Hello, and welcome to Discovery Dialogues. I’m your host, Nick Hyer, Program Manager for Graduate and Postdoc Academic Success. And today, I’m here with Hannah Richards, PhD candidate in chemistry, and Vanderbilt’s first Schmidt Science Fellow. Thanks for joining me today, Hannah.
Hi, Nick. Thanks so much. I’m really glad to be here. So if you could start the conversation by telling us what made you decide to come to Vanderbilt.
That is such a good question. Sometimes I am a little hesitant on the story because Vanderbilt wasn’t my first choice. I initially didn’t really look into Vanderbilt because I’m a Nashville native. I was born and raised here. And while I know Vanderbilt, it’s such an honor to go to Vanderbilt, I was ready to like leave the nest and leave town and have this new independence. And Vanderbilt was just too close. So I didn’t even come to the touring weekend when the chemistry department offered me to tour. And so I had actually put down everything I needed to for an apartment in a different state to go to a different institution. And that institution ended up being like one of the best analytical chemistry programs in the country at the time. And I was set. That’s where I was going to go. And so at the last minute, my partner at the time was like, are you sure? You don’t want to just give it a go. And I was like, okay, well, you know what? It’s local. I don’t have to get a hotel. I don’t have to travel. Let’s look. Let’s look.
Let’s just see.
Let’s just see. Because, again, you don’t know what opportunity is not out there if you don’t give it a chance. And so, you know, I’m willing to give anything a chance. I was like, I’m not, let me go look. And so I went and looked. And like I said, it wasn’t even the touring weekend. There were no free dinners and balloons, nothing special. And I left the day knowing I had a new decision and I was about to make the wrong choice with the other place. And so that night, I didn’t even need to sleep on it. It was one of those decisions when you know, you know. And so I canceled the other place that I was living at, and everything else was a done deal. I just knew.
So when I went to graduate school, I had a similar experience. I did come during some of the fanfare, but there was something about when I first stepped foot on the campus that I got this gut feeling and I just knew. I’m curious, that day when you were walking around, was there a moment where, you know, your gut kind of spoke to you?
Well, for me, especially being a chemist in a laboratory. It’s not the campus and walking around that matters. So this is my doctor’s office. I know what the campus looked like. So it wasn’t the campus or walking around. To me, it was the people. And so the interactions that I had with the people is exactly what I knew. It was those moments. And it was the chemistry faculty, the chemistry professors, and the department head at the time. And so it was the faith that they had in me for me to break down that imposter syndrome because Vanderbilt is the Harvard of the South. And so all of my friends and family are like, Vanderbilt? And so when I got here into the chemistry department, I told the professors, okay, are you sure you think I can do Vanderbilt? Like, I didn’t go to an undergraduate institution like some of these other students did. Like, I went to a state school. Are you sure? And without a doubt, they reassured me many, many times that if got this far, they had no doubt. And so the fact that they believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself is how I knew that. I didn’t get some of that reassurance from my other college tours.
Yeah, that belief is so important. Tell us a little bit about the research that you’ve decided to do here.
My research here, I’m technically an electroanalytical chemist. So I do electrochemistry. And I do analytical chemistry. So, electric chemistry is like a small subfield of analytical in broader terms.
Okay.
And so, specifically, I do women’s health-based research. So, my primary work is what we call the fetal membrane on a chip or the FMOC. And so, this fetal membrane on a chip, we’re able to mimic the fetal membranes in the human placenta in this small 3D model. And then we do electrochemistry sensing on that model. So I’ve kind of termed it the MBESA, a magnetic bead electrochemical sandwich assay. So similar to an ELISA or an enzyme-linked immunoabsorbent assay, if you’re familiar with that realm. And so it’s an analytical sensor that is able to give us an extremely low detection limits. And we can use it in this tiny, low-volume microfluidic model to be able to get a very fast sensing readout. And so while my work is all analytical and chemistry-based, it has this broader women’s health significance.
