SPEAKER_01 0:00

You're listening to the Support Ed Learning Podcast, where we challenge the status quo of education and reimagine what learning should be. I'm Dr. Joe Sebastian, and in every episode we dive into critical thinking, Bloom's Taxonomy, educational innovation, and how AI is shaping the future of learning. Whether you're a teacher, parent, policymaker, or lifelong learner, you're in the right place to rethink, reshape, and revive education. Okay, welcome back to the Supported Learning Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Joe Sebastian. Have a special guest today. Dr. Sulmaz from the Mayo Clinic is joining us on the Supported Learning Podcast. Welcome, Doctor. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Good, thank you. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:43

I am doing well. I'm glad we could uh fit this in. I know Minnesota doesn't get much sunlight many days of the year, so you're enjoying that out there, right?

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Yes, we are. Yeah, definitely. In March, it's very rare to have this weather.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Yeah, absolutely. So you got July and winter out of Minnesota. But want to give you a proper introduction. You want you work for one of the most elite educational institutions on the planet, the Mayo Clinic. Um, we want to get into what you have learned about teaching, mentorship, and preparing other future students for the world of medicine and medical practice. And, you know, just I'm very thrilled to have you because you hold a PhD in biomedical sciences. You started your educational career guiding students through complex lab protocols at Durham University in England, spent years at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, managing educational programs, developing talent, and understanding what it takes to succeed at the highest level of STEM. And you now work at the Mayo Clinic platform team teaching the intersection of AI and healthcare innovation and what is how topical is that for us here today? Uh so yeah, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

So, how do you get to where you are today taking that journey? Because most families out there, when they hear medicine, they just think medical doctor. But you know, you're you're on the research side at the Mayo Clinic doing some very important work. Kind of take me through the journey of how you got there. What sparked your interest and how did you end up in Minnesota of all places?

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Yeah, yeah, thank you. I have to go back two years back around um right after finishing college. When I finished college, I always knew that I want to do a PhD. Um, however, I started uh doing the master degrees in England, and the reason that I started with master's in Newcastle at that time, if you wanted to ever teach um at university, there's always some universities, especially in Europe, they do need and they require you to have a master's and a PhD both to be able to be eligible for teaching. I'm not 100% sure about the US, but at that time, master was a must-have before you start your PhD. I started my master's, and um my master's degree was in industrial and commercial biotechnology. After I finished my master's, it was during the final dissertation of the master that we had to write a project. And I have to mention that doing a master's degree in England, it was not easy because a two-year course was really accomplished, uh very express way into a year. And then I remember that after Christmas holidays and after Easter, we had so many exams, one after each other, the written exam, and also so many assignments to stop meet. I do remember being at the library, looking out the window, sunset and sunrise, we were just like seeing and just still typing. Those are the very, very, very high, uh, highly stressed type of master's degrees in England. If anyone is considering a one-year master's, those are you have to be ready to face those types of pressure. After I finish my master's, I think the key, the very, very key component within my career, and I would definitely consider that as my educational journey, because I was a freshly undergrad, started my master's. I didn't have any experience. I didn't have any real actual work experience. I finished my master's and most of my classmates, they started maybe traveling or they started looking for jobs. It was they were not super successful. What I did, I reached out to my mentor that I did my project in her team. I told her I would like to start learning at least five new skills by the end of the summer. So that year, that summer, I planned to volunteer working in Newcastle University, and I invested three months of volunteer work in the lab, and I was a really master at the end of the summer. I learned at that time was proteomics, running 2B jails, Western blood, running PCRs, very, very independent and very masters on those technical aspects. Around the same time, there was a job advertisement that came from Newcastle University. I applied for that job, and the thing, the unique position that it really uniquely positioned me to get that job. It was a very normal technician job, but it was a very unique technique that I learned that 2D gel for the proteomics lab. So, not that many people at that time. I'm talking about maybe 2008, 2007. Not that many people really knew how to run a 2D gel and how to pursue those types of lab experiments. I was one of maybe two or three people within Newcastle University who had that experience, and I got the job. When I started working, I was very closely working with PhD students, with postdocs, with masters. I always, as I said, I always knew I have to, I want to start my PhD. And that positioned me, it started after two or three years of working, two and a half years of working, I started also looking for positions and opportunities. And Durham University had a full scholarship, full writer scholarship for PhD in not signaling pathway and a skin wound healing. So that positioned me in a situation that I had a great lab experience, and I wasn't like any other freshly starting PhD students. I didn't need to learn any of those techniques. I was really well positioned to start a good PhD, and that was the start of my maybe professional journey from Durham University at that point.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Got it. So you then get into the Mayo Clinic, correct?

