Welcome to “At the Bench” a new podcast in the Incubator network focusing on physician-scientists in neonatology, their research, and career journeys.

This week, we start by interviewing Dr. Elizabeth “Betsy” Crouch, a neonatologist, neuroscientist, and vascular biologist at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Crouch’s lab takes a “Vascular-centric” perspective to neurodevelopment and studies how the blood vessels in the developing brain and spinal cord impact the growing neural cells, and vice versa. In part, this approach is inspired by germinal matrix hemorrhage, a devastating condition unfortunately common in the NICU that can cause cerebral palsy, hydrocephalus, and death. Early in Dr. Crouch’s training, a family she cared for in the NICU questioned the status quo in germinal matrix hemorrhage management. They asked why, in this era of modern medicine, their baby had no treatment options for this devastating and common condition. This anecdote highlights what has become a theme in her research: basic and translational science inspired by parents and patients. Her lab now focuses on defining the stages of vascular stem cells in the developing brain and understanding the mechanisms that regulate their functions, applying this knowledge to produce novel technologies and therapeutic strategies for different brain hemorrhages in neonatal and pediatric patients. This episode discusses the challenges and victories in Dr. Crouch’s journey, her mentors and their wisdom, and how we might create a future without germinal matrix hemorrhage for our premies and their families.

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Here are some of the articles mentioned in this episode 👇

Profiling human brain vascular cells using single-cell transcriptomics and organoids. Nature protocols. Crouch EE, Diafos LN, Valenzuela EJ, Wedderburn-Pugh K, Birrueta JO, Caston J, Joseph T, Andrews MG, Bhaduri A, Huang EJ

Ensembles of endothelial and mural cells promote angiogenesis in prenatal human brain.

Cell. Crouch EE, Bhaduri A, Andrews MG, Cebrian-Silla A, Diafos LN, Birrueta JO, Wedderburn-Pugh K, Valenzuela EJ, Bennett NK, Eze UC, Sandoval-Espinosa C, Chen J, Mora C, Ross JM, Howard CE, Gonzalez-Granero S, Lozano JF, Vento M, Haeussler M, Paredes MF, Nakamura K, Garcia-Verdugo JM, Alvarez-Buylla A, Kriegstein AR, Huang EJ

Disentangling brain vasculature in neurogenesis and neurodegeneration using single-cell transcriptomics. Trends in neurosciences. Crouch EE, Joseph T, Marsan E, Huang EJ

Reciprocal Interaction between Vascular Filopodia and Neural Stem Cells Shapes Neurogenesis in the Ventral Telencephalon. Cell reports Di Marco B, Crouch EE, Shah B, Duman C, Paredes MF, Ruiz de Almodovar C, Huang EJ, Alfonso J

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Short Bio: Doctor Elizabeth "Betsy" Crouch" is a neuroscientist, a vascular biologist, and a physician in Neonatal-Perinatal medicine. She is an Assistant Professor in residence at University of California, San Francisco. Her lab studies how brain blood vessels grow and interact with other brain cells. In part, this interest is inspired by germinal matrix hemorrhage. This feared complication of prematurity currently has no disease-modifying treatments, and changing the trajectory for these patients is one of her passions. Her lab's research revolves around defining the stages of vascular stem cells in the developing brain and understanding the mechanisms that regulate their functions. This knowledge is then applied to produce novel technologies and therapeutic strategies for different brain hemorrhages in neonatal and pediatric patients. Dr. Crouch completed her MD/PhD degrees at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and then moved to UCSF for residency and fellowship.

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The transcript of today's episode can be found below 👇

Betsy Crouch Host 01:08

Hi everyone, welcome to At the Bench. My name is Betsy Crouch and I'm part of this distinguished and super fun group of neonatal physician scientists. We decided to start our program by interviewing ourselves. So today I get to be my own guinea pig and my colleagues will introduce themselves in a minute. Will interview me Misty.

Misty Good Host 01:30

Hi, I'm Misty Good. I'm excited to interview Dr Betsy Crouch today and hear about her work and her journey along the physician scientist career path.

