Marion Pepper, Ph.D.: 'Fellowship programs will be important for continuing to bring postdocs to our labs and to give them an advantage compared to graduate students who go straight into industry.'
“Postdocs are the engines of innovation.”
That comment reflects an uncompromising commitment of Marion Pepper, Ph.D., Chair of the UW Medicine Department of Immunology. She believes postdoctoral fellowships are integral to success, whether one remains in academia or pursues a career in industry.
“Postdocs come in well-trained in scientific techniques,” Pepper said. “They have critical thinking skills. They know how to write. They know how to communicate. They can pick up a project and really run with it from day one in a way many graduate students can’t.”
Pepper’s vision led to the Immunology Department’s Institute for Translational Immunology (ITI) in 2023, a postdoc training program that provides financial and career support for individuals in biomedicine. Two years later, with ITI as a model, she launched SeaBridge, the postdoc program associated with the Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology (SeattleHub), where she serves as a Scientific Co-Director. SeaBridge also includes LaunchPad, a translational research center to train the next generation of scientists, while advancing the potential of SeattleHub’s unique genome engineering platform.
“We’re laying the groundwork for a future in which human biology is monitored and manipulated with genetically encoded control systems that, potentially, will enable new treatments for patients,” Pepper said
The groundwork for Pepper’s career was laid, in part, with her postdoctoral research at the University of Minnesota.
“I absolutely loved my postdoc fellowship,” she said. “It was the time of the most growth for me as a scientist. I had the freedom to pursue the research I wanted, while not having to worry about finding the funding, HR issues, and the bureaucracy associated with running a lab. I could just focus on my science.”
That opportunity to “just focus on the science” likely is her hope – and expectation – of SeaBridge’s first cohort of fellows, announced last January. The eight scientists incorporate SeattleHub’s cell and genome programming technologies into their individual research projects in laboratories at the UW and the Fred Hutch Cancer Center.
Each fellow receives two years of financial support, as well as funding for a structured career development curriculum, mentorship training, and networking opportunities. The fellowships are supported by a $10 million grant from the Washington Research Foundation, with additional financial support from Biohub and the Brotman Baty Institute.
Pepper is quick to note that “this exceptional opportunity for early career scientists” was not always available for postdocs.
“In 2021, it became apparent to many that postdocs were unhappy about multiple aspects of their training,” she said. “Graduate students were leaving academic science to go straight into industry. Industry was paying more, offering more job security, and more jobs were available. People felt doing a postdoctoral fellowship was not worth the time, nor living at lower wages.”
Pepper’s comments also reflect what was then a national trend and the subject of a workforce study by the National Institutes of Health: “NIH Advisory Committee to the Director Working Group on Re-Envisioning NIH-Supported Postdoctoral Training.” Pepper conducted her own study of the postdoc problem. Her findings were consistent with the NIH study.
“It was lab-by-lab,” she said. “Some mentors focused on postdoctoral training, while in other labs post-docs were left ‘to sink or swim.’ Not having opportunities to learn skills they needed to go onto the next step made it frustrating. In addition, post-docs felt very siloed. They did not feel as though they were part of any larger community and were not connected to other postdocs.”
Fortunately, she said, the value of one’s postdoctoral education is becoming increasingly understood – and supported – by the scientific community, for the post-docs’ scientific training, new innovations, new therapeutics, and for the workforce.
“Fellowship programs will be important for continuing to bring postdocs to our labs and to give them an advantage compared to graduate students who go straight into industry,” Pepper said. “This is period of growth, development, and transition to becoming an independent thinker can be important for their careers, no matter what type of scientific environment they want to work in.”
So, where will Seabridge be in five years?
“Hopefully, we will have 30 to 40 fellows,” she said. “The LaunchPad incubator will be up and running, and we will be working even more closely with Washington state companies. And the Fellowship and LaunchPad will be seamlessly integrated.”
(Anyone seeking to learn more about SeaBridge, including applying for the next cohort, should visit https://seabridge.uw.edu.)