Yeah. So with the sensors, what are those sensors picking up?
So the sensors are picking up inflammatory cytokines of interest that potentially could be in a preterm birth case. So for example, if a mother is going into labor, she has this inflammatory response. And she has an increased presence of, let’s say, interleukin 1 beta,
IL-1 beta. And so with the sensor, we can measure the IL-1 beta levels to see: Is there a heightened IL-1 beta response due to inflammation? Is there a low IL-1 beta response?
And we can do that in our fetal membrane on a chip. We can infect the chip and then look at those IL-1 beta responses.
Interesting. And are you currently doing this in a clinical setting?
So we do get human cells, and we can get placentas and use placental samples to use on our magnetic bead electrochemical sensor assay. Yes. However, it has not been translated into a clinical application yet to market to a clinician at this point.
I heard the word yet, though.
Not yet.
Tell us a little bit about how you became interested in this specific topic.
I like studying things that are understudied. That is like where my heart is. And it can be anything. It doesn’t have to be one subject or another subject. I mean, we can talk for something as broad as food and dirt, like two polar opposite fields. If they’re understudied, I’m interested. It can be theater and music. And so a lot of people have hobbies. And like me, I don’t really have hobbies. I just like to study what other people don’t. And so when it came to this field, the placenta and women’s health is extremely understudied. And the placenta is the least studied organ. So that sparked my interest. And then electrochemistry, how many graduate programs have electrochemistry labs?
I don’t know the answer.
It’s not a lot. It’s a very small field. And everybody knows everybody because it’s such a small field. And so… When those two things came together, I didn’t know anything about the human placenta or electrochemistry when I joined this lab. So I wasn’t like one of the students coming in who said, oh, I know I want to do mass spectrometry. I did that before. For me, I didn’t have any experience doing either of them, but it was understudied. And so that’s like, okay, I want to do that.
So I’m hearing this pursuit of the challenge. Tell me a little bit about where that comes from.
I think it comes from who I am as a human and what’s in my core as a person. And so my family life, I’m a first generation student and I have this really non-traditional path from my family lineage. So I will be the first in my family to become a doctor and get a doctorate degree, but I’m also the first in my family to even complete undergrad. And some of my family didn’t even complete high school. And so with that, I just have this motive of I’m breaking this. I am going to be different and I’m going to do what I’ve been told is not possible.
You will become the transitional character in that family lineage.
I hope so. I’m definitely trying for sure. We’ll see.
Hannah, talk a little bit about the intersection of these disciplines and how they came together.
Before I joined this lab, there was already this ongoing project with this fetal membrane on a chip. So this fetal membrane on a chip wasn’t something that I developed. My PI already had the funding for this project. So that had already been going on. But as far as for me and my experience for this collaborative nature, in order for me to be an analytical chemist and develop sensors for whatever it is. You have to be able to be collaborative. Because how am I supposed to know what a clinician needs, if I don’t get into their space. And so for me, that meant going to conferences that were for clinicians. That meant going to women’s health reproductive conferences and looking at what inflammatory targets are they looking at? What are they seeing? And so once they see, okay, they’re looking at this every day and this is a big marker for them and their current sensor timeline is two days. So let me change my sensor and be able to help make their life easier. And I have to then communicate in their space.
Yeah. So talk a little bit about the discoveries that you’ve made here at Vanderbilt.
With the sensor, we were able to really term it that in MBESA. M-B-E-S-A term. And so with it, we were able to publish the paper with extremely low limits of detection, fast responses. We were able to show that when the fetal membrane on a chip was infected with GBS or group B streptococcus, which is a one in four women carry it in their bodies. And it’s a very prominent thing in women’s health applications. We were able to show analytically the increase in inflammatory responses of that with our sensor. And we were able to get a few publications out with that.
Nice. This MBESA, is this something you’re looking to commercialize?
