This week's PhDetails is #97 William Barrie who studies at the University of Cambridge. Will grew up and went to school in London, and decided he wanted to study science around the age of 16, primarily driven by an interest in the natural world. He went up to Cambridge to read Natural Sciences in 2015, ending up specialising in zoology with a final year research project on human language-gene co-evolution in the Americas. Will then took a year out of academia, spending four months living in Botswana working for a wildlife filming company (the film, Elephant by DisneyNature, has just come out!) and the remainder of the year working for a fintech startup in London on the data science team. He then began his PhD in October 2019, using ancient DNA from human skeletons to look at how modern human diversity is related to our ancestry. You can find Will on twitter @WilliamBarrie!
Let’s begin by talking about completely unscientific stuff. What is your favourite band/musical artist pre-1980?
Louis Armstrong or Sly and the Family Stone.
Favourite band/musical artist post 1980?
This is tough. I’m going to pick a few: Tower of Power, Stevie Wonder, Sufjan Stevens, Radiohead, Daniel Caesar, Tom Misch.
Favourite movie?
Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Objectively the greatest films ever made.
Do you listen to podcasts?
I do. For the more serious politics and world affairs stuff, Talking Politics, the New Statesman Podcast, and Political Thinking with Nick Robinson. For more light-hearted listening, My Favourite Murder, Reasons to be Cheerful and Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History (for when you need to kill 22 hours).
Where do you study and who are your supervisors?
I study at the University of Cambridge in the Zoology Department. My PI is Eske Willerslev (Cambridge/ Copenhagen) and co-supervisors are Daniel Lawson (Bristol) and Rasmus Nielsen (Berkeley).
What year of your PhD are you in?
I’m a newbie first year.
Who’s giving you the money – and for how long?
I get funding from the Zoology Department (Weis-Fogh studentship) for three years.
Do you have any publications?
Not yet (sensitive question), but I’m aiming to be an author on a paper in a couple of months.
Did you do a masters – where was it and was it about?
I didn’t, but I took a year out between my undergrad and PhD in which I worked for a fintech start-up in London as a data scientist and I really started to learn to code properly. We’re not great at teaching coding skills to biologists, so there’s a lot to be said for learning in the commercial sector and bringing those skills back to academia, especially if you’re in the right environment with good mentors.
Do you do any field or labwork?
I don’t do any fieldwork or wet-labwork. I’m the guy who leaches off those hard-working wet-lab scientists and analyses the data they generate.
Bioinformatics is great because it gives you massive flexibility and it’s constantly intellectually stimulating. For me, labwork was always a non-optimal combination of stressful and boring. I also know that my work won’t be done by robots in five years’ time!
How many PhDs did you apply for – what were you looking for?
I applied for to Cambridge and for a couple of DTPs (Doctoral Training Programmes) in London. I considered going to the States but I was put off by how long their PhDs take, and by the current political climate there. In the end a traditional PhD program rather than a DTP seemed best.
What one piece of advice would you give to a masters student applying to PhDs now?
It’s cliché, but make sure you meet your supervisor (and ideally the rest of the lab) before applying. I’m always shocked by how many people fail to do this. The people you work with are even more important than your research questions, the facilities or funding, so make sure you scout them out. They’re definitely doing the same to you, after all.
How often do you meet with your supervisors?
I try to have a meeting with them every two weeks. Because they’re based mainly in Copenhagen, Bristol and California, we were used to Zoom meetings long before Covid-19 introduced them to the world!
What supervisor traits are important to you?
Someone who will look out for you and fight your corner, preferably with a heavy dose of empathy.
What do you think are the worst supervisor traits?
Anyone who doesn’t trust their students to work independently (though not everyone would agree).
In one sentence what is your PhD about?
Finding out how modern humans are related to ancient human populations, and how this affects modern human phenotypic diversity (so diseases, physical appearance etc.).
What has been your academic highlight of the last year?
Attending the launch of the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre in Denmark, the largest ever project looking at ancient DNA and using it to investigate the origins and causes of mental health disorders. It was cool to meet the names you know from reading papers.
