hello and welcome to another episode of Immunity by Design.
My name is Hashem Kooy, and I'm delighted to be hosting this series where we
explore the ideas, technologies, and people shaping the future of science.
Today's episode is slightly different.
Instead of discussing a science story, we will be discussing inclusive
access to education and technology, and also barriers to success.
Much of modern science is built on belief that talent, curiosity, and hard
work lead to opportunity and impact.
Yet around the world, countless gifted individuals never reach to their full
potentials, not because they lack ability, but because they lack access: access to
education, access to mentorship, access to network, access to opportunities
that many of us take for granted.
At the same time, we are living through a technological revolution driven
by artificial intelligence, data science, and digital connectivity.
Some see these technologies as great equalizers that can democratize knowledge
and opportunity, whereas others fear that may widen existing inequalities and
further concentrate power and privilege.
So how do we build a future in which talent matters more than geography,
background, or circumstance?
How do we identify and support individuals who might otherwise be overlooked?
And what role can science, technology, mentorship, and entrepreneurship,
and you and I play in curating a more inclusive innovation ecosystem?
To explore these questions today, I'm very delighted to be joined by
Dr. Abhilash Mishra, a physicist, entrepreneur, and founder of Equatic
Futures, an organization dedicated to expanding access to science, technology,
innovation, and leadership opportunities for talented individuals across the world.
In this conversation, we discuss the barriers that prevent talented people
from succeeding, the realities of building and scaling a mission-driven
organization, and the role of mentorship and community in shaping careers,
and how we can create systems that enable more people to contribute to
future of science and technology.
Abhilash, welcome to Immunity by Design.
Thank you for having me.
I really appreciate the invitation.
Thank you.
It's a pleasure.
So Abhilash, to start with, for listeners who might not know you well,
could you please briefly introduce yourself, and tell us a little bit
about the missions you are on and the, the missions that drive your work?
Sure.
So my name is Abhilash Mishra.
I'm the founder and chief science officer of Equitech Futures.
I was born in India in a small town in the eastern part of India.
I always wanted to be a physicist since high school.
I was fascinated by astronomy and physics and so I decided to
pursue physics as an undergraduate.
And I, pursued physics as an undergraduate in India.
I went to Oxford for my master's and then finished my PhD
in astrophysics at Caltech.
And throughout this time I was very interested, given just the setting where
I grew up in figuring out how we can have more people from around the world
be part of the scientific enterprise.
When I was growing up, I was very lucky to have amazing science teachers and mentors.
My parents were very supportive in me pursuing science as a career.
But even then, I saw that the kind of opportunities available
for people to pursue scientific discovery and innovation were limited.
And that's was the driving force behind what I wanted to do.
I really wanted to figure out how we can enable more people in the world to
participate in the scientific enterprise.
great.
Also we will be coming back to Equitech and we will be discussing about it,
but to begin with, also introduce Equitech Futures, what it is what the
missions are, and what they offer.
Yeah.
So Equitech Futures is a talent engine and an innovation lab.
So by talent engine, a mechanism through which we identify the most
promising innovators from across disciplines and from around the world
who want to use science and technology to tackle societal challenges.
The way we do that is by running institutes virtual institutes that
students can participate in and go through courses in applied artificial
intelligence, in applied data science, in communication, and societal and
ethical perspectives in technology.
And we also host challenges, innovation challenges through which innovators
from around the world can participate and pitch new ideas that we then
support through funding, through training, and through mentorship.
And we invest a lot in our alumni network in trying to, again, support
individuals who've been through our programs to find opportunities
in research, in entrepreneurship or working in the civic sector.
Sure.
In addition to your own career path that you mentioned, that was very impressive
and also, y- coming to Oxford and then Caltech and seeing some opportunities
was there any other specific gap or problem that, led you to think that
eventually formed the Equitech Futures?
Yeah.
So two experiences come to mind.
So when I was in high school, I was part of the mathematics Olympiad program-
… in the state of Odisha where I grew up.
It's a small, relatively impoverished state in India, and one a mathematician
by the name of Swadhin Patnaik used to run these math Olympiad programs and that's
where my interest in physics really began.
He was a mentor to me.
I was interested in pursuing science a- and physics and he
gave me the opportunities to to really learn about science.
So when I was in college, he launched a new program called the Rural Math
Talent Search Program- … where he was identifying very mathematically
gifted students from rural India and trying to support them by giving
them training through summer camps.
And he asked me to come back and teach at these summer camps, so I went back during
summer vacations to, to teach at this Rural Mathematics Talent Search Program.
And that was really a pivot point for me because when I was teaching
these students, I would see students who would come from families that
were making less than $50 a month.
But these were students in eighth grade doing, college level
math extraordinarily talented.
And it just impressed upon me the fact that opportunity is truly… talent
is widely distributed, but opportunity is not, and that if we gave this
opportunity to folks we would find exceptional Marie Curies and Einsteins
all around the world, not just in Silicon Valley or in Cambridge or in Oxford.
