Natalie Kuldell (00:03):
Hello, Maxine. It’s so good to see you. Thank you for being here.
Maxine Jonas (00:07):
Hello, Natalie. Very happy to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
Natalie Kuldell (00:10):
It’s great to reconnect. We’ve known each other for a fair number of years, but I would, if you don’t mind, ask that you introduce yourself and where you work and a little bit about the job you’re doing.
Maxine Jonas (00:22):
Sure. So my name is Maxine Jonas, and I’m an instructor at MIT. Actually, my role title has now become a senior lecturer. But essentially my primary responsibility is to teach at MIT. So I don’t carry any research, although my teaching keeps evolving semester after semester, so not boring at all. The primary class that I teach every semester to people who are between sophomores and seniors at MIT is a laboratory class called Bioinstrumentation and Measurements. And there I teach a lot of optics and microscopes. So our students learn, you know, what resolution means and how their camera works and what lenses they have to put in a microscope. And then they really take very cool pictures of biological samples that have fluorescent stains in them. They do some particle tracking, so they learn a lot of coding to be able to analyze their images and their movies. We also teach them a lot of electronics so they understand how they can filter different signals and signals could be voltage, but they could also be s around the cell. And we draw a lot of parallels between electrical engineering and biological engineering. Yeah. I should mention that I’m affiliated with the Biological Engineering Department, which is also my home at MIT. This is where I earned my PhD after doing undergraduate studies in France.
Natalie Kuldell (01:52):
I did notice that you maybe have, have a background that’s from another country from your accent. It’s lovely. And it’s so nice because there are so many interdisciplinary aspects of the work that you do. And we talk a lot about that through these conversations that to be trained in an interdisciplinary way is so important and so effective now. But I will ask you more a question about the nature of that class because the “Mind and Hand” aspect of MIT is so ingrained, so is the hands-on aspect of the class that you’re teaching… can you just say a little bit more about that?
Maxine Jonas (02:31):
Yes. So really we, we’ve come to really recognize and value the fact that the class has both a lot of theory and a lot of practice in the lab. And so we are responsible for lectures. But most importantly, we spend hours and hours every week with our students who work in teams of two or three to build their microscope from scratch. So many of them say that they finally feel like real engineers because as you all know, a lot of biology is mixing a lot of liquids, but you don’t necessarily see what happens in there from, you know, the theoretical principle you’ve learned. Whereas to build a microscope, you have screws and you have part, and it needs to be stable, and it needs to be well aligned so your cameras see things well centered. And that’s what I love about this job is that I get to know the students very well.
Maxine Jonas (03:25):
They come at the times that are convenient for them during the week, and they work as a team on their microscope. And really all the troubleshooting that they go through is a state of mind that is built in every engineer and that you can really carry out in all aspects of your life just asking yourself question after question. Okay, is this working as I thought? Is this functioning the way I had designed it or not? If yes, okay, next question. So working like this as investigators together is really rewarding. And for certainly the students, we throw too much at them during lecture, and it’s only when we have time to work with each person one at a time to see what they get and where the gaps are that we can really make sure everybody learns and progresses from wherever they come from.
Natalie Kuldell (04:22):
Yeah. It’s wonderful mentorship. It is really that that guided almost an apprenticeship in science and engineering that you offer them. And it is really life changing. It’s fabulous. So your background did you grow up building microscopes or is your training all in building microscopes?
Maxine Jonas (04:41):
No, I’ve always I’ve always liked optics. I’m not sure why, but, you know, I like photography and I like art in museums, so I think I’m, I kind of like visual cues in that sense. But I grew up in France. I must say I’ve always liked math and physics. I was just someone who likes schools and feel fulfilled in school and rewarding by learning everything and that, that worked well for my curiosity. But I went for undergrad, I went to a very generic engineering school where we all had to learn things from economics to a bit of chemistry, quantum mechanics, philosophy, foreign languages. So we had an extremely broad training which I think really helped me get into biological engineering. I just had some interest in biology that I thought I recognized as being now a discipline in the United States, which was not in France about 20 years ago when I went to graduate school.
Maxine Jonas (05:46):
And so I just kind of jumped at the opportunity to discover this new discipline that I didn’t know much about, but that seemed to have such a breadth of application that I imagined that I could find my niche there and something of interest that I was capable of it of doing. And I thought also I would learn English a bit better. Still haven’t lost my accent, but getting around <laugh> and it’s nice indeed to see a different system. You know, the French school system, I think it is evolving, but it’s way more theoretical, much more math heavy, and it’s a bit less about discovering for yourself, expressing yourself, and doing research for yourself. So I really had no training in research and took a chance and made sure I chose a PhD advisor who had time for me to teach me what research was about and to brainstorm with me so that we could progress together.