David McCulley Host 01:42

I'm David McCully. I'm also really excited to get this podcast going Today. We are very lucky to be able to interview one of our own, Dr Betsy Crouch, who's a neonatology physician scientist at UCSF. Rather than have me say all the great things that I know about Betsy after getting to meet her after the last couple of months, Betsy, we were just hoping to hear from you and have you introduce yourself a little bit, and then we're going to follow up with a series of questions to learn more about your career path and your work.

Betsy Crouch Host 02:18

Thanks, david. Yes, I'm honored to be the inaugural guest, so can only go up from here, right? I'm a neuroscientist, a vascular biologist and, of course, I'm a neonatologist. So my lab, the Neurovascular Development Lab at crouchlabucsfedu, studies how blood vessels grow and interact with other cells in the central nervous system. We study the brain and the spinal cord, and currently we're using mouse and human primary tissue, as well as some organoid models to understand how these cells interact with one another. One of our favorite phrases is that we're interested in neurovascular neighborhoods and how the cells communicate.

Misty Good Host 02:59

That's really cool. Betsy, I would love to hear more about your training, because there are several folks who are running labs that are either MD only, like myself, or have had MD-PhC training. Which did you choose, and can you tell us a bit about your path?

Betsy Crouch Host 03:17

This is a good story, like I think, a lot of physician scientists have. So I, you know, growing up I liked science and for me that meant I was going to be a doctor. So I actually applied to medical school my last year of college and didn't get in anywhere. So I think for everyone that has had a major setback, just remember that. You know, whatever it is, it's the person who gets knocked down and get back up that you know eventually is successful usually.

03:44

So I kind of recalibrated after, you know, not getting into medical school my senior year of college and ended up at the NIH doing research in a B cell lab with a scientist called Rafael Casalius, who is and was a really good scientist and I'm still very grateful to him for his standards that he established for me. And there I met some other young women that I was working with and they were applying to MD-PhD programs and I realized that I liked medicine, I liked people, I was an EMT kind of growing up and but I also loved science and I had never heard of MD-PhD programs before I got to the NIH. So that's what started me on that journey and so, yeah, so I did some research, retook the MCAT, like a lot of people need to do, and then got into Columbia for the MD-PhD program.

David McCulley Host 04:32

Betsy, can you just talk a little bit about your PhD work, just because I feel like that's such a specialized training path. How were you stimulated and how did that help you build your research interest that you're pursuing now?

Betsy Crouch Host 04:47

Yeah, well, I guess the short answer is that I took a grad school class on stem cells and I was really inspired. I thought stem cells were amazing, and I still. Maybe the foundational question that I enjoy thinking about every day is how does a cell start out? How does it make those decisions to become something else or to stay as a stem cell? I still think those are some of the most fascinating questions in biology. But, yeah, it was just a really good stem cell course and then one of the instructors was a woman called Fiona Deutsch who ended up being my PhD advisor and she's a phenomenal PhD scientist who was really interested in neural stem cells in the adult mouse brain. But then I think, getting back to neonatology, one of the reasons I realized I love doing this job clinically is because neonatology is essentially watching human stem cells in action, and I still think it's one of the coolest ways that you can spend your day.

Misty Good Host 05:46

That's awesome. That's a really great way to think about our babies, as they're growing them and getting them to be larger and get to go home, get out of that incubator. This process of your training and everything you've gone through has to have been really difficult, and so you talked about falling down and getting back up again. Can you tell us maybe about, throughout your training, a big challenge that you encountered and how you overcame?

Betsy Crouch Host 06:16

it? Yeah, thanks for that question. I think, also something we don't talk enough about. You know, as scientists and doctors, which are what are our challenges. So here's one of many that I could talk about.

