Episode 150: Building the Next Generation of Biotech Leaders with Nucleate

Balancing a PhD is challenging enough, but what happens when you add leading a biotech organization into the mix? You're listening to Bio from the Bayou, empowering biotech leaders with the tools, assets, and expertise to improve healthcare outcomes. Each episode provides insights and information to expand your network, advance your product line, and help your company thrive. Serving the entire Gulf South, but recorded in the heart of New Orleans. Welcome back to Bio from the Bayou. I'm your host, Dr. Elaine Hamm, the executive in residence at Tulane School of Medicine. And today's guest is Haley Marcotte. She is the co-managing director of Nucleate New Orleans, a nonprofit organization empowering the next generation of biotech leaders. Welcome to the show, Haley.

Hi, Elaine. Thank you so much for having me today. I really appreciate it.

Well, we appreciate you coming on. Okay, so talk to me a little bit about yourself and then we'll dive into Nucleate. I think that you're pursuing a PhD here at Tulane. And then you're also on top of that doing your job at Nucleate. So let's first talk about like, what's your PhD? What, what are you working on currently?

Yes. Yes. So I am a rising 3rd-year PhD student at Tulane within the School of Medicine. I'm in Dr. Chad Steele's lab doing fungal pulmonary lung immunology research. It's super exciting. And yeah, yeah, I'm really excited to be here today.

Okay. So another fellow microbiologist.

Yes.

Love it. Although, Fungus was never really my thing. I mean, I was not very good at that. I mean, I keep, keep, I like to keep it to bacteria. Yeah.

Yeah. My, my background, actually, I was involved in undergrad research at LSU up in Baton Rouge. And so my background is also in bacteria. So jumping into a fungi lab has been a fun challenge for sure.

A fun challenge. I see what you did there. Right. But yeah, you jump up a level and it's like, okay, this is all, this is a little bit different. So what is Nucleate? This is a national program, right?

Yes. Yes, that's correct. It's actually a global nonprofit organization. And I, along with Sammy, who is the other co-managing director of the New Orleans chapter, he's also a Tulane student. Shout out Sammy. But yeah, so Nucleate is a global nonprofit organization. The entire mission of Nucleate is to inspire the next generation of biotech leaders. And so how we try to do that here within our New Orleans chapter is we will get with our partners and co-host a variety of events to really educate the community about what it means to be involved in life science innovation. So for example, we'll host workshops surrounding AI and biotech or IP law. We'll have panel discussions and have experts in neuroscience come talk about what it means to be involved in psychedelic research. So we really try and have a wide variety of events that are free to attend, by the way, to get the community to come out and get inspired about what it means to be a part of life science innovation, truly.

Okay. But how did you get involved in this? Because when I was in grad school, I mean, I was just shoving gavage tubes down guinea pigs' mouths and crying at night and trying to study for general exams. How are you also, how are you also doing all of this other stuff? Like, how did you hear about it and what got you involved in the first place? Yeah.

Yeah. So back in undergrad, I, like other undergraduate students, were thinking about what we're doing post-grad and yeah. I only had considered medical school or going to graduate school and going into academia and being a research professor at a university. And ironically, of all things, I came across a social media post that was like careers in life science that you are not aware of or are unfamiliar with. And one of the things was getting involved in biotech. And so I realized like maybe this is actually a really interesting career path for me to pursue. And so once I decided not to pursue medical school and go get my PhD, I realized and knew immediately that once I actually was here physically at Tulane, I wanted to find opportunities for me to get involved and learn more about biotech in our community. And one of the student groups that was posting about leadership applications being open was Nucleate. So I applied on a whim, heard back from them, and the rest is history.

That's awesome. And I love that you're doing it as, as a rising third year and not as you're like, I'm going to be graduating in 2 months. I should be thinking about what a job looks like and, and what the future looks like, because that's how some of us do that.

So, right, right. Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah. I feel like I've always been inspired to like stay on top of things and I'm always thinking about, okay, what's the next step?

