Story Behind the Scientist: Beatriz Rico

At the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research, we enjoy an exciting agenda of scientific lectures by invited guest speakers from all over the world. We recently had the pleasure of welcoming Beatriz Rico, Professor and Principal Investigator at the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology at King's College London. I sat down with Beatriz (who also happened to be my MSc Neuroscience supervisor a few years back!) to find out more about her scientific journey so far. 

When did you first know that you wanted to be a scientist?  

I love this question! I knew very early on – this doesn't happen to everybody, and that's okay – but in my case, when I was seven years old, I already knew that I wanted to be a scientist. I even have a paper confirming that, which said something along the lines of: "The scientist, Beatriz Rico, has created a medicine to cure cancer." 

Wow, that's so early! What happened between you writing that note and the amazing scientific career you have today?  

Thank you for your words. It was an interesting journey. I was always very curious, and it was very clear to my parents what I wanted to be from the start. They started to give me Christmas presents in that direction: I got one of these very basic microscopes, and a chemistry kit I did so many experiments with. 

But before going to university, I told my parents I wanted to do biology and my father tried to dissuade me, saying that no one gets a job with a biology degree. He wanted me to go into informatics – computer science was very popular at that time – or a "useful" biology degree at least, like medical or veterinary school. But I was very stubborn and went for biology anyway. 

In my second year at university, I had a good mark in one of my subjects, and one of the teachers asked me to do a placement in her lab. This experience was a revelation in many ways: it showed me that I really loved to do research. In my final years of university, I had many subjects in neuroscience and came to fall in love with the topic. From there, I jumped into a PhD. 

I did a PhD in a very good lab – though a very small lab, me being the only PhD student at the time. My supervisor, Carmen Cavada, taught me fundamental aspects of being a solid scientist: to be very critical in science, and to strive for perfection. The decision of where to go for a postdoc was a difficult one, because my then-boyfriend (now-husband, fellow group leader and close professional collaborator Oscar Marin) was also applying for postdocs, and we wanted to end up at the same place, or at least in the same city. 

We managed to both find postdocs in different labs in San Francisco, which was an amazing experience. It was super fun: again, my supervisor was fantastic in many ways. His name was Louis Reichardt, and he was both a very successful neuroscientist and also happened to be the first person to climb Mount Everest without oxygen. In fact, he's the scientist in the 1991 K2 movie. Lou was very important for my career progression. Before coming to his lab, I had a very good background in neuroanatomy and histology, but I didn't have a clue about molecular biology. And I remember being really hesitant to do certain things in the lab at the beginning – such as conditional knockouts – because I was not a molecular biologist. But when I shared my reservations with another postdoc, I remember being told: you can't tell a person who has climbed Mount Everest without oxygen what you think you cannot do things, you can tell him that you are not interested. This period really taught me that everybody can do anything they want, and it is us who puts the barrier for not doing so.  

What's a piece of advice you have for people thinking about starting a scientific career? 

As a general rule, I think that it's important to do things in your life that make you happy. If you're able to choose a job that makes you happy, you won't have problems in terms of motivation. To have a job where you're always looking at your watch is not ideal: that's no way to live, right? It's important to be motivated by the things that you're doing. If you're no longer happy and motivated, you should – if possible – think about why that is and work towards changing your circumstances accordingly. 

I remember when I was doing my MSc project in your lab, I was really nervous because I had come from a psychology background and didn't have any lab experience. But you told me that the most important qualities of a scientist are passion and motivation, and that put me at ease. 

Definitely! There are a few people that are brilliant in science. How many Marie Curie's, or Albert Einstein's do you know? Most of us are pretty average, in many things – and that's totally fine. That's why being motivated is the most important quality for anyone pursuing a career in science.  

What were your career milestones that led you to your scientific niche?  

I would say there have been two major hallmarks in my career. One a was the Nature paper that I jointly published with my husband, Oscar, in 2010. There, we describe one of the major discoveries from our labs: the first time we showed the ErbB4 gene is involved in the formation of excitatory synapses onto parvalbumin interneurons. The second hallmark was transformative in that until then I was primarily continuing work I'd started before, from my postdoc and so on. But then I started asking the question: "What in my field – the integration of circuitries during development – is truly not yet understood?" This line of questioning culminated in our Science paper in 2019, where we discovered specific molecules involved in the subcellular targeting of interneurons. Before that, we knew that these neurons were targeting specific compartments, but we didn't know exactly how this was happening.  

Do you have any advice for women in science? 

What I would have done differently, looking back, is to have been more open to saying "no" to opportunities that weren't right or relevant for me. Another piece of advice I have is to find a partner that supports your career. In my case, my partner was super supportive: we divided our work 50%. It's really important to have these conversations with your partner early on. Another piece of advice is to acknowledge our own unconscious bias, and to call it out when you notice it in others. 

Finally, what's your experience of our Center been like? 

It was amazing! The science is spectacular. The people are fantastic. It was great to see so many familiar faces – Joris [De Wit], Pierre [Vanderhaeghen], Lynette [Lim] – as well as meet so many new ones. Last, but not least, I loved the foosball tables in the lobby – I wish we had something similar in our Centre!  

Interviewed and written by Bethan Burnside, Neuroscience Communicator at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research