Molly Shoichet: ‘We fail every day’

All through my chemistry degree at MIT, I thought I would go to medical school. In fact, in my senior year at MIT, I applied to medical school. But then, because I got interested in polymers, I applied to a couple of different programs as well. I had actually gotten into medical school, but ended up pursuing a PhD in polymer science and engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

If we’re really going to shape the future in medicine, we can’t do that just in the academic lab. This is a big challenge for science: taking the knowledge we’ve gained in our own research, the advances we’ve made, and translating those into products. I’m very motivated to partner with companies – I’ve started some companies myself – and raise funds for those within the venture community to take those innovations out of the lab and turn them into products that will make a difference in people’s lives.

What most people don’t realise is that we fail every single day. Our experiments don’t work, our papers get rejected, our grants get rejected. And so, in order to succeed in research, you have to have a thick skin, you can’t take things personally, and you have to have the strength to go back at it and not give up.