06:27

So when I was doing my PhD, I was interested in developing ways to pull out the blood vessel cells from the brain Because, you know, as neonatologists, again, we're all familiar with germo matrix hemorrhage. But you know, one of the big challenges to studying blood vessel cells is that they're the minority of cells in the brain. So I was even interested in this as a PhD student and, to make a long story short, I was adapting these protocols that have been published previously with, like, how to pull out blood vessel cells from the mouse brain, but they were, you know, they were old by the time I was looking at them and they were also set up just, I think, to be able to get some blood vessel cells. And I was interested specifically in how the blood vessel cells and the neural stem cells interacted. And in the adult mouse brain there are only two regions where that happens. So I had to be, like, very precise in how I was doing this and I had to Pull out as many cells as I could from a very small brain region.

07:23

So I was going through the process of trying to figure out how to do this and I had one of those moments where I just had a terrible day.

07:31

I was I was using an Ultra centrifuge where I had to, like, go to another floor to use it and that one Broke.

07:38

And so then I was going like to different floor to use the ultra centrifuge and then I went to the flow cytometry facility to look at my yields and they were abysmal, just terrible.

07:48

And I went to my PhD mentor and I said this is not the right way to do this. Can I start from scratch and, like, figure this out, you know, taking into account now what I know? And she gave me the freedom to say, sure, I trust you, like, I'll give you six months to try to do this a better way. So I Took out that ridiculous ultra centrifugation step because now we're using flow cytometry, so now I can pull out the cells in a different way and I don't need to use, you know, gravity like they did in the 1980s. So, yeah, that was one of many I don't know moments, I think particularly in research, where I just thought this is terrible, but I have ideas about how to do this better and you know I'm still very grateful to Fiona that when I went to her and said I need to start from scratch, that she trusted me and you know, and then, from then on, it went much better.

David McCulley Host 08:41

That was an awesome story and I think it helps to demonstrate just how To do this work and be successful as a new newtology physician scientist. You really have to be a little bit resilient because we're constantly facing challenges. But I Think a thing that we're often rewarded for, or that enables us to keep going, is Creativity, and it seems like you know that's one of the things that is just so fun about this job is to get to be creative and to get to work with people who Inspire that kind of creativity. And you've hinted at your mentors a little bit and it seems like they've had a pretty significant influence on you and just how you've approached scientific problems and experiments and stuff. I wondered if you could just talk a little bit more about your mentoring along the way, the types of mentors you were seeking and Just mentorship in general and what you've valued.

Betsy Crouch Host 09:40

Yeah, you know, I think this is such an important question and topic. I will say so in general. I've I've never had mentors who, who were modeling every aspect of who I ended up being. I've never worked under a neonatologist, so let's see my page. So my you know post-bac mentor you know the three major people I published with my post-bac mentor was a PhD immunologist, my grad school mentor was a PhD neuroscientist and my Postdoc, or my, you know, fellowship mentor, is an MD, phd neuro pathologist. So he's probably the closest person that I could identify with as a physician scientist. And I think I've spoken about Rafael, my post-bac mentor, and Fiona, my PhD mentor.

10:24

So to focus a little bit on Eric Wong, who you know is and was my postdoc mentor, I think he does many things well, you know. I think, to speak to some of his you know vision, he created a neuropathology brain bank at UCSF where, you know, when any person passes away and Consents to full, unrestricted autopsy, they also consent to donate some tissue for research. So he started banking those specimens 13 years ago now and now he has over a hundred specimens from pediatric to adult cases and you know German matrix hemorrhage, of course, is one of the main interests of my lab as a neurovascular development lab and he has, I don't know, at least 20 specimens from babies who passed away with German matrix hemorrhage and that's a phenomenal resource Of you know tissue now for all the different types of omics that we can and will be doing. So I think you know he was really a great example of somebody who you know was situated in a particular clinical niche and Found scientific inspiration there. So I think that's one thing he did well.

11:29

The other thing that I've spoken about is his mentoring. So I was very fortunate to receive something that anybody who's going to be a pediatric physician scientist on this Call should, should be interested in. It's called the pediatric scientist development program, the PSDP, now run by Sally per Marr, and I was fortunate to receive that fellowship my first year of fellowship. And when he found out that I'd received that fellowship, he sent me an email and he said congratulations, now we need to prepare for your K, of course, your K weight two years from now. And I was flown away by that. No pressure. Oh yeah, I mean, you know, come on, just relax celebrate for a second.