Natalie Kuldell (06:50):
Yes. Your PhD advisor and the PhD experience that you had, was it at MIT. Correct?
Maxine Jonas (06:57):
Yes, that’s right. That’s how I landed at MIT yes, in the early two thousands. I had a very good time, a very good relationship. I think I’m very grateful for that because these five, six years of your life doing a PhD can be arduous and sometimes isolated. Cause often you really work on your project and you are the one who cares the most about it when the world keeps going on around you. And so I feel that having people who you get along very well around you in the lab and your advisor really make a big difference in how you spend those years and how enjoyable they are.
Natalie Kuldell (07:41):
Well, it sounds like you have found a really wonderful mix of application of your training and also your talent in teaching and communicating. So it is an unusual position within a university to have a senior lecturer or an instructor’s position which interacts so directly with students. Is there something surprising about this role for you? Or is it something that you directed your studies towards or a place you just landed and have found your niche?
Maxine Jonas (08:15):
No, I, I didn’t expect to be here at all actually. When I thought of academia starting with my PhD, because my family didn’t go into that kind of studies. I thought of the professors around me and I thought of writing a lot of grant and spending a lot of hours and weekends in lab. And I actually was not attracted to academia because I knew I will be happier with a more, a better life work balance as people say. So not spending my entire life at work, essentially. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> But you, Natalie, was one of the people who showed me that there were other roles because you were the one new instructor in our department in Biological Engineering at MIT and your job was completely different from the one of the faculties. And, you know, I from far away, but witnessed you invent what that meant and, you know, cover space and a network around yourself.
Maxine Jonas (09:18):
And so for myself, after my PhD, I thought I wanted to go to industry and I think it was pretty clear about that again, maybe primarily because I didn’t know what industry meant mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And so I wanted to just have some experience in that world. So I got a job at a biotech company right after my PhD, still in the Boston area still doing instrumentation. So this time robotic instruments for drug discovery. And as it turns out, this job was very much about building the instruments in house, but then most importantly, installing them at customer site. So at big pharma biotech throughout the world, I got to go to Japan and Sweden and back to France and Switzerland, et cetera, as well as a lot of Canada, the us. And so I would, I would install the instruments at our customer sites who were searching for new drugs, essentially, and I would teach them how to use them and how to drop troubleshoot when something went wrong.
Maxine Jonas (10:30):
And then I was in charge of the whole customer support by phone, by email, or back in person, whether they couldn’t figure out what was wrong. And so this really actually confirmed to me what my mom had told me my whole life was that I was a good teacher. I didn’t know if I was good or not, but at least I noticed that I really enjoyed that part of the job. And so when the next chapter came up for me because the company was restructuring and I had to decide whether I would stay in Boston or not, which I wanted to I decided to look for teaching jobs. And was wonderful to find one in my home department where I felt qualified and at home and, you know, already familiar with people and respected. And so, yeah.
Maxine Jonas (11:21):
And this is a job where there are so many human interactions and yet where your intellect is very much needed that I thought it was, would be a good fit for me. And yeah, I’m glad — excuse me — I’m glad indeed MIT is multiplying these roles because research faculty don’t have a ton of time to teach. Usually around me, they actually love teaching, but it’s time that they need to carve out of a thousand other things they do every day. Whereas for me this is my primary job, and so this is what I have all the time to focus on and be good at.
Natalie Kuldell (12:06):
Yes. Well you are exceptionally good at it. You are truly a gift to the department and to the students. And I know how this story just really illustrates the perfect fit that you have found for your background, for your interests, for your talents. It is lovely to see such success because it is not a typical university role, and yet they do exist. It’s wonderful to celebrate the wonderful teaching that can happen and the talent that you bring to it, the expertise that you bring to it, because you really are paying it forward and the department knows it and the students know it. And I am very grateful to be able to say thank you for your work and your contributions to this next generation of innovators. It’s very powerful and very important.
Maxine Jonas (12:57):
Thank you very much, Natalie. Yeah. Yes. I’m very happy to have found this home, and I think I’ll stay here for several, several more years.
Natalie Kuldell (13:06):
I will tell the department chair. 😉