Have you had an academic lowpoint of the last year – if so what happened?
I’ve been very stuck a couple of times on coding problems. Key trick: take a weekend off and very often the solution will seem obvious to fresh eyes.
Which academic idol/scientist have you met?
I met David Attenborough for tea once. I’m sure I hardly need extoll his virtues to this audience. His voice in person really lived up to wild expectations.
Which academic idol/scientist would you most like to meet?
Either George Price or Richard Dawkins. Price was one of the most important 20th century population geneticists during the Modern Synthesis, who, troubled by the implications of evolutionary theory, spent his life searching for the evolutionary basis for altruism and eventually ended up taking his own life in a squat in London after giving away all he had to the poor.
Dawkins was one of the main influences in my becoming a biologist, especially after reading the Extended Phenotype. He’s made a lot of enemies with his God books, but he’s also a really, really excellent biologist. No one is better at communicating complex abstract ideas, and lot of professional scientists could learn from him.
Who has been your academic role model/inspiration and why?
Prof. Maanasa Raghavan was my PI during my undergraduate research thesis on gene-language co-evolution in the Americas. This was the period when I realised I wanted to do more research, and Maanasa was a major reason why.
My grandfather was also a scientist and I wish he had lived to see me doing a PhD.
Do you have a favourite paper?
This is like asking a mother to pick between her children. I’m going to pick two:
Orr, HA 2005 The genetic theory of adaptation: A brief history Nature Reviews Genetics 6:115-118.
Gould, SJ & Lewontin, R 1979 The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B.205: 581–598
What has been your favourite conference so far?
Sadly due to the coronavirus pandemic I haven’t been able to attend any yet.
What hours do you typically work?
In theory around 10am-6pm. Quite a lot of variability though…
How do you avoid procrastinating?
I make a plan at the beginning of every week, and break this down day by day as the week goes on. It’s very important to have short-term goals in a long-term project.
What motivates you in your day to day PhD life?
I enjoy thinking about the early humans we’re studying and how they would have lived and viewed the world. There’s a lot of uncertainty and mystery, so every revelation – however minor – is exciting.
What do you do when you’re not working – how do you balance it with your PhD?
I always take the weekends off, and don’t work from home. The work/home barrier is really important. In my free time I play lacrosse and socialise; I’m also a big fan of wildlife, photography and the outdoors.
If a genie could grant you one wish to help with your PhD what would you wish for?
Like every PhD student, I feel under-read, so maybe the ability to read and understand papers at lightning speed.
What would be your dream job?
This is a question I’ve been asking myself for a while. Ideally something that combines intellectual stimulation, travel, the opportunity to work with great people, and to do something positive for the world. Hardly original, but hey!
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Well, hopefully I’ll have a PhD unless things go very wrong. So maybe a post-doc position?
One word to sum up your future in academia:
Complicated.
What do you want to achieve outside of academia in the coming year?
Win the southern prem lacrosse league. And the lottery.
What essential tool hardware/software could you not do your PhD without?
My laptop and an internet connection. In terms of software: PyCharm, iTerm2, python, R, Mendeley.
Where is somewhere you would like to work in the future?
As is becoming increasingly clear during the present lockdown, not from home! Otherwise I think it would be cool to work at the Crick Institute in London.
Do you have a favourite organism?
I have to say humans, because they are at the forefront of my research. In my field, most of the most interesting techniques are developed and applied to them first.
Having said that, I’d love to see ancient DNA work done on other species; I would love to work on African mammals in particular, looking at their evolution and past demography – particularly in a species like elephants which move over massive distances.
Are there any social interactions/meetings which have enhanced your PhD experience?
Any time spent with other PhD students and academics is always encouraging. We have a lovely community on my floor of the department with everyone studying very different things, from coral bleaching and ancient pollen to movement ecology and conservation.
If you could change one thing about your group/department structure what would it be?
I’d like control of all the finances.
What major question in your subject area is yet to be addressed – why is it important and why isn’t anyone addressing it?