Well, one of the interesting aspects about Nucleate in general is that it's student-led and I love that. So talk to me a little bit about that and then why you think that model in particular has been successful.

Yeah. Yeah. So Nucleate, I think being student-led is fantastic because what better way to represent a certain group of individuals than to be a part of that group. And so again, we're inspiring the next generation of life science leaders. So that's students in our community. And another fantastic thing about Nucleate is we're not tied to one specific university. So Sammy and I, both of the co-MDs for our New Orleans chapter, are both Tulane students, but we also have Xavier students, LSU Health students that are also on our leadership team. We're trying to branch out and have representation from other schools. Like UNO, now LSU New Orleans, and things like that. So I think, again, having collaboration across academic institutions and again, not being isolated to one particular school has been extremely impactful for our chapter. Again, all of this is just to increase conversation and increase connections and collaboration because we cannot make New Orleans a biotech hub without doing it together.

To be honest, in grad school, I mean, it was really hard to even get outside of your lab in terms of getting to know other students, much less the entire school. And then getting involved with other schools on top of that, and not just your department either. I mean, I'm sure that it's— you're not just microbiologists getting together and talking about biotech. I'm sure it crosses a lot of different sectors, and that's got to be pretty cool.

Right, right, exactly. Yeah. So getting to collaborate with other students and hear about the needs within their school and what they're interested in learning about when it comes to life science innovation really helps us tailor our programming for the year, for sure.

Okay. So, I mean, I know what sort of the hot topics are for me. I want to know what the kids are talking about these days. What's— what are you guys like most excited about? Like when you think about like really cool science and what's really awesome right now, like what are you guys thinking about?

I think what we're thinking about is And what's inspiring to hear is that the stuff that we're doing in school, and whether you're a PhD student or not, the research that you're conducting, the experiments and work that you're involved in can apply for people outside of an academic setting. And being able to translate that from the bench to the wider community is, I think, just like a theme across the board of what people are interested in. In terms of like hot topics, I think—

Yeah.

Fun things that are going on is like, you know, CRISPR and, and gene therapy and things like that and how that's impacting our society. AI is also another super hot topic everyone is interested in. Yeah.

The psychedelic piece I think is really interesting.

Yeah.

Is that because that was such a, I don't know, a taboo topic when I was in graduate school and now it's becoming a lot more mainstream and we're seeing a lot more therapies in that space. So that's gotta be, are you a fungicologist? What, like mycologist?

A mycologist. Yeah. Yeah. So it's funny, we had our psychedelic panel discussion in partnership with one of our— this is our top sponsor, the New Orleans Bioinnovation Center.

Sure.

And they host the BioChallenge competition every year in October. And so we try to have one event with them per semester, and they like having things focused on neuroscience, which we're totally open to because that's such a fantastic field. And so when we were talking with their team, they were like, hey, I think this is a really interesting topic that's not often talked about within the neuroscience space. Like we think about neurodegenerative diseases, but no one's really thinking, what's the psychedelic community like? What's going on in that space?

Yeah.

And so we actually had someone, one of our panelists come from the UK and he was able to share, you know, the difference in the United States versus other countries and how they're viewing psychedelics and what that means and how the US is kind of starting to say like, hey, maybe this isn't such a taboo topic. Maybe this is something we should explore some more. And we had a lot of attendees from that event, which was fantastic. it because again, we're inspiring people to get involved and learn more about biotech, but we're also just trying to educate people on topics they wouldn't otherwise hear about. And so yeah, that event was definitely super, super fun to co-host with, with No Big.

That's super interesting too. Yeah. And it has changed a lot and it's a really, I mean, it has a therapeutic potential. I'm sorry, I'm going to get really nerdy. So I'll stop there because I could, I could talk about that aspect all day long. Well, so how can people such as myself get involved and how can we be of help to organizations like Nucleate?

