Freedom and flexibility in Research Fellowship
- 23 September 2024
- 3 minutes
Embarking on a Research Fellowship at Gonville & Caius College is recommended by Fellow Dr Vaithish Velazhahan, who has enjoyed the freedom and flexibility to follow the science and learn new techniques.
Vaithish joined Caius in October 2022, after completing his PhD at Sidney Sussex College, where he was a Gates Cambridge scholar and worked at the University of Cambridge/Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology.
He says: “It is a transformative experience. It has given me the freedom to explore questions I wanted to always work on that I didn’t really have the opportunity to pursue, things I got really excited about during my PhD. Having the Caius Fellowship made it possible for me to work on them in an independent project.”
Applications for the Research Fellowship competition are open annually in September, with four academics – two in sciences, two in arts and humanities – usually selected in January.
Vaithish adds: “I would strongly recommend it for people applying. It’s one of the best opportunities people can have after their PhD, especially if they want to work on a very independent and creative project which is high risk. One of the best things about the Research Fellowship is they have a lot of trust in your work.
“They don’t expect you to write a 10-page proposal expecting you to explain every step. You have the freedom to explore questions you become passionate about and have the flexibility to take the project in any desired direction. That was transformative for me; to be able to pursue the questions in ways that I initially didn’t even think about when I was writing the application for the Caius Fellowship.
“I ended up taking the project in those directions and having that flexibility and freedom was really important to me.”
The freedom for Vaithish has extended to pausing his Research Fellowship to learn new skills and techniques at Stanford University in California. This is necessary to be at the forefront of work on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), which allow a cell to communicate with their environment.
GPCRs are targeted by about 35% of all FDA (Food and Drug Administration, the United States’ Department of Health) approved drugs, Vaithish says, because they are important for a variety of physiological processes.
Research thus far has focused on artificial processes to understand GPCRs; Vaithish’s work endeavours to understand GPCRs in a native (human) context.
He adds: “Part of what I wanted to do was to establish a system that allows you to study GCPRs directly and in a more native state where they exist as a group of proteins. I want to study them as they exist within the cells in groups, not just individually, as monomers; I look at how GCPRs function as dimers or oligomers”
At Stanford, Vaithish is learning to apply new techniques, including cryo-electron tomography to his research. He is also learning from colleagues at a different institution, having been at Cambridge since 2018. He is due to return to Caius and Cambridge well-equipped to advance his research career.
He says: “It’s important to get more training at a different place, learn a new technique and parallel approaches to asking the same questions. I’m broadening my skillset. I’m also applying the technique to the study of another class of membrane proteins here.
“Now I just don’t focus only on GCPRs, but I also know how to apply these techniques to other classes of proteins. This will be really valuable when I set up my own lab, so we can work on multiple interesting questions at the same time.”