And that support them, that could be a net benefit for not just the communities that
they came from, but also for the world.
The-- think of the kind of innovations that we miss out on because we don't
support these amazingly gifted students.
And so that was my kind of first experience that drove me towards
working in identifying or developing new pathways for scientific talent.
The second was when I got into graduate school at Caltech, I asked
if I could take a year off and go work in education in India and Caltech
was kind enough to let me do that.
And when I went back to India, I founded a nonprofit that was placing science
undergraduates as part-time science teachers in local low-income classrooms.
So local low-income classrooms would typically not have teachers
who were trained in science, and so we were providing assistant
teachers to teach science and math.
And I would visit these classrooms and I was just stunned at how some of the
students would completely change their attitudes towards science and math
because they had a mentor a teacher who was making the content interesting,
making the the ideas interesting to people, giving them an avenue and an
imagination where they could think of themselves as scientists in the future.
And I just saw what a profound impact teachers and mentors really play.
And that was the other kind of motivation behind founding Equitech Futures.
How can we make access to learning not just via technology, but also
via people more broadly accessible to the world and particularly in a world
where the global majority does not live in, the UK or the US where the
leading research universities are.
So that was something that really drove me when I was founding Equitech Futures.
Very impressive.
Thank you for sharing.
Now, looking back, what was the first irreversible step that made Equitech
real rather than just an idea?
Yeah.
So I think it was the pandemic really.
I had moved to Chicago after my PhD.
I was at the University of Chicago, but I still have a position where
I was setting up a research center on, on technology and public policy.
And I saw the gap between the kind of research that was happening in
academic institutions and the gap between how that research and ideas
failed to percolate to society.
And we saw that during the pandemic, during the early stages of the
pandemic, when you had public health officials, talking about evidence,
talking about scientific evidence, which was relevant for the pandemic
and society wasn't quite responding.
Or governments really struggled to- to, think about and communicate the scientific
approaches to tackling the pandemic.
And I thought that was real failure that we were going through where we
have all these scientific advances, we're writing all these papers, making
all these discoveries, but there clearly is a gap between scientific
advances and the way society looks at science or adopts science.
And so there was a missing layer, I think, of practitioners who are educated
in science, know about science- … and then are actually working in problems
in society as opposed to, just working in an academic setting where you are
effectively preaching to the choir because you're talking to your peers
as opposed to talking to society.
And so the kind of irreversible part, I think, was when we were
thinking about What should we do here?
We said maybe we just start a summer program for individuals undergraduates
or postgraduates who want to work in this space." We knew that there were
people who want to work in this space, but they did not quite have an avenue
to go learn about the kind of skills to, to translate science to society.
So when we launched the summer school, initially we thought maybe
we'll get 10 or 20 applicants.
But we were flooded with applications.
And this was also the early stages of the adoption of remote work, of
Zoom and we were just fascinated to get applicants from constituencies
which, where you absolutely see no representation in traditional academia.
We were getting applicants from Sudan, where there was a war going on.
We were getting applicants from rural Africa, where people were hopping on our
institute using borrowed mobile phones.
And that really struck a chord, that we realized there was something here.
There's a hunger and a demand for opportunities like the institute that
we were hosting, where students could come, learn about these tools, and
then truly that ended up being the kind of pivot point for them to take
their technical skills or their social practitioner skills, learn the kind of
tools that we were providing them with, and then go work with their communities
to to bring about the action that that they wanted to see in the world.
And that really it is the students who always inspire me.
It's it's the scholars that I work with always inspire me.
They are the ones who get me up in the morning and excited to work.
And and that was really the point where I realized, yeah, this
is the work that we have to do.
We have to create more avenues.
We have to create more pathways for young, talented individuals around the world,
not just from the sciences, by the way, from all across, from other disciplines.
Because as in many parts of the world, I think people
specialize a little too early.
And I always try to think about science not as a discipline but as a way of
life, as a way of thinking And that way of life and way of thinking translates
to so many other things that we do in society, whether that's in public
health, whether that is in cybersecurity.
So we really wanted to have this kind of wide disciplinary
global network of people.
And and once we saw that there was a demand, we just decided to keep
going and hosting new institutes and and growing our network.
Excellent.
So all these motivations and opportunities, that's all great,
and in particular, you are presenting it in a very nice way.
So thinking about the past did building Equitech require sacrifices
or difficult decisions or were there any alternative path you could
have pursued but you chose not to?
Yes.
I should mention that when we were-- when I was thinking about Equitech
Futures, it was a s- the germ of an idea for about two or three years.
Around twenty nineteen or twenty eighteen or so.
The parallel kind of tech world was very much focused on edtech,
where scale was the bet, right?
So every organization and every company wa-wanted to have a million
students and, wanted to reach X amount of revenue within one year.
And there was real FOMO, I think.