It wouldn’t be my go-for task, but our lab is definitely working on it and we are continuing the work and the students that are now joining the lab and are joining this work, that is going to be their next steps is taking the sensor and putting it in a point where it can go to the hands of a clinician. But with that comes having to program software and making things that are translatable from a scientific researcher who’s working behind a bench to a clinician who is very user-friendly. So it is a bit of a process to go from science to tableside.
Hannah, I keep hearing you bring up, you know, the clinician setting, how you’ve gone to these conferences. How did you know that you wanted to connect to the real world? I think so many folks in their research just kind of stay behind the bench, stay within the research papers. What was it that made you say, I want to have a real impact?
For me, and I think this was such a pivotal point of my entire PhD career, was that, and nothing against these students, but there are so many students who are so in the publications, in the, they get so far in that they miss the broader impact and the broader aspects of it. And I think for me, I was able to really see that more real-world connection because when I walk off the Vanderbilt perimeter, it’s like I’m back in the real-world. Everybody I talk with every single day, all of my family, no one has the same intellectual rigor that is here at Vanderbilt. And some of these students, all of their family holds PhDs. That’s all they know. And so when there’s that analytical rigor is so high, you sometimes are filled with expectations and pressures compared to where me, every time I left, I was looking at, it was a constant reminder of, I’m doing this work for these real reason causes. Or I need to collaborate with people who are not in this analytical rigor, developing new science, doing new research. Their goal is to get the results for a patient. And so it’s more, it’s, I don’t want to say it’s more human, but it’s more, it’s more real world based. And I constantly had that real world exposure 24/7. And I think that really helped.
Yeah. I hope that you can find ways to communicate that to the other researchers out there.
Yeah, for sure.
So important. Vanderbilt’s first Schmidt Science Fellow.
Yes.
Congratulations.
Thank you. Thank you to Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt, I wouldn’t have been able to do it without Vanderbilt.
Can you tell our audience a little bit about this fellowship?
Yeah, so the Schmidt Science Fellowship is a phenomenal fellowship. It is one of the world’s most prestigious fellowships. And I say world because it’s not just national. People from Europe, China, they apply for this fellowship. And so for me, when I saw the application come through on my email, I got an email from maybe even graduate school. Fellowship application. submit 2026. And the application process starts like a year and a half prior to doing it. And it’s a fellowship that really harnesses on interdisciplinary science and pivoting disciplines, pivoting fields. And so for a lot of students, they see that and they’re like, oh, I’m a chemist. I’m not leaving my field. Or, oh, I’m a biologist. I’m not leaving my field. And for me, I didn’t see that opportunity as, oh, I’m leaving my field. Science requires broad interdisciplinary minds, just like how I am now with chemistry and connecting with clinicians. Science doesn’t happen if there’s not that diversity, that bridge. And so when I saw that, I was like, okay, sign me up. And you don’t get the chances you don’t apply for. So I submitted my application. And it wasn’t the only fellowship that I applied for. I applied for a lot of them. And so I submitted it, and it was a very long process.
For folks that are going to submit in the future, any advice you want to share?
Start early and prepare from the heart because I think that makes all the difference.
There’s thousands of people that are making proposals. And if you believe in yourself and you believe that you are able to put down what’s on that piece of paper, and I think it really makes a lasting impact. And I think that’s important. How does your application stand out from somebody else’s?
That’s great advice. What can you tell us about the research you’ll be doing in the future?
Yeah, for this fellowship, I’m going to pivot from analytical chemistry to marine biology.
Oh.
Yes, it’s a big pivot. And if you look at the history of Schmidt Science Fellows they do large pivots, and this one’s large. So it’s one of the larger ones. And so I’m going to be looking at identifying some safe and natural treatments, therapies for invasive fungal infections that are found in leatherback sea turtles in Florida’s beaches and on the coast. And so with that, it’s not me leaving chemistry. It’s definitely not a departure, but it is using some of these analytical skills in these chemistry foundations to look at therapeutics in a different species.
