Interview With Jon Okerblom

Tell me a little bit about yourself, your project etc.

I am a postdoc at UCSD and I’ve been doing research here for about 10 years - during my undergraduate years, PhD and now my Postdoc. I’ve been working with Hemal [Patel] (the current lab) for about a year, but I’ve known him longer since he was on my PhD committee.

My main project is that I am studying the cardiac phenotype of these mice with human mutations. I am finding out that there is indeed a difference; the mice with the mutation start developing heart problems earlier. My other job is to work with students and train students on various projects and help them learn new skills that you can use for other projects. Another project is that I am working on looks at how normal and nuclear caveolin mutation interacts with endogenous proteins, signaling proteins etc. I’m also working on Hemal’s projects like cell membrane repair, other scaffolding projects. But my primary project is trying to understand the cardiac phenotype from the mice from my old lab.

I’m also a teacher at Miramar College

What was your academic path? What did you do in High school; did you always want to be a researcher?

No intention of doing science in HS. I did get an award, however, for following protocols. I was more into sports and athletics. After my surgery, I wasn’t really motivated because I couldn’t play sports. I lost motivation for high school and then I eventually dropped out during my junior year. I’ve had a job since I was 15 years old and I realized that I needed a degree in order to make some money so I started going to community college. I was taking business classes and through some internships I realized that I didn’t want to do it. At this point I was really motivated and I felt like I was surrounded by people who weren’t motivated. So I switched to biology with the intention of becoming a pre-med because that would be hard. It wasn’t until I took this invertebrates class I took with this one professor when I really got interested in biology. I did really well in community college - I got straight As and everything. Then I applied to UCSD and I got in - it was my first choice.

Between my summer between community college and UCSD, I did a summer research program at UCSB that got me interested in research. So I decided to switch my career.

I went from straight undergrad to PhD because I’ve always felt like I was behind. I was very set in what I wanted to do and motivated after my undergrad.

What does a Postdoc do? Transition area between PhD and Professor. Still doing benchwork but trying to be a Professor. There aren’t enough professorship positions for the number of postdocs being trained. Its a time where you can practice doing different things, like helping students and teaching - so its a bit more social than a PhD or a Professor - who doesn’t have time for benchwork because they need to grants.

Favorite and not favorite things about your job:

I like the freedom and flexibility with the job. It’s very easy to take time off. I like the creativity and the challenge of questions and not answers and trying to come up with creative ways to answer the question. At the Phd level, there wasn’t enough social interaction. I think that as you work your way up academia its alot more social, but at the lower level, there isn’t enough social interactions.

Are you planning on starting a business? Not anytime soon, but it is in the back of my wife and my heads. My wife doesn’t want to work under a boss and we would like the flexibility, but there are alot of other things to consider as well. But we have talked about it.

Any advice for high school students? Do internships, be active, go with what you like. The best way to figure things out is to give it a shot, but your experience can also depend on the environment. For example, my first summer, I had an amazing experience and it caused to change my major, but my second summer, the lab I worked at lost a lot of their funding so it was terrible experience. I couldn’t really do anything so they made me count the dendrites of neurons. So maybe, I would’ve not been a researcher if I’ve had the experience from my second lab the first time.