When senior researcher Vidya Alexander arrived in Canada three years ago to join Atuka, it felt like she’d travelled from one extreme to another. “In Kuwait, where I’m from, temperatures can reach over 50 degrees Celsius, so when I came here the winters felt pretty harsh,” she says. “But I think I now love them more. I love everything about Canada, how it’s so welcoming to different cultures. It’s so much easier to feel like you belong.”
Vidya came to Atuka well prepared, with ten years of research experience under her belt in immunology, molecular biology, and oncology, much of it while working as a senior researcher at Kuwait University in Jabriya, first in the department of anatomy, and then as part of its Research Core Facility.
In her role at Atuka, Vidya handles all the technical aspects of a study, from administering doses to performing necropsies, surgeries, postmortem assays, and so much more. “Mostly, it’s lab work,” she says, with obvious delight. “I do well in the lab, it’s like coming home.” Another aspect of Vidya’s job is her involvement with Atuka’s quality team, where her roles include maintaining the quality management system and working towards higher quality standards and certifications.
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What’s the most challenging part of your job?
What’s unique about Atuka is that each study we do for our clients is different, tailored specifically to the prospective therapeutic, which means each study has different requirements in terms of drug preparation, model induction, and analytical methods. Setting everything up from the beginning of the study to the end perfectly can be a little bit of a challenge.
How did your interest in science and biology first start?
My mom is a researcher at Kuwait University, so during my school holidays I used to visit her lab often. It was mainly in-vivo work, like I do here. That was an inspiration, along with meeting different professors at the university. Learning about their research made me interested in a career in science.
Did you have any familiarity with Parkinson’s research when you first joined Atuka?
When I was working in the Department of Anatomy at Kuwait University, my initial work was on the brain, mostly in-vitro studies looking at microglia and astrocytes, so it was kind of similar to the work here, except that here it’s in in-vivo studies where we do more animal work. So, I was familiar with the brain, but not specifically Parkinson’s. It’s a learning curve for me right now, but I’m learning from the best scientists, who are solely focused on Parkinson’s, as well as from all the varied collaborations we have going on at any one time.
Is there someone who has been a mentor to you?
Professor Khalid Khan, who was chairman at Kuwait University’s Department of Anatomy, was a mentor to me when I was there. He is an expert on the central nervous system; I think he knows the entire anatomical structure of the brain better than anyone else. Anytime you approached him with questions, he would have answers. He was another reason I loved science. He’s retired now and living in the U.S., but he still writes books on anatomy. It’s very rare to find scientists that late in life still writing books and keeping it going.
Is there anything about the human brain that continues to surprise or fascinate you?
That there’s still this endless opportunity for discovery. There’s so much more we have yet to uncover about the brain. I don’t think anybody has a whole idea of how our brains work and all the various processes that go into our daily lives. I think we’ve just discovered a small percentage of what our brains are capable of. How much more we can discover about the brain is what is interesting to me. If we are able to improve our understanding, we can use that knowledge to develop therapies or cure diseases like Parkinson’s.