We still have a few black holes in our understanding of past human demography. We’re now filling in those gaps, and moving from asking coarse questions about movement and population mixtures to harder questions about fine-scale movements (which can reveal even more from an archaeological/historical perspective), as well as more biologically interesting questions – about selection, introgression, and implications for modern disease phenotypes for example. There are major challenges in scaling these methods to include more samples and deeper time periods. Overall though, the future in ancient DNA looks very bright.
Let’s begin by talking about completely unscientific stuff. What is your favourite band/musical artist pre-1980?Louis Armstrong or Sly and the Family Stone.
Favourite band/musical artist post 1980?
This is tough. I’m going to pick a few: Tower of Power, Stevie Wonder, Sufjan Stevens, Radiohead, Daniel Caesar, Tom Misch.
Favourite movie?
Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Objectively the greatest films ever made.
Do you listen to podcasts?
I do. For the more serious politics and world affairs stuff, Talking Politics, the New Statesman Podcast, and Political Thinking with Nick Robinson. For more light-hearted listening, My Favourite Murder, Reasons to be Cheerful and Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History (for when you need to kill 22 hours).
Where do you study and who are your supervisors?
I study at the University of Cambridge in the Zoology Department. My PI is Eske Willerslev (Cambridge/ Copenhagen) and co-supervisors are Daniel Lawson (Bristol) and Rasmus Nielsen (Berkeley).
What year of your PhD are you in?
I’m a newbie first year.
Who’s giving you the money – and for how long?
I get funding from the Zoology Department (Weis-Fogh studentship) for three years.
Do you have any publications?
Not yet (sensitive question), but I’m aiming to be an author on a paper in a couple of months.
Did you do a masters – where was it and was it about?
I didn’t, but I took a year out between my undergrad and PhD in which I worked for a fintech start-up in London as a data scientist and I really started to learn to code properly. We’re not great at teaching coding skills to biologists, so there’s a lot to be said for learning in the commercial sector and bringing those skills back to academia, especially if you’re in the right environment with good mentors.
Do you do any field or labwork?
I don’t do any fieldwork or wet-labwork. I’m the guy who leaches off those hard-working wet-lab scientists and analyses the data they generate.
Bioinformatics is great because it gives you massive flexibility and it’s constantly intellectually stimulating. For me, labwork was always a non-optimal combination of stressful and boring. I also know that my work won’t be done by robots in five years’ time!
How many PhDs did you apply for – what were you looking for?
I applied for to Cambridge and for a couple of DTPs (Doctoral Training Programmes) in London. I considered going to the States but I was put off by how long their PhDs take, and by the current political climate there. In the end a traditional PhD program rather than a DTP seemed best.
What one piece of advice would you give to a masters student applying to PhDs now?
It’s cliché, but make sure you meet your supervisor (and ideally the rest of the lab) before applying. I’m always shocked by how many people fail to do this. The people you work with are even more important than your research questions, the facilities or funding, so make sure you scout them out. They’re definitely doing the same to you, after all.
How often do you meet with your supervisors?
I try to have a meeting with them every two weeks. Because they’re based mainly in Copenhagen, Bristol and California, we were used to Zoom meetings long before Covid-19 introduced them to the world!
What supervisor traits are important to you?
Someone who will look out for you and fight your corner, preferably with a heavy dose of empathy.
What do you think are the worst supervisor traits?
Anyone who doesn’t trust their students to work independently (though not everyone would agree).
In one sentence what is your PhD about?
Finding out how modern humans are related to ancient human populations, and how this affects modern human phenotypic diversity (so diseases, physical appearance etc.).
What has been your academic highlight of the last year?
Attending the launch of the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre in Denmark, the largest ever project looking at ancient DNA and using it to investigate the origins and causes of mental health disorders. It was cool to meet the names you know from reading papers.
Have you had an academic lowpoint of the last year – if so what happened?
I’ve been very stuck a couple of times on coding problems. Key trick: take a weekend off and very often the solution will seem obvious to fresh eyes.
Which academic idol/scientist have you met?
I met David Attenborough for tea once. I’m sure I hardly need extoll his virtues to this audience. His voice in person really lived up to wild expectations.