Nice. And I understand Schmidt Science Fellows, there’s this aspect of high risk. Can you tell us a little bit about the risk?
Well, the high risk is, one, you’re having a chemist go do field-based research in the Florida sand. So I’m going from a very controlled laboratory benchtop to a very fluid moving beach.
So the risk of that is high. The other risk is the fact that leatherback sea turtles are endangered and they’re very protected. And so everything has to follow marine turtle permits and protocols and everything has to be done to very strict ethical standards. And so the work, it is timely. And like I said, there’s a lot of risk involved. And so with that comes a lot of patience, a lot of training, a lot of extra background that I have to learn very quickly to keep up the pace of biologists who’ve done this their entire life. So it’s a risky pivot, but if successful and even working towards success is high reward.
As you transition from the bench to the beach, What are you doing to prepare yourself?
The good thing about this application is it’s over a year and a half process. So through that, there are different stages and different requirements and different things you have to do. So through that year and a half process, I have, of course, done the very extensive deep dives into the literature and seeing what’s been done, what’s out there, preparing for experiments, going to Florida, looking at the spaces, talking with collaborators, connecting with the laboratory that I’m going to be working with. And so these are all things that I’ve been able to do now. But just like my current work, it has to be collaborative. The only successful science is collaborative. And so with that means forming these connections and forming these teams of people to be able to do this work. Because it’s not, I’m not the cure. I’m not the scientist that’s going to cure this problem. But I am potentially the scientist that could bridge these disciplines to have more people working on a solution.
Love that perspective. Hannah, we’re going to transition a little bit from the research to you. What have you enjoyed most about being a graduate student here at Vanderbilt?
I have enjoyed the most. Most definitely my lab and my PI, Dr. David Cliffle. That’s been my favorite part. And everybody always tells me, they’re like, it’s not going to football games or going to the library. And I’m like, no, it’s not. It’s my lab environment. And that was one of the reasons I chose Vanderbilt, the people. And one of the reasons I chose the lab that I chose to join. I liked it was an understudied field, but also the people, the flexibility, the understanding of. You are an adult. You get to be your own researcher. And there are some labs where they have a clock in and a clock out. And you have these very strict, you have to write weekly reports and weekly updates. You have to tell me what you’re doing every day. And for me, I wanted a lab where the PI believed in me to do the science. I wanted that PI that would not leave me completely stranded on the boat in the middle of the ocean, but would drop me a very nice care package if I needed it. But I also didn’t want that PI that was captaining the ship. So that was my favorite part.
Yeah, mentorship is so interesting because it’s really not about the mentor. It’s about the fit between the mentor and the mentee. How did you know Dr. Cliffle was the right fit?
I knew I was independent, and I knew I didn’t need a captain giving me set defined directions because I’ve never had that in my entire life. I’ve never had that type of guidance or structure. So I knew I didn’t need that. And I knew I didn’t want that. But I also know I needed someone who was accessible that was here, that was present if I needed a response. And he was the director of graduate studies. He’s forced to be here, so I knew I could find him.
That’s great. On the flip side, what has been your greatest challenge?
My greatest challenge has most certainly been myself. And so with that, it comes since I had never needed someone to give me a structure of what to do. I completed this PhD in four years. And so it’s typically a five, even six plus year program. And so my greatest challenge was me because if I wouldn’t have had self-control and self-discipline, I would have worked 24-7 all night long. Until I would have been sick. Like, that’s just who I am. So my challenge was me balancing physical health, mental health, and a PhD at the same time. I am 100% my hardest critic. And so hardest challenge is managing you and my imposter syndrome.
What were some ways you managed that?