Yeah. Yeah. I think the, the biggest thing that I would say that people can assist with our organization is to just help in any way you can come out and support and attend our events. We, and myself and the rest of the Nucleate team put so much time and effort into this. And so having people come out and seeing, you know, a really productive Outlook and turnout is really great. And then we're also continuing to look for sponsors and partners to participate. As I mentioned, we have several partners already secured for the upcoming year. So we have the New Orleans Bioinnovation Center, the Tulane Innovation Institute, as well as the Lepage Center, amongst others. And so I think if any listeners of this podcast think that supporting student groups and wanting to increase the biotech hub within New Orleans is something that they're inspired to participate in and support, we would be honored and, and absolutely thrilled if they would be interested in reaching out to become an official sponsor and, uh, and partner of our chapter.

That's great. Well, we say student, what is that? What's the range that you're looking at here?

Yeah, I mean, we've had high school students attend some of our events. The majority of our leadership team is consistent of undergraduates as well as graduate students alike. The attendees of our events are not primarily students, ironically. Sure. We have people from all over the community come. We've had lawyers, we've had bankers, we've had layfolk who just want to come out and listen to what's going on in the community. And so, yeah, I— we are student-led, but I want to emphasize that our target is not just students. Anyone is open to these. Yeah.

That's such an important piece that I think is really cool, and that's a way to get science more mainstream and more talked about. Having these more community-type events are, I think, are more and more important these days. So kudos to that. Are postdocs allowed to be part of that?

Oh, yes, yes. We've had postdocs on our team. Yes, yes, yes. We've had postdocs.

I didn't know what the cutoff was.

No, no, no, no, no. We try to keep our leadership team student-led, but communal events open to all. But yes, we've had postdocs on our leadership team as well.

Well, so if any of our listeners who may also be pursuing a degree in science but want to think about biotech, what advice would you have for them?

My biggest piece of advice for students who want to get involved in biotech is, or life science innovation in general, is go to the free events that we have in our community. And I'm not just saying the Nucleate events, which is, you know, what I'm talking about today, but Greater New Orleans Startup NOLA, all of these individuals and organizations put on fantastic events in the community that target a wide variety of people. So not even just fellows in biotech, but people that are interested in entrepreneurship in general. So if anyone is interested in any of these topics, That's right. I encourage you to Utilize these free resources. Bring a friend if you're scared to go. Bring a friend. There's always, well, I won't say always, but there's usually free food and drink at these events being in New Orleans. So if you wanna, if you want an excuse to try out a new place or try out a new restaurant, yeah, I encourage people to go to these events and meet people and don't be afraid to introduce yourself. And yeah, all people can do is say is no, you know?

Absolutely. We just literally did our series on networking, So if you want more advice, go back to our previous episodes on that because I think you're, I mean, you're, you're hitting all of the things that we encouraged as well. Okay. So if you don't have a nucleate in your community, how do you recommend, how do they get started if there's not one, if there's not a Haley in their community leading the efforts?

Yeah, I would say if there's not a nucleate in your community and there's not already some type of organization that you can be a part of within biotech or life science innovation in general, I would, if you're in an academic setting, go talk to your professors.

Yeah.

Go see if this is an academic effort that you can spearhead and start at your school. If you're not in an academic setting, I would encourage you to look up life science, biotech-related companies or organizations in your area and see if you guys can spearhead maybe a pilot event just to see, is this something that would best fit our community? Is this something our community is interested in? And get people to come out and speak. We really, it's so funny, we just cold email people all the time to come speak at our events. There's always someone out there willing to come and talk about what it is that they do. And so I would encourage those people to reach out to their professors if it is a student, if this is a student-led effort, I would encourage people to reach out to their professors and see if this is something that they could spearhead for sure.

And since this is a national organization, I'm sure you can go to the website and see if there's, is there anything that really says how to start your chapter?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. If people are interested in starting their own Nucliate chapter, the Nucliate headquarters website offers information into how to start a chapter. Yeah, absolutely. That's awesome.