We would-- we thought of really am I really missing out on on building
solutions which are scaling very rapidly and getting, lots of attention from
either from funders or from people.
And we took the difficult decision of growing slowly and not to scale rapidly
and to be intentional about how we grow.
And I think that was a difficult decision back then because everyone was puzzled
with, why would you launch a program where you just select twenty-five students
or, have smaller cohorts of people?
But we intentionally wanted to do that because we wanted to figure out how
to be able to, craft our curriculum, how to be able to craft the student
experience deeply before we scaled.
And so making that choice of doing things that, Paul Graham, the
investor, the UK-based investor, has a saying, "Do things that don't
scale." And I think we-- And I would still argue that we are still doing
things that don't scale at this point.
But I think it's important to do that because for a lot of innovators and
entrepreneurs at the early stages, the pressure is to scale too fast.
And I think that leads to mistakes later on or that ma- leads to compromises made
later on that can hinder the mission.
Yeah, exactly.
Speaking of, this scaling up and growth, which are very essential for any business
in particular at the beginning, and actually most they fail at this stage.
So I would like to talk a little bit more about building and scaling And
in that what structures or principles did you put in place that later proved
essential for Equitech Futures' growth?
Yeah and Hossein, I think as a scientist you will appreciate this,
where we really thought about each of our institutes as a new experiment.
Where you want to take this experimental approach towards building a company,
where you have a hypothesis, you go, run the experiment, you run the
institute or run the program, get some data on what worked and what
did not work, and then you iterate.
And I think taking that experimental approach towards building the organization
has really benefited us a lot because, A, it helped us not to get stuck on
solutions that were not working, and B, it helped us identify opportunities
early on and pivot towards opportunities early on, when if we had just stuck
to one way of doing things, we would not have found those opportunities.
And so I I really think that having that experimental kind of attitude towards
entrepreneurship is something that being a scientist taught me and that has been very
beneficial as we have launched Equitech.
And when trying to scale in a normal way, did you scale Equitech
wi- without diluting its mission of accessibility and inclusion?
Yes.
I think that was and I should frame this as saying because we are philanthropically
funded- … the reason why we were able to attract philanthropic funding was
because philanthropy, the philanthropists who support us were aligned with our
mission, and they wanted us to really double down on our mission and try
to make it as accessible as possible as widely available as possible.
And even today we have programs where, which have some kind of a tuition
component to it, but we try to make it as accessible as possible for individuals.
For example, for just this year we launched a new platform called
futureshub.com where students can apply for challenges, read AI textbooks our
curriculum that is now on the platform.
And we have tried to make the platform as widely accessible.
So a lot of the resources that are free a lot of the institutes that we
host there are fully tuition funded.
And so we've really tried to make sure that our mission remains aligned.
And one of the things that a big part of my job is trying to work with funders
from around the world who are aligned with what we are trying to do to make
sure that we are continuing to able to grow this mission without diluting it.
And so we've been lucky.
I consider myself extremely lucky that we have philanthropic partners
who believe in our mission.
But yes, that is a trade-off, right?
I think a lot of young entrepreneurs try to think of whether you want to,
focus on commercial capital or patient capital and or philanthropic capital.
And we intentionally looked at philanthropic capital.
And that's-- And my advice when I'm talking to entrepreneurs is being
very intentional about what kinds of capital they take in because that can
determine what your kind of mission or your kind of core priorities are.
Sure.
And, during those periods of translating an idea to impact and also trying to
scale without diverging from your goals and the goals of the your company, what
mistakes or less successful initiatives taught you the most valuable lesson?
Yeah, this is a great question.
I think the kind of lessons that we learned was that, in instances where we
did launch programs where we thought can we, without taking philanthropic capital,
can we maybe have a revenue-based program?
And we did launch a revenue-based program and we have launched revenue-based
programs in recent years too.
But we distinctly see that a lot of our revenue-based programs particularly, the
way in which it is priced, particularly for American and European customers
or users, they tend to overlook the kind of talented individuals that
we are interested in supporting.
And so really I think the kind of constant struggle that we have internally is how
do we balance the economics of running an institution versus making it accessible?
And there have been mistakes that we've made in terms of, offering a
program that was just clearly not going to be accessible to students in the
African continent or in South Asia.
And then we've had to course correct and- … figure out, okay, how do we make
sure that these programs are accessible, whether we do that via philanthropic
funding, or we do that via coming up with more flexible tuition structures.
I think those are the lessons that we are still learning, I would say.
I don't think that we have full answers yet.
But those are places which have definitely helped us make relevant pivots.
speaking of failure, actually this brings me nicely to my next few
questions, which are about why talented people fail and barriers to success.
And in that regard, when we talk about inequalities in science and technology,
people often focus on funding.
So in your experience, what are the biggest barriers talented
individuals actually face?
Is it money, mentorship, network, confidence, geography, credentials,
or perhaps combination of everything?
Oh, I think it's a combination of everything.
