Hello everyone. Welcome back. For Week 4 of this MOOC, we wanted to offer you the best advice possible for networking within and/or beyond your specialized community. And so, today, we are really fortunate to have with us Mary Ann Horn, who has agreed to be interviewed for this MOOC. Mary Ann has been a professor of mathematics at Case Western University for four years where her research interests are Control Theory, Mathematical Biology, and Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations. She has an impressive publishing record, including co-authoring a book entitled "Mathematical Models in Medical and Health Sciences". Now, Mary Ann, there are a number of reasons why I invited you to speak to the participants of this MOOC. I have to admit, I took a peek at your recent CV, which is available for everyone on LinkedIn, and what stands out is the cross-disciplinary aspect of your vast experience. Yes, your area of expertise is Applied Mathematics, but you have collaborated with dozens of biologists, doctors, and other medical practitioners. And I wanted to get to the heart of how that collaboration came about. That's why I really invited you to this week on networking. Another major accomplishment of your career is your 13 years of experience as Program Director of Applied Mathematics and Mathematical Biology at the National Science Foundation, or NSF. I'll also be asking for your insight into applying for NSF grants and the networking and the promotional skills that are involved when putting proposals together. So, Mary Ann, thanks again for being a part of this MOOC. My first question is: What advice do you have for researchers who wish to network with other scientists or professionals, whether this be at conferences, online events, or just reaching out to fellow researchers to collaborate? Thank you for inviting me. And I really appreciate the opportunity to explain my experiences. I initially started getting more involved beyond my years in control theory in mathematical biology when I was a professor at Vanderbilt University. And it was in part because one of my colleagues was working quite a lot across the bridge with our medical school. And we had somebody come along who was interested in working with us and he said he couldn't handle yet another project and asked me if I was interested and I said yes. So 1) say "yes" to anything that you are remotely interested in doing. I would say because this turned out to be one of the best projects I ever worked in. It was with somebody in infectious diseases and she also worked in dialysis treatment. It was really interesting. Then I had another colleague whose wife happened to be the chair in pharmacology and so I ended up meeting up with one of the other professors in pharmacology and sending my student over there. It worked incredibly well. So, I think that there are opportunities that you may not realize are there and suddenly they pop up. And it's a good thing to accept them if you're interested, and go from there. See if you can connect. We've often had differences of opinion when it comes to talking to each other, because it's often a very different language between math and biology and so you have to learn from each other. And it takes a while. It really does take a while. It can be a challenge, but it's definitely a worthwhile challenge to talk to people in other disciplines and to meet them. I've met people also since I've been at Case Western, I worked with people, as was said, at NSF in biology and kind of gone from there. It's an interesting challenge, but it's a good challenge. That's great, that's awesome. Thank you very much, Mary Ann. It sounds like your experience has been so rich thanks to the networking that you've done and so how could researchers go about doing that on an international level? I think that is more of an issue just because depending on who you know. But I would suggest getting involved with some of the societies that are more broadly international where you can talk to people. I've known people through the Society for Mathematical Biology and that is definitely international. The SIAM Life Sciences Group frequently works with people who are overseas. And if you go to their conferences, that is sometimes a great time to connect with people and see if they have interest beyond yours. Granted, within mathematics, it's probably more mathematical but you still may have opportunities to connect with people who may know other researchers who can give you opportunities, especially on areas that you may be interested in exploring. Great, thank you very much. Let's now look at another area of your time and of your professional experience. Let's focus a little bit on your time as a director of the NSF. I would really be interested to hear what your insight is when applying for NSF grants and the networking and the promotional skills that are involved when putting proposals together. Yeah, I would definitely say that if you are networking with a number of people, you should write the proposal together and make it clear how you're interacting, so that it doesn't come across as if one person has put the proposal together by themselves. It should go further than that. In terms of interaction with NSF, they will usually answer questions. They may not go further than that. So you may not get tons of information. You certainly won't get a pre-evaluation. So, that you still have to put your proposal together and go from there. If a researcher in another country wants to reach out to someone in the United States to submit an NSF grant proposal they can? They can, and in fact, a lot of countries do participate with the US. Yeah. There are programs that expressly request that people from outside the US also are involved. Great, thanks and so I have one more question to ask you, Mary Ann, and that is actually related to mathematics and mathematicians specifically, and also basically it's what the challenges are. What are the biggest challenges or difficulties that you have observed that researchers encounter, specifically mathematicians or when they try to promote their work? So, I do think that applied mathematics tends to sell more easily, overall, but pure mathematics can. In fact pure mathematics is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation. Many people get funding for periods of time, which is great. I think if they could connect better with what their programs do, what are the challenges within it, and if they can talk to an audience that is maybe, not as sophisticated mathematically, but talk to them as if they don't know what is going on, especially with some of the pure math programs, they may not. I think it's important and I think pure math is very important overall. But I think it is a challenge to explain to the general public exactly what they're doing. So, I believe it is something that could be worked on in terms of conveying information. And I believe that they have important contributions to make. But I think that sometimes different areas do it better than others and areas like applied math can sell it more easily. They can say, "We're contributing to this particular application" or something else. I think it is more a challenge for the pure math people to make their work clearly understandable to somebody more average who is not necessarily in the mathematical sciences. Thanks very much, Mary Ann. Now, there's another question I wanted to ask you. This is totally off the record if you want, but, actually, it comes to mind. It's not off the record because we're still recording. I recently attended a conference. And it was really, really interesting. And there was a brilliant mathematician who attended that conference and he gave a presentation. It was a conference related to the link between artificial intelligence and the medical world. There was this absolutely brilliant mathematician, who presented. And he said something. He said that, if the math world is going to associate with the medical world, then the mathematicians absolutely need to learn how to boil it down so to speak, to get to the essence of their models so that the medical world could understand. That rang a bell to me because you've published so many articles and you've collaborated with so many medical professionals. Does that ring a bell for you too? Yeah, I would definitely absolutely agree with that because in working with different medical professionals or biologists, depending on what the paper was, I would say we had to make them understand. But they also had to make us understand the biology. So, it's a two-way street. It really is. It's a challenge to make sure that both of us understand what is happening in terms of the biology, in terms of the mathematical models and what they can possibly contribute. I would definitely say that it's a challenge. But it's one that's well worth it if you're willing to put in the time. Thanks very much Mary Ann. This has been a really, really fruitful and informative interview and I really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much for agreeing to be a part of this MOOC and I think that the participants will certainly benefit from your advice. Well, I appreciate being invited. Thank you for that.