Do you know, any of the Nucliates get together?

Yes. So there's, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So there's actually national Nucliates. Combined, right?

So there's an event every year called Nucleate Summit. Last year, I believe it was held in Boston, and this year it's actually in Dallas. So just, you know, a few hours away from us. Yeah. And that's where all the chapters from, again, around the globe are able to come together. And there's several days of events. They have speakers flown out, and it's a fantastic opportunity. And I wanna say that Nucleate Summit is actually free for any student to attend. So not just students directly involved in Nucleate, anyone. I mean, as long as you have the transportation, you know, and lodging figured out, anyone can attend Summit, which again is another fantastic opportunity. Maybe there's not already a chapter in your community and you're interested in starting. Go out to Summit, go chat with the people that already have chapters involved and, and yeah.

And reach out to you.

Yes.

Yes.

Reach out to me as well. I would be happy to have anyone, if you're out there and you're a listener and you wanna start a Nucleate chapter and you don't know where to start and you're confused with the Nucleate HQ website, please reach out and I would be happy to help you guys get something set.

Well, and you guys have a couple of events coming up. Talk to me about those.

Yeah. Yeah. So we're starting to plan our fall semester programming right now. We've secured on Thursday, September 10th, we're going to have an event centered around careers in the neuroscience space. So we're hoping to have panelists come out that represent lawyers, that represent venture capitalists and things like that to come and speak about their careers in general, what the day in the life looks like and how that relates to neuroscience and the future of neuroscience and where they see that field going towards in the future. And so, yeah, I encourage people to come out. It'll be at the New Orleans Bioinnovation Center, again, Thursday, September 10th at 6:00 PM. As well as that, we're gonna have another women's dinner for the second year in a row coming up in October, which is always fantastic to get women all in one room and talk about all things life science innovation and biotech. And then later in November, we're going to have some type of workshop centered around AI. So more information on that to come. Awesome.

And then we'll have the— NOBIC also puts on their BioChallenge event at the end of October, I think October 29th, and that'll be focused on neuroscience as well. So we have quite a bit of things going on in the New Orleans community as it relates to biotech. So.

Yes, yes, certainly. Again, I encourage any listeners to reach out, use Google. There's always something going on in this city, not just in regards to biotech, but, but yeah, hopefully we'll see some people out at these events. I hope so.

Okay. Now, is there anything else you'd like to mention that we did not get to?

Yeah, I would just say the only thing I'd like to mention is if you're a listener out there and you are interested in life science innovation, I really encourage you to show up and get out there and meet people and network and talk. That's always the first step. Getting there is always the hardest step, but once you're there, I promise you're gonna get something out of it.

I just wanna second that. I mean, I think it's easy for us as, as we move through our career, it can be challenging to think about how to give back. I can tell you that it is incredibly rewarding. And if you are ever feeling a little bit discouraged in your career or discouraged by what you're working on, go to these types of events and you will be, I don't know, inspired to see where biotech is heading. It can be one of those things that can really fill your cup. So I, I really encourage people to give back as you think about what I would've given to have something like this back when I was in graduate school. So this would've been really, really helpful. Maybe it would've taken me less time to get where I am today if I had known exactly what tools were out there and what careers were out there. Thank you so much for sharing what you guys are working on. Thank you for, for doing this type of thing on top of going to graduate school and finding the next cure for fungal-related pneumonia. Yeah, thanks for coming on the show on top of that.

Thank you so much for having me, Elaine. I really appreciate it, and I hope to see the listeners out there at these events.

I love it. Perfect. Well, hey, as always, we'll have Haley's contact information and some of the things that we talked about today posted in our show notes. Make sure you check them out to learn more, and thank you once again for joining us. Thanks for joining us for Bio from the Bayou, and we hope you'll join us again. To never miss the latest updates in biotech, hit the subscribe button now. We'll catch you on our next episode of Bio from the Bayou.

This podcast was edited by Resonate Recordings.