What you just described I think is a classic sort of wicked problem, right?
There are so many different reasons that drive why talented individuals
cannot find the opportunities and one obviously is money and funding.
I was able to pursue science because in undergraduate the government of
India launched a scholarship program for emerging young scientists.
There was a test and, I had to do work on a project, and based on my, interview
with professional scientists, I got a scholarship from the government.
And that really gave me a confidence in pursuing science, but also gave confidence
to my parents and to people around me to say, "Yeah, this is something that
is worth pursuing." So I think funding matters a lot when pursuing science.
Definitely pursuing science at Oxford, I went to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship.
I would never have been able to go to Oxford had I not been fully funded.
Same with a PhD program.
And so I, I cannot emphasize the role of philanthropy and government
funding enough around science.
The reason why science has re- really flourished in Europe and
in and in North America has been because of government investments in
science and because of philanthropy.
And I think one of the things that I'm really alarmed about today
is how government funding both in North America and across the pond
in Europe is going down in science.
This is definitely true in the UK where you are.
As well as how philanthropy is shrinking around science as well.
I think this is something that, that really as a society we need to
confront if we want to make sure that scientific progress is equitable.
But beyond funding, I think, even in environments where funding exists the
two things that I have seen being a big blocker tends to be credentials.
And you would know this Hashim.
We-- You and I have talked about how the fact that you go to a particular
type of school if you're a, a- an Oxford undergraduate and you're applying to a
PhD p- position at Cambridge people are likely to see your application much more
favorably than if you're applying from a university in in the African continent or
in India, say, which is not as well known.
Which is not to say that there are not talented students in these places.
It's just that I think there is a bias of a lot of departments and research
institutions to, to select from, quote unquote, "elite institutions." And there's
actually a lot of evidence now, Daniel Larrimore a professor at U- University
of Colorado did this fantastic paper where he looked at who gets hired at
top PhD programs science PhD programs in the US, and you constantly see that,
it's the universities feeding each other's graduate programs, and it's the
same graduate students who are going to become faculty and so on and so forth.
So that I think is is a place where credentials like really for us to start
thinking about what credentials mean is I think, the… This is especially at a
time when AI is disrupting the role of credentials it's worth asking how how
we can change the credentialing system to make sure that more people are able
to enter s- the scientific enterprise.
The third and important thing I would say is is mentorship and networks of people.
I got into science because of access to some incredible mentors
and because of my parents.
Both my parents were professors.
They were very supportive of my scientific interests.
In fact, again, going back to Daniel Larrimore's work, one of the things he
saw was that if you look at top the top university or the top faculty at top
universities in in North America the faculty are 50 times more likely to have
had a parent who also worked in sciences.
And so which means that the kind of the training and the environment that you
grow up in, whether it is through parents, whether it is through mentors, whether
it is through teachers, really has a profound influence in in entering science.
And, if you talk to any scientist I'm sure you and I can talk about the
profound influence that, that some of the mentors in our lives had on us.
And so really having access to that mentorship and to that support I think
can be a life-changing experience, and that's something that we at
Equitech Futures really believe in.
We don't think that scientific learning is just about, having access to, to
content or having access to to high curr- quality curricula or credentials.
It is really about having access to amazing mentors who
can support how students evolve in their scientific careers.
Yeah.
Excellent.
Abhilash, y- firstly, you actually very nicely answered my next question that
was whether we have become too reliant on prestigious credentials and institutional
reputation when identifying talent, because you answered that very nicely.
So perhaps, a slightly different question how we can change the system?
So let me contextualize it just in terms of sheer numbers, right?
If you think about the number of young people in the age of 15 to 25 today,
there are about 1.2 billion people.
If you think about even 1% of those 1.2 billion people,
that's about 12 million people.
If you think about how many students are in the top 100 or 200 universities
in one of, one of these rankings, you'll get maybe in the ballpark
of two million people, right?
A- and just relying on elite institutions as the only kind of drivers of
scientific discovery, I think is the wrong approach, because it's not
like these elite institutions are increasing their intake significantly.
I was talking to the president of, or the former president of a major research
university, and I asked him, "You have a massive multi-billion dollar endowment.
Why don't you double the number of undergraduate students or graduate
students that you take up?" And they basically said the faculty would not
allow us to grow the number of people."
So there's these heavy, currents of conservatism, small C conservatism
amongst universities not to grow because people feel like, oh, if
we grow too much, then it'll dilute our brand or value or what have you.
So I think we, we should really therefore, and when we are thinking
about access, when we are thinking about about scientific talent, we should
be thinking about how we can support scientific talent in institutions
that are not in these, top 200 and thinking about alternative mechanisms
through which we can support them.
One way of supporting them is through things like fellowships.
I think especially as the number of PhD positions is going down
significantly, at least here in North America because of funding cuts.
There's a real kind of a reckoning right now of thinking about what are
alternative pathways to having, to training people in sciences without
having, without having people to go through a five or six-year PhD.