12:14

Yeah, exactly, but I think that's the example. So so everybody needs a mentor who's walking out your next five years for you and your goalposts that you need to achieve. And so, again, anybody listening this call. If you can't, if you don't know what your next five years needs to look like for you to get where you want to go, find a mentor who can help you get there. You know my, my division chief. When I interviewed for my job as an assistant professor, he basically said you need to get papers and grants. I said, okay, papers and grants, and then I could figure out, then I can make my own. You know timeline by the time I was at that point, but you know. So Eric was walking out for me and during my postdoc, like what I needed to achieve certain goalposts.

Misty Good Host 12:54

That's fantastic. Mentorship is so important along the way, and sometimes it's your primary mentor and sometimes it's, you know, your division chief or your program director or somebody else's mentor who has great ideas, and so be on. Everyone needs to be on the lookout for their next great mentor. So obviously, betsy, you're doing amazing work in the lab and you're incredibly well funded. We didn't talk a lot about your friend name, but I know this that you're incredibly well funded. Tell us about some of the stuff that you're working on now and what inspires you and maybe future directions for your lab.

Betsy Crouch Host 13:30

Thanks, misty. Yeah, I mean, I think getting back to what David was alluding to is something I feel, I'll say, incredibly blessed to do. Is that as a physician scientist, you get paid to think, you know, and I just I mean, think for the benefit of humanity, right, but I think to be able to have that as, like, one of your main objectives and your job is an incredibly fortunate position. You know, and I hold that tightly because I think that there's, I would say, in my lab both fascinating science that I'm really excited about, but also, of course, therapeutics. So I think you know, first we'll talk about the science.

14:10

So something that I think is really important is that we don't know where blood vessels in the brain come from. You know, like, think about every other stem cell system. You know, we know where the neural stem cells come from. We know where the intestinal stem cells come from. We still don't know where the brain blood vessel cells come from, and so I'm passionate about figuring that out and then also figuring out, as I mentioned earlier, how these vascular stem cells make the decisions, like how do they become an artery or a vein, how do they decide to go deeper into the brain or to go north in the brain. How do they decide when they should receive blood?

14:46

You know, I think that I was talking to Chen Wangu, who's a fantastic neurovascular biologist, and you know she and I were talking about how the vascular system I think it's emerging this idea that in fact it, all of these cells have to mature in situ because essentially, the vascular system has to receive blood and be functional first, and then those cells have the luxury of differentiating. So I think it's a very interesting kind of self types to study, because the process of being functional and, you know, acquiring some sort of differentiated self-ate have to occur, I think, in the opposite and the opposite order that they do a lot of other stem cell systems Can you share how you became interested specifically in germinal matrix emerge?

15:38

Yes. So I think you know this is a nice story about how our patients inspire us. When I was a resident, I took care of a family whose baby, this little girl, had what one of our neuro radiologists called the worst germinal matrix hemorrhage they had ever seen. And this was a family that hadn't had a lot of interaction with the medical system previously. So you know, we had to have a lot of meetings with them to talk about what this hemorrhage meant. And you know, of course we all know that you tell a family that the baby has a terrible germinal matrix hemorrhage and that you're going to watch for hydrocephalus. But this family didn't know that script yet, and so the way that they asked us questions I just found profoundly inspiring and honestly to hold us accountable.

16:27

So this family went through this series of questions where they said, okay, our daughter has this condition, what are your treatment options? And then, of course, we have no treatment options. And so then they went back, did some research? Came back another day, okay, we're willing to enroll her in a clinical trial. And I thought what a great question and also how devastating to tell them we have no clinical trials for this condition. So then they went back and they came back another day and they said we're willing to try an early stage experimental compound.

16:57

And again I thought what a brilliant idea. And why? Why don't I have anything to tell them? And so at the end of the conversation, the mother looked at me and said if you have nothing for this, then when she dies because her hemorrhage was very severe and she had other end organ complications as well when she dies, I would like to donate her body to research, because no family should have to go through this. Yeah, and I just I, as you can tell still can hear her words in my head verbatim and it's something that gets me out of bed in the morning.

