects of my life: first and foremost, my daughter Isabella (on her first day of 2nd grade). Second, our bike. We ride our bike everywhere! What I like about it is that it defines our lifestyle and Isabella loves it. She already dislikes riding our car around and understands that biking takes us further and faster and avoiding traffic jams! She of course also rides her own bike and we enjoy the freedom that comes with it.
As a child, I learnt to ride my bike when I was the same age she is now. I remember feeling the freedom of being able to get everywhere in no time and, moreover, without supervision. Now I am trying to convince my daughter we should ride all around Patagonia together some day!
This picture is from a science talk I regularly organize at my favorite bar in town. From my work with patients with rare genetic diseases, I have come to understand that our role as scientists cannot be circumscribed to “just” doing experiments. We are privileged people that have been exposed to wonderful education opportunities and as such, we must make science available to everyone. In these talks I invite colleagues to tell us about what they do and how this impacts the life of “people sitting at the bar right now”. It makes for a great occasion to talk about what we scientists like most (our science!)