SPEAKER_00 7:07

So no, I finished my PhD at Durham, and Durham University in England is a sister of Oxford and Cambridge, and Durham is also on a college base. So I was part of the Houston of College at Durham University. And Houston of College at that time, they gave us some scholarship that I could travel and I could go to any conference or seminars. At that time, I remember I had 500 pounds, British pounds. It was maybe equivalent. The value was way higher. Maybe it was at that time equivalent to $800 to $900. And then I got that scholarship from Houston of College. And then I started looking for the area for all these summits all around the world that are interested to me. I found about World Stem Cell Summit, and it was also recommended by one of the professors that I used to work on a project in King's College. He mentioned that maybe that's a great place if I want to look for careers outside of the United Kingdom. And I applied, I got, I reached out directly to the main chair of that summit. And I remember that when I reached out to him, I said, I'm a PhD, just graduation. I was just actually writing my thesis at the time. I said, I am not graduated yet, but I am submitting my thesis within the next few months. I am looking for an opportunity. If you have any room, any space for the students in your summit. And he very kindly offered me a very great discount for that big summit. I entered into that summit, I had a poster to present as well. And then I wasn't quiet on that summit. I started going session by session. I do remember every morning from seven in the morning, I had my days planned and planned ahead. So I was, I knew exactly which talk I am going to watch. I am going to listen to this talk. At the end of each presentation, I started speaking to all those speakers. I knew the area of my interest. And at that time, I reached out to one of the speakers. He was a cardiologist from Mayo Clinic. The area that he was presenting was very close to my area of research, my years of experience at Newcastle University, the GMP good manufacture practice experience that I earned during the years at Newcastle University. I reached out to him after the talk and I said, I am a PhD, I have these years of background, and we started talking about my project. And I said, Can I grab your time during the coffee break? I would really like to see if you have a room in your lab for a PhD postdoc. And then he said, sure, yeah. He gave me about 10-50 minutes of his time that day. When I talked to him, it was very interesting to him that I had the GMP good manufacture practice background. Then the next day, when I was presenting my postset, that physician stopped by my postal with another person from Mayo Clinic, and they started talking about my background at Newcastle, my PhD in regenerative medicine, and they started talking to me, and they said, Would you consider a postdoc at Mayo? That was the very first time that I heard Mayo Clinic name. And uh I started looking into it and I was so thrilled and excited. Around the same time, I had another offer within the same conference. I also met another professor from Children's Hospital in LA. Um, I had another job offer and another professor from Toronto University. So that was the maybe networking and communication skills that I really put all my effort. I studied their papers, I read about their research, I read about their area of interest, and I individually kept like within the conference, I targeted them, I started having a conversation. When you start a conversation, and when they know that we read their papers, you know their area of research, that's a great initiation for a great conversation. And then, yes, within all those offers, I accepted the Mayo Clinic postdoc. Then I came to Mayo for my official interview, and then I started my postdoc journey in October 24 Mayo in Rochester, Minnesota.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

This episode is brought to you by Supported Tutoring, where we don't just help students get better grades, we help them become critical thinkers. Whether it's mastering AP exams, maximizing college applications, or building lifelong learning habits, our expert tutors focus on critical thinking, confidence, and real growth. Head to supportedtutoring.com to find the support your student deserves. So, getting to the Mayo Clinic, what is their approach on how they look at education and implementation of learning across the medical field? Because you kind of made that switch to more the administrative side of education and research. How do they approach education at the Mayo Clinic?

SPEAKER_00 12:34

So your question is how Mayo Clinic approaches education or how so Mayo Clinic has three different shields. If you have seen Mayo Clinic's logo, it has three different shields on the logo. It is our education, research, and practice, the clinic. So education is a very important part of the Mayo Clinic, is one of the shields. And Mayo Clinic as a medical school, Mayo Clinic research and education has always been a very important part and body of Mayo Klinik that has driven Mayo as an academic institution. Mayo clinic education and shield, it's not only for students and for medical students and the researchers, it's also for the staff as well, for providing so many different ongoing educational courses. And it has been always very highlighted and very acknowledged within Mayo. As a student, as a mid-college student, there are so many PhD programs as well that Mayo Clinic offers. Maybe not everyone is aware of those. There is also a very great program, MD PhD, at Mayo Clinic. I don't know the exact administration process and admission for that program, but it's a very long process that you can start. If you can get into that program, it's a very long journey, but you will be an MD PhD, and that's something that Mayo Clinic also offers.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

So for a um a student out there that's looking to go the medical route, but really doesn't have an idea, because I mean a lot of students, especially especially across the United States, they just think doctor, right? They don't know the range of opportunities that are out there for someone who is more analytical, that might be into the research and at the cutting edge of driving healthcare in a different factor. What would you say to them in terms of what is important to kind of analyze and really grasp an understanding of how they should pursue seeking something in medicine?

