Trushar Patel was born and raised in a small village in India— Derol, in the state of Gujarat. His father was an accountant for the government of Gujarat and his mother was a primary school teacher. She wanted him to follow in her footsteps and be a teacher, an idea he was not too keen about. “Ironically, I teach at the university now and she is pretty happy about it,” he shares.
As a child, he was interested in either becoming a lawyer or a scientist and as he reached high school, he became particularly interested in studying biology and physics. In his hometown, he was only able to attend school through grade 10, so at the age of fifteen, he moved to a boarding school in the nearby city of Vadodara to complete his high school education. Following high school, he moved again to Vidhyanagar, where he completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biotechnology at Sardar Patel University.
Patel wanted to diversify his skillset, so he sought out a PhD program in biophysics. “The concept of applying physical methods to unravel biological processes and study biomolecules was very tempting. I applied for a PhD program in Dr. Stephen Harding’s laboratory at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, where I learned applications of light scattering and analytical ultracentrifuge to investigate therapeutic polysaccharides,” he says. Once he completed his PhD, he joined a structural biology group led by Joerg Stetefeld at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. He spent about five years in the lab as a postdoctoral fellow. “During my tenure there, I received two postdoctoral fellowships: Manitoba Institute of Child Health and Canadian Institutes for Health Research, each for two years,” he shares. “As a postdoctoral fellow, I began my career studying human extracellular matrix proteins using X-ray crystallography and light scattering. In 2008, Dr. Sean McKenna’s group, who mainly works on RNA molecules, joined the University of Manitoba. I got excited about his research activities, especially working with RNA (as I already had experience working with polysaccharides and proteins) and started communications with him. As a result, we used biophysical tools to study West Nile and Adenovirus viral RNAs.”
Following his postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Manitoba, Patel successfully applied for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship from the European Union to integrate his structural biophysics background with cell biology & mass spectrometry and joined Neil Hotchin’s group at the University of Birmingham, UK.
For a few months after his postdoctoral studies ended, he could not begin a permanent position at the University of Lethbridge due to financial restructuring in the Province of Alberta. “Subsequently, I received a term position for 16 months, followed by another term position for 3 years, and finally a tenure-track contract as a Canada Research Chair in RNA & Protein Biophysics in November 2017,” he explains. “I was lucky enough to jump from one contract to another without completing the entire tenure of these contracts.”
One of the major challenges of his career thus far was not having enough funding support as a PhD student, “like many other trainees across the world,” he says. “I recall working in a superstore during evenings and on weekends to make ends meet (and save a bit for tuition fees). However, this was not as difficult as not having a job at all, after a productive postdoctoral tenure, due to financial challenges and restructuring encountered by a particular funding agency. The interesting thing about time is that it never stays the same forever: both a good time and a bad time have an expiry date!” With consistent effort on his part to secure a faculty position, plus support from the University of Lethbridge administrative and research faculties and his family, he was eventually able to secure a Canada Research Chair (Tier II) position, as well as research funding from federal and provincial agencies.
“The main objective of our laboratory is to understand the structural features and functional significance of viral nucleic acids. We mainly focus on flaviviruses and have recently expanded to Hepatitis B/C/D viruses as well,” he explains. “Infection with pathogenic viruses dates back centuries and has increased significantly. Viruses are unique in that they can rapidly develop mechanisms to overcome the host defense mechanisms. We lack effective treatment options for many viral infections, due to our lack of understating about how viral components recruit host machinery. Therefore, our laboratory mainly focuses on deciphering the communication events between human proteins and viral nucleic acids. We apply a variety of biophysical and cell biology tools to gain detailed insights into the molecular mechanisms by which viruses hijack host components and use them for their benefit.”
As leader of a relatively new group, Patel’s biggest challenges are securing research funding and trainees. To overcome these obstacles, he seeks out collaborations with researchers across Canada and in the United Kingdom. He also knows the importance of visibility in establishing a new lab, so his group often applies for collaborative grant projects, reaches out to other groups for help, attends conferences to give presentations, and organizes conferences. “Being a Biophysical Society member and attending Annual Meetings has always been very useful in terms of learning new tools, networking, establishing collaborations, etc.,” he says. “I was delighted to be a part of the Early Careers Committee of the Biophysical Society and co-organize a panel discussion for early career researchers during the 2019 Annual Meeting. Our team (including Borries Demeler) has also established the first-ever Biophysical Society Student Chapter in Western Canada, with strong ties to the University of Montana, USA.” Getting involved in these activities has provided Patel and his trainees with further opportunities for networking and knowledge-transfer with scientists they might not encounter otherwise.
Though he has been very busy, he is also working to achieve work-life balance. “Recently, I have started taking Sundays off,” he says. “I spend most of the time with my wife and two sons either playing games, watching singing shows, or gardening—weather permitting! I also enjoy watching movies and getting together with friends and colleagues.”
As he moves forward in his career, Patel hopes to successfully apply biophysical and other tools to study host-viral communication events, and eventually to other health-related research areas. “In terms of career, I have a long way to go, as I only started my current job a few years ago,” he says. “However, I cannot rule out the possibility of holding a senior research chair such as the Tier I Canada Research Chair and/ or an administrative position in higher education academic institutions.”
To biophysicists just starting out in their careers, Patel advises: “Be nice to others and treat them the way you want to be treated. Always be keen to learn new tools and apply them to interesting problems. Be productive and use every opportunity to network. Be proactive and begin with the end in mind. Develop time and project management skills and prioritize tasks. Remember that we always encounter challenges and we must keep trying to realize our goals.”