Interview with Dr. Michael Shiloh - Part 4: The Reality of Being a Scientist

I wanted to end the interview with a question that was less about technology and more about the experience of doing science. After spending time in a research lab, I've learned that experiments don't always work the way you expect them to, and that research can take a lot of patience.

What advice would you give students interested in this field?

Michael Shiloh: My advice to students interested in infectious disease, or really any field, is to pursue something that genuinely interests and motivates you. You need to develop the skills to be good at what you do, of course, but it's also important to find work that you find meaningful and that sustains your interest over time. That's particularly important in science because the work can be difficult and progress can be slow. A long time may pass between developing a hypothesis and completing the experiments needed to test it, and even then, the result may not be what you expected. You have to be comfortable with that delayed gratification and with the possibility of being wrong. So I would encourage students to pursue questions that they themselves find interesting and important. Don't choose a field simply because other people tell you it's important. Find work that you think matters and that you enjoy doing, because that interest will sustain you when the science becomes difficult.

Is there anything you wish more people understood about science or infectious disease research?

Michael Shiloh: I wish more people understood that science takes time. When a new problem arises, we can't expect the solution to appear overnight. The speed with which vaccines and therapeutics were developed during COVID-19 was remarkable, but those advances were built on decades of fundamental research that had already been done. When the pandemic arrived, scientists were able to draw upon that enormous foundation of knowledge. At the same time, many infectious diseases have been with us for centuries and remain unsolved problems. Tuberculosis, malaria, HIV, diarrheal diseases, and pneumonia still cause enormous amounts of disease around the world. Scientists are working hard on these problems, but meaningful solutions have to be discovered, validated, and tested. That process takes time.