The best one, which is so crazy thing, but I have to give credit to my PI. He was the one that told me, he was like, you’ve got to get over the imposter syndrome. I mean, you have to break it down. And so I think when I came to Vanderbilt, I realized I was in a lab where my PI was not in the lab. It was up to me to figure it out. I’m the scientist. And so, if you need this, you need to go find it. If this is your experiment, you need to set it up. And so for me, that really helped break it down because I finally realized I don’t need someone to hold my hand or show me how to run an experiment or tell me how to set it up. I’m capable of doing it. And after you do it so many times and you have failures and you have successes, you really learn so much. And so I realized I’m just another scientist and I learned this new independence.
You know, I think about the research on imposter syndrome. A lot of it talks about it shows up really high in transitional periods. What are you doing now as you start to think about your transition to make sure you’ve got that under control?
Right. And for all of the transition I’ve had from high school to undergrad and undergrad to graduate school, and then now from graduate school to my postdoc, this is the least of imposter syndrome I’ve felt out of all the different transitions. So that is good. But I can’t lie and say that I’m not nervous or that I’m not scared. Anybody is nervous about what their future is going to entail. But what I do know now is that if I think I can, I can’t and I won’t. And I’m just delaying the inevitable. And that will be the challenge. And so I now have this new, I don’t want to say confidence, but this new resiliency. And not that it wasn’t resilient before, but now I know, well, when there’s a failure. Okay, well, that didn’t work. That’s a success because that’s one more thing off the list that I know doesn’t work. So I’m one step closer. And so you have to get rid of the imposter syndrome. It’s not an option. And so if it’s not there, you don’t have it, you create that. It’s something self-inflicted.
And that’s such a great perspective on failure as well. If I’ve learned from it, it’s not really a failure.
No, it’s definitely not. Not at all. And so, like I said, in science where there’s only these such limited fields, it’s like, well, you only have five possibilities. So when one doesn’t fail, okay, you were, I mean, and people want to see that it didn’t work. Okay, well, where’s the evidence?
And talk a little bit about the Vanderbilt resources that maybe helped you get over imposter syndrome or resources that just helped in general throughout your time here.
For sure. There were so many. And so it was one of the greatest things about Vanderbilt was the different resources they had. And the one that I benefited from the most that I think helped me the most was the different graduate school grants and funding for conferences, professional development, dissertation enhancement grants, leadership grants. And all of those grants were able to fund different aspects of my research, or they were able to fund conferences where I was able to go on a very large, sometimes even an international scale, and go to these conferences where there were people here that were world-renowned scientists. I mean, the scientists here are still world-renowned scientists.
Of course.
But I was able to go and in the scale and present my research and talk with other people. And the more you do it and the more you get comfortable in that space, you realize I’m not just a peanut in this big, big pantry. Instead, I’m the box. And so I’m a player in the field.
And so had I not had those experiences and those resources to go to those conferences and connect with these people, it would be very different. And I don’t know that I would have had some of the courage and some of the ability to knock down that imposter syndrome had I not—Vanderbilt had the faith in me to fund me to go to these things.
Yeah. So we do have those grants available. You got to go looking for them sometimes. We try to put them in emails, newsletters, etc. Tell us, how did those grants get on your radar?
Every email and grant is always on my radar. Every single one is because you don’t get what you don’t apply for. And so what I wanted to do was make sure I could do what was available to me and really build my CV and build that because I know that CV is going to follow me into the future. And I want to be able to show that I’ve done these experiences. I’ve had this work done and I was able to learn from that and gain from that and so if I have the opportunity to be here at Vanderbilt. I can’t leave opportunities on the table. And so for me, coming from a background where it’s like, I didn’t have a lot of opportunities growing up. And so to me, when I do have an opportunity to apply for me, it means a lot to me because it’s worth something when you’ve been there, when you didn’t have those things.
And all these conferences you’ve gone to, all these different people that you’ve met,
who is someone along the way that has been able to provide some additional mentorship to you?
Outside of the chemistry department or are you thinking within the chemistry department?
I was thinking outside, but you’re welcome to share both.
