Welcome to Getting Curious

Getting Curious with Jonathan Vanes.

This episode I want to talk about a very serious topic and that is strokes.

What is a stroke and what do we do about them? I want to

welcome Lena Nees, she's one of my favorite clients.

Lena, tell me about what you do. Hi Jonathan, so I work as a postdoc, so a post-doc fellow at UCLA and I recently

started managing a research team.

So what's post-doc mean? So post doc is typically the first job you get after you

graduate from a PhD. So you're a full-on doctor. Uh-huh. Which if anyone's listening to getting curious, they know that I'm a big old fan of PhDs.

So much.

So now you, this is your first job post that and what is it that you're studying?

So my background is basically neuroscience and vascular biology.

So I have studied how vessels work, how they function in every organ and specifically in the brain.

And over time I started specializing in brain tissue regeneration and how to promote vessel formation after strokes and such diseases to promote wind healing.

But when I joined a lab here at UCLA, I actually was offered a job at an engineering

department, which was quite surprising because I do not have any engineering background.

Right.

So it was a very big challenge for me and so I am very glad I accepted because it allowed me to basically merge the two fields of tissue engineering

on one side and neuroscience on the other one.

I love that.

So when you were in France, you were basically only saying brain stuff.

Yeah. And then you come here and you're like and you go to UCLA and they're like, we're going to give you a job in engineering.

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