Which academic idol/scientist would you most like to meet?
Either George Price or Richard Dawkins. Price was one of the most important 20th century population geneticists during the Modern Synthesis, who, troubled by the implications of evolutionary theory, spent his life searching for the evolutionary basis for altruism and eventually ended up taking his own life in a squat in London after giving away all he had to the poor.
Dawkins was one of the main influences in my becoming a biologist, especially after reading the Extended Phenotype. He’s made a lot of enemies with his God books, but he’s also a really, really excellent biologist. No one is better at communicating complex abstract ideas, and lot of professional scientists could learn from him.
Who has been your academic role model/inspiration and why?
Prof. Maanasa Raghavan was my PI during my undergraduate research thesis on gene-language co-evolution in the Americas. This was the period when I realised I wanted to do more research, and Maanasa was a major reason why.
My grandfather was also a scientist and I wish he had lived to see me doing a PhD.
Do you have a favourite paper?
This is like asking a mother to pick between her children. I’m going to pick two:
Orr, HA 2005 The genetic theory of adaptation: A brief history Nature Reviews Genetics 6:115-118.
Gould, SJ & Lewontin, R 1979 The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B.205: 581–598
What has been your favourite conference so far?
Sadly due to the coronavirus pandemic I haven’t been able to attend any yet.
What hours do you typically work?
In theory around 10am-6pm. Quite a lot of variability though…
How do you avoid procrastinating?
I make a plan at the beginning of every week, and break this down day by day as the week goes on. It’s very important to have short-term goals in a long-term project.
What motivates you in your day to day PhD life?
I enjoy thinking about the early humans we’re studying and how they would have lived and viewed the world. There’s a lot of uncertainty and mystery, so every revelation – however minor – is exciting.
What do you do when you’re not working – how do you balance it with your PhD?
I always take the weekends off, and don’t work from home. The work/home barrier is really important. In my free time I play lacrosse and socialise; I’m also a big fan of wildlife, photography and the outdoors.
If a genie could grant you one wish to help with your PhD what would you wish for?
Like every PhD student, I feel under-read, so maybe the ability to read and understand papers at lightning speed.
What would be your dream job?
This is a question I’ve been asking myself for a while. Ideally something that combines intellectual stimulation, travel, the opportunity to work with great people, and to do something positive for the world. Hardly original, but hey!
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Well, hopefully I’ll have a PhD unless things go very wrong. So maybe a post-doc position?
One word to sum up your future in academia:
Complicated.
What do you want to achieve outside of academia in the coming year?
Win the southern prem lacrosse league. And the lottery.
What essential tool hardware/software could you not do your PhD without?
My laptop and an internet connection. In terms of software: PyCharm, iTerm2, python, R, Mendeley.
Where is somewhere you would like to work in the future?
As is becoming increasingly clear during the present lockdown, not from home! Otherwise I think it would be cool to work at the Crick Institute in London.
Do you have a favourite organism?
I have to say humans, because they are at the forefront of my research. In my field, most of the most interesting techniques are developed and applied to them first.
Having said that, I’d love to see ancient DNA work done on other species; I would love to work on African mammals in particular, looking at their evolution and past demography – particularly in a species like elephants which move over massive distances.
Are there any social interactions/meetings which have enhanced your PhD experience?
Any time spent with other PhD students and academics is always encouraging. We have a lovely community on my floor of the department with everyone studying very different things, from coral bleaching and ancient pollen to movement ecology and conservation.
If you could change one thing about your group/department structure what would it be?
I’d like control of all the finances.
What major question in your subject area is yet to be addressed – why is it important and why isn’t anyone addressing it?
We still have a few black holes in our understanding of past human demography. We’re now filling in those gaps, and moving from asking coarse questions about movement and population mixtures to harder questions about fine-scale movements (which can reveal even more from an archaeological/historical perspective), as well as more biologically interesting questions – about selection, introgression, and implications for modern disease phenotypes for example. There are major challenges in scaling these methods to include more samples and deeper time periods. Overall though, the future in ancient DNA looks very bright.
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