So the whole chemistry department is great and all Vanderbilt is great, but there’s a collaborator in VUMC who’s on my committee, has been great. But even in these, when you go out and you collaborate, the number one thing that I think has been, like, my thing has been taking care of mental and physical health. And that means, like, reaching out to,
like Vanderbilt has great, like, doctors and health. And so I think, like, that really has been the thing to, like, keep me going. Like, I knew I had to value my mental health. And so even at Vanderbilt, there are great people. I’ve met so many great scientists. Sometimes those scientists, it’s so rigorous. It’s so rigorous. And so for me, I think along the way that helped me the most was clinicians, my own personal providers.
Yeah, absolutely. It takes a village.
It does, absolutely.
Tell us a little bit about what you’ve discovered about yourself since coming to Vanderbilt.
For me, I have discovered a lot of things. But one is that we’ve already touched on, I’m the hardest critic. There is nothing I’m not willing to try. I’m hardheaded. But again, I knew all those things from the beginning. But I know I’m capable. And when I came in here, I was asking the department, are you sure? Like, did you really want to pick me? Like, do you think I can survive in this world? And now leaving, I have without a doubt. Like, I know without a doubt I will be okay. Well, am I always going to be the expert? Absolutely not. I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be, but I have all the skills now that I need to survive in these extremely academic, rigorous environments.
Yeah. You know, sometimes we talk about stubbornness as this thing that gets in our way, but a lot of times an attribute can be both a negative or a positive, depending on how we’re utilizing it. So how are you able to take your characteristics and use them in the most positive ways possible?
I love the question. And I try to harness it as being a good example. Because for somebody who is so stubborn and is so hard-headed, like, it’s inevitable you’re going to have failure.
And so I think you can take that in two ways. And some scientists will have this stubborn and this hardheadedness mentality. And so when they fail, then they have X, Y, Z excuse for why they failed and whose fault it was and what happened. Compared to where me, when I failed, I failed. I messed up. And if somebody was at the fault of that, I’m like, I’m so sorry. You were so right. This experiment did not work. And I just wasted a week of my time and these possible chemicals. I’m so sorry. I failed. And so for me, I think being able to be apologetic and recognize that this was your stubbornness, your hardheaded, and it was a failure, I think is a good example. And it shows people like it’s okay to know that you failed and to be hardheaded. But you just have to own up to that and be humble about it. And I think setting that good example is a way to like how to show you, you can use a fault or like a not so great quality, but yet make it a good example.
Ownership, yeah. It’s such an important aspect of whatever it is we do. The successes, the failures, we’ve got to own those. What’s something you wish you had known before you started this journey?
I wish I would have known that it’s okay to slow down and to believe in myself a little bit more. I had the goal of doing it in four years. And if I have a goal, I have to meet it. So I did that goal. However, I do think there were some experiments that I ran that it’s like I had to redo them and repeat it and do it two, three, four, five times. Because instead of slowing down and going, okay, what went wrong? Why? Instead of spending two weeks in the laboratory, let’s go spend two days in the library. And so I think had I realized, okay, I’m slowing down in the moment and I am taking up more time now, but in the long run, it’s going to save time in the future. And so that is something with the new students coming into the lab, I’m telling them, they’re kind of like being like me and they’re running experiment, experiment, experiment, and they’re spending hours in the lab and I’m like, just wait. And they get the data. And instead of spending five days just sitting on the data, analyzing the data, waiting, waiting, they go right back into the lab. And so I wish I would have, and I tell them like, just wait, sleep on it. Because in the middle of the night, at midnight, you’ll wake up and it’ll hit you. And it’s like, had you had just waited and slowed down, you would have saved time. And so that’s, and I’m taking that thing that I learned into my next field.
We’ve had lots of great advice on this podcast. That’s at the top of the list.
Well, good. I’m glad. I’m glad. I’m glad I learned it because I won’t forget it.
