Sitting down with Dr. Sheila Patek for this interview, it was clear to me how much this scientist loves her work. She carved the time for this interview out of an incredibly busy schedule, running from meeting to meeting in order to fulfill all of her duties as a professor and researcher here at Duke University. Her scientific career began at Harvard University, where she completed her undergraduate education as a biology major. Being the only scientist in her family, she wanted to somehow combine the fields of physics, math, and biology, but she had no idea how to accomplish this. According to Dr. Patek, the initial years of her career involved a lot of knocking of doors, trying to find professors’ office hours, and a lot of rejection. It wasn’t until she took a class with Dr. Karel Liem, who taught a course on the biology of fishes. Dr. Liem played a major role in founding a field where you connect morphology and mechanics with behavior and evolution, a field that Dr. Patek quickly fell in love with.
After Harvard, Dr. Patek studied here at Duke University with Dr. Steve Nowicki, where she researched the mechanics of sound production in lobsters. Having been a serious clarinet player in college, Dr. Patek wanted to find a way to combine her love of music with her love of science and the ocean, which this research topic gave her. After graduate school, she went on to do her postdoc studies at the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at the University of California Berkeley. The institute consisted of approximately thirty postdocs from various scientific fields and visiting and local professors who were a part of the institute. This experience allowed Dr. Patek to create friendships and collaborations that have lasted throughout her career, and it made her unafraid to reach across the scientific fields. After her postdoc studies, she was hired as a professor at Berkeley. Dr. Patek is also very thankful to Dr. Beth Brainerd who became a sort of life mentor to her, rather than just a scientific mentor.
Despite being such a respected scientist, Dr. Patek says that she has had her fair share of embarrassing moments. For example, her first scientific talk was at a regional meeting that happened to be held at Harvard. Talk about pressure! Her friends were sitting in the front row at her talk, and as Dr. Patek went through her presentation she noticed that they were all laughing to each other about something. Naturally, this made Dr. Patek even more nervous than she already was. It turns out that her hair had gotten stuck and was sticking straight up for half of her talk! However, this talk helped her overcome her nerves and her presentations only improved from then on.
While she greatly enjoys teaching, Dr. Patek greatly prefers researching and having a few hours of uninterrupted time to simply think about science. In addition, she loves running a lab and getting to meet people from various perspectives and see their input on the question that they are researching. According to Dr. Patek, the most frustrating thing about her career is not having enough time since teaching is so time-consuming, as are all of her requirements to the university and other organizations. However, she also says that making a discovery is the most rewarding experience. She wishes that the field of biomechanics involved more evolutionary thinking because cross-species analysis often reveals flaws in the mechanical models that seem to be supported by one species.