SPEAKER_00 14:46

That's a great question. So when we are talking about something in the edit, if they want to be a medical doctor versus a researcher and having an educational path or academic path, I would call them PhD doctors versus MD doctors, or in the other way, you know that the PCR or CPR. So when you are looking into academic and being a PhD, your life style, your process, your everything will be different. So definitely a medical doctor requires for you to go to medical, to the to medicine, to start practicing medicine, to go to residency, to go to fellowship, it's a very different path for getting into the research. If you want to get into the research, if the schools are really looking into the research, they have to have a passionate and patience for the research, because research is something that during a PhD, you will be given a hypothesis, a question. That question within the five years, it really depends how fast you can finish your PhD. That is five years of your life that you are dealing with one question, one area of science. Your life will be dedicated if you are having hands-on, depends on the nature of the research and the science you're working on. It could be working in a wet lab. You have to put yourself in a situation that your life would be five to six years working on a project in a lab with the same people, with the same professor, with the same environment in the same location. And then you cannot graduate without having a really good, meaningful research outcome. It could be a published paper, it could be anything, but then you have to dedicate five years of your time into that area, if it's neurology, cardiology, whatever it is, you are dedicating your life into that area. It's very different. The journey is very different compared to going towards a medicine. But when you become a doctor, when you are working on a PhD program, it's it doesn't mean that when you are have your PhD, for example, my PhD is in skin wound healing and working on one specific signaling pathway on a skin wound healing. The PhD program trains you and teaches you how to answer a scientific question, how to plan around it, how to plan experiment around it, how to help others to pursue any scientific questions. So it doesn't mean that if you do your PhD in a cardiology, you have to always pursue something in cardiology area. You can be more flexible and you can start teaching, you can start working in so many different areas. But pursuing medicine in cardiology, if you start your residency in a cardiology, dermatology, or neurosurgery, you have a narrower vision and it becomes narrower and narrower and more specific into that area. But being a scientist, being a PhD, it gives you more option, in my opinion, if you haven't narrowed down yourself into that one area specific, that gives you more option and more flexibility. And the route I took, it was also not only the science, but I also started looking into the area of FDA and the regulatory as well. That was also something that did. Alongside with my PhD, I took some courses at FDA and NIH, and that certified me as a GMP good manufacturer scientist, that it's really something that we can pursue so many different industrial positions as well. So that's also another open door that you don't need to work in a hospital suddenly. You don't need to be an academic setting. You can work for a pharmaceutical company, you can be a scientist for a drug or a device company.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

Gotcha. Okay. Well, let's leave it with this because I know we're I'm short on unfortunately short on time. So I hope you come back. What is the number one thing? What is the number one skill? I want to say this. What's the number one skill us high school students should have if they're going to pursue anything in the medical field in 2026?

SPEAKER_00 19:21

If you want to become either a physician or a scientist, I would say, as a high schooler, be very detail-oriented. Just even if you are reading a very simple biology text or anything, just look into the all the details. It doesn't matter that what the subject is, ask every question. Don't accept everything. Just really ask all those details around that single task and questions or anything. Being a detail-oriented person can definitely land you well. Because that detail, if you are in medical school or if you become a scientist, without paying attention to details, you can't be successful in either of those.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us on short notice. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Sorry about the technical issues I had at the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

No worries, it's okay. Let's come back and potentially have a deeper conversation and uh maybe talk a little bit more about AI. All right.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Absolutely. Happy to. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

All right. Thank you so much. And thank you for joining the Supported Learning Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. Bye.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Absolutely.

unknown 20:37

Bye.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

Thanks for joining us on the Supported Learning Podcast. If today's conversation inspired you, challenged you, or sparked a new perspective, be sure to subscribe and share with a fellow change maker. We'll be back soon with more voices, more insight, and more ways to elevate the future of learning together. Until then, keep learning and keep pushing the conversation forward.