You have recently defended the dissertation. Congratulations. Tell us, particularly those who are in the process and haven’t gotten there yet, what was that like for you? What did you do to make sure you were ready? Was it as scary as you thought it would be?
It was as scary as I thought it was going to be. Not going to lie about that. It was. But for me,
I prepared well in advance. And so I think it would have been a much more daunting task had I not had publications and I had not had already had an outline. And so for me,
when I went into even my first exams before my qualifying exam, the last couple of slides of my exam were an outline of my dissertation where my committee had already laid eyes on that and they had already agreed to these chapters. And so when it came down to it, I wasn’t having to think, oh, is my committee going to be okay with this? Are they going to like these chapters? Are they going to like this? I had already presented to that then. And so I really used my committee as a resource to get their expertise to make that dissertation process a lot simpler. And so for me, I value mental health. And so I had to think about it. If my dissertation is due by the end of March, what’s better for my mental health? Is it for me to write my dissertation in the middle of an ice storm where there’s not a tree, there’s not a leaf on the tree, and there’s ice outside, and everybody’s in a panic? Or is it mentally better for me to write my dissertation when the Christmas tree’s up, the lights are sparkling, it’s warm and cozy, and the fireplace is going, and I’m sitting there with a blanket, and I’m writing. And so I knew for me, for my mental health, what was going to be best. So I started writing my dissertation back in late October, November, and that was when I actually finally started actually really writing. The outline I’d done a year prior. And so my advice is to get started.
Yeah. I wish you could have warned us all about that ice storm that was coming in February.
Yeah, I’m glad I wasn’t writing my dissertation in the middle of it because a lot of people had no power.
Hannah, this has been such a great conversation. Is there anything else that you’d like to share? My last piece of advice or for any of the students potentially listening is I really hope they know that no matter where they came from, where their background is, or who they’re trying to be, that they go forth into the future with this mentality that they if they think that they can’t, they won’t. And their success is going to be lower compared to where if they really believe in themselves and they think they can and they just do it and they don’t worry about procrastinating, they don’t worry about what everyone else is going to think, and they do what their heart is set on, their success is going to be much higher and much more likely. And so there have been times in my life where I’ve overcome huge obstacles that I would have never have thought I was capable of. And so my advice to them is just to keep going and to not let those roadblocks discourage them, but use them as a move to keep going. And so if anyone has any questions for me or wanted to ever talk, I’m always an open book. And so I tell everybody, find my email, find my phone number, and I will never hesitate to respond to an email to help any other student about anything that they have. And so I hope everyone knows that.
Yeah, that’s a great invitation. I don’t imagine you have a lot of time for TV, but have you watched Ted Lasso by any chance?
I have not.
Oh, you would love it, Hannah. It is all about the importance of belief.
Oh, really? I’ll have to get on that. I do try to give myself a little TV entertainment here and there, but my genre of TV is more so as far realistic as my life as possible. So we’re talking about like crazy reality TV, like keeping up with the Kardashians type of, just because it’s so much more world. It’s not academic-based. It’s not, yeah.
Well, this is an American football coach who decides to coach a Premier League in England. Okay. So pretty far out there from what you’re currently doing.
All right. Yes, I can get down with some football.
So, Hannah Richards. Vanderbilt’s first Schmidt Science Fellow. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Thank you, Nick. I really appreciate it.
Thanks for joining us on another episode of Discovery Dialogues. Stay connected with the Vanderbilt Graduate School as we continue exploring ideas, innovations, and people shaping our academic community. Until next time, keep asking questions, stay curious, and continue discovering what inspires you.
This podcast was recorded in Studio 608 at Vanderbilt University with the assistance of J.T. Spangler. This podcast is produced by Anna Thomas, Nick Hyer, and Stacey Satchell in the Graduate School at Vanderbilt University with audio editing by Ben Hill. The perspectives shared in this episode are those of the speakers and do not necessarily represent the views of Vanderbilt University.