What does that training look like?
Can we do that training without, the traditional institutional
structures that have been built over the past 100, 120 years?
And so I think we, this is a real kind of time for creative thinking amongst
academics and and academic leaders to, to think about how we can re-
reimagine scientific talent and training in in different parts of the world.
And so m- my kind of short answer is that, I think we really need to
move away from the credentialing and elite credentialing signals.
And part of that, I think is is the kind of work that you are doing, Hashem,
of as a professor at the University of Oxford for you to send a signal out
to the world saying, and to your own colleagues saying, "This is the kind
of work that we should be doing, that this is our responsibility as citizens,
as benefactors of, the largesse of the public and taxpayer money that we
should be doing this for the world."
But also for the fact that, we are going to be able to identify some
exceptional scientific talent that's going to make the next big discovery.
Think about all the discoveries that we are leaving out on the
table because we've narrowed our lens of who we think is, talented
versus who we think is not talented.
And I think the more we are able to increase that aperture of thinking
about where talent lives and how we can su- support them I think,
science will be better for that.
Society will be better for that.
Absolutely.
Based on your experience with participants from many countries and backgrounds What
qualities consistently predict success that traditional systems often overlook?
I think the biggest quality that I find in the scientific
enterprise and in entrepreneurship is persistence and resilience.
Science is about failure, right?
Science is about failing multiple times.
You cannot, make a discovery or a novel invention first time around.
You have to be resilient to to discovery.
And I find that the most interesting students that I meet and who go
through our programs are the ones who are extraordinarily resilient.
I have a story to share.
One of our scholars Mohammed, who was in Sudan when the war broke, and he joined
our program when the war was erupting.
And, he attended the program while he and his family were basically
moving from Sudan to, to Rwanda, and then finally to the UAE.
And he would just show up every day and was extraordinarily diligent
in working through the program.
A-and after the, program, we hired him as a venture fellow
and a research fellow with us.
And he won the Chevening Scholarship and went and did a master's at
the University of Birmingham.
And I think that's a story of someone who shows extraordinary resilience.
And I think people with extraordinary resilience are the ones who will
really thrive in the future.
I think there is a misconception that science is for,
quote-unquote, smart people.
I find that the most effective scientists tend to be the ones who
are not merely smart in the kind of problem-solving sense of the term,
but are extremely resilient in-- to failure, don't give up very quickly.
And these are the kind of things that I think oftentimes, we don't
measure when we are trying to recruit for high-quality scientific talent.
We look at things like SAT scores or the kind of scores that they have in a test.
That's not really measuring resilience.
And I think resilience matters a lot for being a good scientist.
I want to also cover entrepreneurship innovation, and ask you to share
your experience about that.
And in that regard, many young scientists are curious about en-entrepreneurship,
but have little idea where to start.
Where they have to start and a little bit of advice about that.
Yeah.
I think the kind of landscape has changed dramatically, I
would say, in the last 10 years.
When I was graduating from my PhD people were moving to industry
and doing data science stuff.
Some people were starting, new companies.
I think it has become much more commonplace now for scientists to
start companies for two reasons.
I think the kind of AI boom has really allowed for people with technical training
to go out there and apply a lot of these tools to new applications, right?
Whether that's in healthcare, cybersecurity, education, what have you.
The second is I think university systems unfortunately it's still the kind of elite
university systems that have built these ecosystem of innovation competitions or
accelerators which are embedded inside the university that help scientists translate
the stories to… discoveries to industry.
And so I think for a lot of scientists, my advice in general
is, A, you have an unfair advantage.
Being an entrepreneur, having an unfair advantage helps, and the unfair advantage
you have is that you have a deep expertise in some topic that probably
10 other people understand in the world.
And if that expertise can translate to something that is applicable to
the larger world to society, whether that is through medicine, whether
that is through a scientific tool or a technical tool I think you, you have
a real kind of edge in doing that.
So identifying the problem, I think is the first kind of step.
So when a lot of people particularly those who are in the sciences come and
ask me for advice on entrepreneurship, my first question is: Is there a problem
that really drives you, that, that really that you're really passionate about?
And so I think identifying the problem is key and is step one.
The second is to actually realize that as scientists, we are trained in a
particular mode of thinking that is very beneficial to an entrepreneur, and
that is the kind of scientific style of thinking where you're thinking of a
product or a program as a hypothesis.
And you have a hypothesis, you go run an experiment.
But… and by experiment I mean you go have a bunch of users use your tool,
get some feedback, see what they're saying, and then you fine-tune your
experiment or you fine-tune your product, and then you iterate on it.
And this iterative style of this kind of scientific style of of thinking is
really beneficial in, in entrepreneurship.
In fact the reason I think scientists have an edge over those who might not
think scientifically is that I think a lot of times entrepreneurs it's very easy
for entrepreneurs to get too married to the solution as opposed to the problem.
But as a scientist, we are trained to not get too married to the solution.
We are trained to get really invested in the problem.
The solutions can come in different shapes and forms.
And I think that, that attitude can be very valuable for an
early-stage entrepreneur.
Yeah.
Because I myself, I'm a scientist, and actually I've been thinking
about perhaps setting up a company or bringing an idea to action.
There are two issues here.
One is the use of AI.
So on the one hand, AI is very helpful.
It can do different jobs for you.
You don't perhaps need to hire some people at the beginning, and with,
AI agent, you can do quite a lot.
But at the same time, for exactly the same reason, AI has
made the market very crowded.
So this is one issue.
And the other issue that I would like to again hear your advice on that is that
scientists mostly are very perfectionist, and they don't like to take risk.
They don't know, when is a perfect time.
Perhaps an imperfect is a perfect for, you know- Yeah … putting up a business.
But when to start I really I struggle to, find that point.
So what your advice is for that?
I'm so glad you brought this up because I think this is one of
those kind of personality traits that we as scientists have, right?
We… Before we, i'm sure you've done this, where before you hit publish on
a paper you go through it for a week.
Yeah.
You try to make sure that every single thing is accurate.
And I think, we are rewarded for that, right?
The community rewards you for rigor.
Whereas in entrepreneurship, what matters is whether the thing that you're building
matters to your users and your customers.
And so there you want to think about your, launching a startup as launching
a lab, as opposed to launching a startup as publishing a paper.
Because what you're doing while you're building the product is actually doing the
kind of hidden things that you do in a lab where you are making a lot of mistakes.
You are, building things that might look messy or wrong.
The problem of course is that, you're doing… When you're a
scientist, you're making these mistakes in the privacy of your lab.
When you're doing a startup or a product, you're building that in public.
And one of the things that we focus a lot with our entrepreneurs in, at Equitech
Futures, is to get them to become a com- become comfortable in building in public.
Building in public means that it's gonna be messy.
You are going to make mistakes.
Things are going to break.
But that's just part of the process, and that you have to be be responsive
to that part of the process and not wait till till you have the
perfect product that you can ship.
That's easier said than done.
I suffer from the perfectionism thing too, where I feel embarrassed that,
oh my gosh if I'm gonna put something out there which is not perfectly-
… polished people are gonna judge me.
People are gonna think I'm not rigorous.
And I think that's something that, that, that kind of just comes with practice.
And one of the things that I've learned is that actually people
are quite sympathetic to seeing.
And a- as long as you are open with people saying, "Hey, we are building
things," "Help us figure out, what is working, what is not working,"
people are quite sympathetic to the act of building in public.
And so sometimes it is just our own the voice in our own
head that is holding us back.
And the second was about AI.
So as I said in my intro, generally speaking, AI can be, an equalizer and
democratize technology, networking, mentorship, but at the same time it
can be actually a barrier and it can widen the gap widen the inequalities.
So what do you say about that?
I think yes and yes, right?
In the sense that I'm-- I think it has been remarkable to see how the access
to AI tools has made building easier for so many students and en- entrepreneurs.
I think the real kind of gap that we are seeing right now
is, A the fact that, the…
using these AI tools still requires taste and skill that is cultivated
over a long period of time, right?
So I'm sure when you're using an AI tool, you are bringing to it this
wealth of experience that you've had as a scientist as a mentor, and the kind
of questions that you are asking, the kind of issues that you are pursuing
is something that is quite different from, say a student or an individual who
might not have had access to the kind of training and networks that you've been in.
And so I think that's the thing that I really worry about.
Yes, it is going to hyper-charge productivity.
It is already hyper-charging productivity in for a lot of people with access to
a lot of kind of, skills in the past.
I think what we are now barreling towards a future where I worry that people who've
not had that opportunity to build that taste in the kind of problems, build
the kind of skills on how to use these tools effectively, how not to become
too over-reliant on these tools, how to understand these tools as not as as
black boxes or as- magical instruments, but as technological tools which are
very capable but have limitations.
W- when people don't understand those things, I think they then use AI to,
to generate either, glitchy products that people will not use or to generate
either, what people call AI slop, which is something that people just not,
going to find joy or interest in using.
And so I think that's something that I really worry about.
Like, how do we build the infrastructure to building or how do we build an
infrastructure to cultivating good taste in problems, deeper understanding
in problems, making sure that people don't become too cognitively dependent
on these tools as opposed to using these tools for irresponsible and
effective ways to solve harder problems.
Now switching to mentorship, leadership, and positive culture.
How can I become a truly effective mentor, i.e., what are the
characteristics of a good mentor?
Someone inspiring, someone with long-lasting impact on young people.
So to, to answer this question I think if I have to think back to my, to the
mentors who have influenced me the most the mentors who have really shaped me have
been the ones who came to me and believed in me before I saw anything in myself.
So oftentimes mentors are the ones who are going to their mentees at moments of
doubt, at moments where mentees feel like, "Oh, I'm not good enough to apply for this
fellowship," or, "I'm not good enough to apply for this particular program," a-and
say, "No, actually you can." You, you want that push, and the mentor can really
p-provide that push to a mentee to, to take bigger risks, to try bigger things.
A-and that I think ends up being a really profound sort of impact.
That definitely was a profound impact that I had in my life, where mentors
at almost every single career stage that I've had have spoken to me and
said you should be aiming bigger."
And and their confidence in me gave me the courage to try things out.
And so when I am mentoring students I'm always asking, is
this person selling themselves short by not believing themselves?
And can I convince them that, "Hey even if you fail, just try this"?
Because oftentimes what happens is that when they actually try they
go and are exceedingly successful.
And and so yeah, I, I think the best parts of mentorship is to
help people see in themselves what they don't see for themselves.
If you could redesign one aspect of how universities and research institutions
support the students and early career researchers, what would it be?
I think that it is a rewarding the kind of work that you are doing,
Hashem, where you're trying to supporting… you're trying to support
innovators from around the world.
You are doing this I'm sure when you're doing this pre-tenure, your
tenure packet wasn't considering this as as part of your promotion.
It's something that you are doing as a service to the community and and I think
we I think universities need to recognize this as not just, unpaid service to
the community, but this is the things that they should be rewarding, whether
that is something that they reward by making sure this is included or given
the same prestige as as research papers.
I think that, that is one direction that they should really look at.
Increasingly, I think the fact that research is starting to become relatively
democratized using a lot of AI tools.
I think the real value for universities is going to be the kind of mentoring
opportunities that they provide.
So universities, if they want to, continue to to justify their existence,
they need to reward faculty to be better teachers, to be better mentors and
not just be individuals who can write papers or publish very fast and, and
get all the citations that they can.
Because I think that, that bar that metric has really been
disrupted because of AI right now.
And like universities really need to reimagine what kind of incentive
structures we provide because then that's also going to, invite people who
have that dedication to come into that academy and make the academic enterprise
richer more diverse and more impactful.
And so I think, yeah, universities should really look beyond narrow citation metrics
when they are rewarding all kinds of things, whether they're rewarding, faculty
tenure or who they are hiring and who they are giving awards to and so forth.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
I usually don't talk about my own work, but because you just brought
it up and it's what you said perhaps for some listeners they might not
know what you are referring to.
Like yourself, I grow up … I was born and grow up in a very rural
and poor area in Iran, and I have had a very difficult career path.
And I have seen quite a lot of inequalities, disparities in education
and talented people not becoming successful, as I said, not because
they weren't talented, but because they had no access to education or
opportunities as we have here in European.
And for that reason, I have set up all these things.
There are webinars.
I ask very renowned scientists around the world, and these are freely
accessable to scientists and students in particular from around the world.
We have a mentoring and coaching scheme that we offer free of charge,
a CV or cover letter evaluation or mock interviews, and again, just to
help them to reach what they deserve.
So thank you for that.
Now for the last section, Avilash I would like to just talk a little bit
about, looking ahead to the future.
Which achievements makes you most proud because it convince you that
real impact was being created?
Yeah.
If you let me again talk about a story that, that connected us actually.
One of our Equitech scholars, Kexin Xu was an undergraduate at
Imperial College when she joined us.
And Kexin did not have a background in programming and coding
when she joined the program.
And when she went through our program, she was able to learn about AI.
She was a biologist by training, and she was able to learn a bunch of these
tools and could see the application of these these tools in biology.
And then after she finished the program with us, we hired her as an
Equitech research fellow, where she worked on application of AI tools to
breast cancer research from a massive dataset called the Nightingale dataset.
And I could see the process of someone going from saying, "Oh, maybe I'm
not a AI scientist, maybe I'm not a machine learning person," into
really embracing themselves as an AI scientist and a machine learning person.
And then going and working with you now as a PhD student in really
embracing their identity as an interdisciplinary scientist.
And I think seeing those kinds of successes, and there are many, we
cover a lot of these stories on our on our newsroom on Equitech
Futures, and I encourage people to go look up these examples.
And the reason we also showcase these stories is because I think it's important
for people to see that, that the kind of career trajectories or the skills
that they think are inevitable in them just because they chose biology,
that they cannot do AI in biology, or just because they chose physics,
they cannot study something else.
That, that's just a false narrative, right?
The idea that you can grow and that you can be interdisciplinary
and that you can take risks.
And I think the thing that I'm proudest of most in, in Equitech Futures is
seeing the number of students who go through our programs and are able to
make that pivot, and it gives them that confidence to go try new things
to try, building careers where…
which are slightly riskier, which are in the fringes in some ways.
But that's how the frontier gets pushed, right?
That's how new discoveries come.
New discoveries always come from the boundaries between fields.
And so that really convinced me when I saw lots of students from our programs
discover that that interdisciplinary lens of thinking, and then moving
forward and taking the risks to, to applying those things in their lives.
Thank you.
I must say Keshan is really a pleasure to work with.
She's very talented and yeah I'm sure about her great work in the future.
So she's a rising star for sure, yeah.
What gives you optimism about next generation?
I just think that they're fearless in a way that I I don't think that
that o- our generation, my generation particularly I graduated college in 2008.
I think there was there was the kind of, looking at a linear pathway, right?
As an academic, the linear pathway that, that I was looking at was
you finish your PhD, you get a, faculty position, so on and so forth.
I think this new generation is so much more willing to take risks
and trying to experiment with different career trajectories.
They really care about not just, having a career path, but figuring out how their
careers have an impact in the world.
And they're truly driven by genuine, sincere desire to make the lives of
their peers, their communities better, and that really gives me hope, right?
If you just look at the news all the time, you might get the impression
that the future is very bleak.
Everyone is very depressed and and anxious about the future.
But I think when you talk to a lot of young people, yes, the anxiety exists,
but there also is a kind of unbending optimism a kind of desire to say the world
doesn't have to be a particular way and that we can shape it in the, in, in the
shape of what we want to see in the world.
And a lot of young people want to do that.
They want to, pick themselves up by the bootstraps and get to work.
And that's the thing that really inspires me.
And the more opportunities we provide, the more pathways we provide for these
young people to then go and and have that impact in the world I think we
as a society, and we as a scientific community will be will be richer for that.
Where do you see or where do you like to see future of Equitech Futures or
more broadly speaking, the movement for equitable access to science and
technology that you started in next few years, perhaps next five years?
For Equitech Futures, we would really like to build more tools and and
mechanisms through which more people can participate in the process.
As I-- the statistics are really alarming, right?
There are going to be about one point five billion young people
in the next five to ten years.
The number of projected jobs are around four hundred million people.
So there's a massive gap in in the workforce that needs to be solved.
And that's something that, that we… I really want to figure out how to solve.
And one way to solve that is not just access to skills, but access to networks
and capital for entrepreneurs in different parts of the world to start
companies where they can hire other people and activate these economies.
Right?
So I think what we have seen in the past fifteen years is a concentration
of technology innovation in very small a handful of cities in the
world, whether that is, Silicon Valley, New York, London, Bangalore.
And, in the next five to ten years, my hope would be that this geography of
concentration of of innovation really diversifies and that, you don't need
to be a Silicon-- in Silicon Valley to found the next great AI company.
You don't need to be in London to launch the next big biotech company.
And and, the vast majority of the one point five, one point two to
one point five b-b-billion young people are going to be in the
African continent and in South Asia.
Not all of them are going to be able to attend Oxfords and Cambridges
and Stanfords of the world.
So we would really like to figure out how can we as an institution at Equitech
Futures help these emerging innovators from around the world to really get
their re-realize their potential.
And that's not just through skills or mentorship.
That is through, supporting these networks giving them access to
opportunities that are-- that they might not be aware of and which is why
I'll put a pl-plug for Futures Hub.
Go check out futureshub.com, which is a new platform we are launching
to make these networks and learning opportunities more accessible
to, to people around the world.
And finally, if you had one message for a talented student or
early career researcher who feels overlooked, what would it be?
I would say do not undersell yourself.
think that you are not enough.
You are enough.
You have the potential to, to try and do incredible things.
Go find, search for that opportunity.
Go find that mentor.
Reach out to people.
You'd be surprised at how much people want to help.
When you go reach out to people for help and you're able to take that
help I'm sure new doors will open up and new opportunities will open up.
And it's that process that really, definitely brought me as to
where I am, and I'm sure, Hashem,
it's, it was reaching out to mentors and other people who made that happen.
So reach out.
I think reaching out you'd be surprised how many people would be willing to help
and help you achieve your ambitions.
So don't under, undersell yourself, and ask for help,
are the two things I would say.
Thank you.
Great message.
Abhilash, is there any other message or anything that I haven't
covered in my questions and you would like to finish up with?
No.
I just want to thank you again for inviting me to
this wonderful conversation.
I really enjoyed this conversation, and I want to thank you for
what you are doing, Hashem.
And just emphasize to your listeners that this, and both … And I'm sure there
are some academic listeners, faculty at universities who are listening to you.
And I hope they will equally go out and be mentors to students in their
networks and communities because this is the way in which we give back.
A lot has been given to us.
We we give back using this.
And and this is not just from the generosity of our hearts, right?
It is one of the most meaningful things I do.
I'm extremely proud of what I do.
But I also recognize that this is the way in which scientific progress is
going to happen in the next 10, 20 years.
So it's really an exciting time to be a scientist.
And the way to, to do that is by enabling more scientists to enter the field.
So thank you.
Thank you so much, Abhilash.
It was great having you on board.
I really enjoyed talking to you, and hats off to the great work that you guys do.
And I hope my listeners also enjoyed as much as I did.
And I hope to see them again in next episode.