Misty Good Host 17:32

Well, that's a sad, devastating story, but as a good sign of how you're motivated to get it to the lab and really do amazing work. So I'm sure the family is really grateful for that.

Betsy Crouch Host 17:46

Yeah, I mean, I think it's also a story that you know, inspiration doesn't come from the ivory tower always right, inspiration is homegrown. And that this family. They had the vision for what should happen long before I did, and I just adopted their vision.

David McCulley Host 18:04

Betsy, that is definitely a really inspirational story and I can see what's motivating you. I just wondered it sounded like in the beginning when you were kind of talking about what has developed as your research question and you're focusing on how neurovascular stem cells and then the developing vasculature in the brain sort of develops its niche and how the endothelial cells that make up the vascular network in the brain kind of develop their network of connections in their neighborhood, as you said, and interact with the developing brain. I just wondered how, like what are the approaches that you think are really valuable these days for being able to answer those questions? Just curious how you're using modern techniques and really cutting-edge techniques to address those questions.

Betsy Crouch Host 18:57

You know, as some of you may know, we had a cell paper that came out last fall that was using transcriptomics to pull out the blood vessel cells, and I think a nice backstory to that paper is just that when I came to UCSF when I was starting my postdoc, there was a lab that became kind of like my other  Host  lab, arnold Kriegstein's lab, and he's a phenomenal scientist and a really supportive person, also, I'll say, a neurologist, physician, scientist, and his lab is one of the best in the world in terms of studying human brain development. So I had done flow cytometry previously, I knew how to pull out blood vessel cells and I thought all I need to do is use flow cytometry and pull out the blood vessel cells and then use single cell transcriptomics. So that was the idea right, but I had never done single cell transcriptomics. I actually don't code, which I'm very embarrassed about, and if I had more time that's the first thing I would do. And so if you have any time this is what I tell every person who comes to me and asks for advice I'm like learn to code right now and stuff whatever you are doing and learn to code. But I was very fortunate and I think this is another way to get things done. And there was a postdoc in Arnold Kriegstein's lab who now is a very dear friend, and she needed flow cytometry experiments to get done and I needed transcriptomics to get done. And so we met and became good friends and I ended up doing her flow cytometry and she analyzed my transcriptomic data and it was super productive for both of us and that's also a great way to do science, where you just develop other expertise by learning from somebody who's already doing it super well. So I collaborated with that lab then to pull out the blood vessel cells from the developing human brain.

20:45

But something that's interesting and kind of a loose end from our paper is that my hypothesis was that we know that the hemorrhage always happens in the ganglionic eminences, the germinal matrix. So those blood vessel cells are going to be different from ones in the cortex which doesn't have a hemorrhage, right. But we didn't see that and in fact the editors our reviewers and the editor made us take out any mention of germinal matrix hemorrhage in that paper, except for one sentence in the discussion, because we didn't answer that question. We did not answer whether there's regional heterogeneity in the vasculature in the developing human brain.

21:20

I think it's a technical thing. You know, as many of us have done single cell transplants, you know the specificity is very high but the sensitivity is not that high, particularly for lowly expressed transcripts. So you know, what are we doing now? We're doing it better. We're using the newer kits and the long read sequencing and trying to get at this. We're getting more cells, we're doing spatial transcriptomics, we're doing multiomics, you know, like all of these different ways. So that's the question that we weren't able to answer with that paper. That, I think, is, you know, potentially underlying one of the major regions for that hemorrhage and I haven't solved it yet.

David McCulley Host 22:00

I like how you answered that, just because in the end there you could kind of hear how you are approaching things using multiple experiments to address the same question, because no one experiment usually is capable of clearly demonstrating a result and establishing a clear conclusion. So you have to really use multiple overlapping experiments that all have their limitations to build you know that you can demonstrate, build the evidence to support what your conclusion ultimately is, and I think that is something that people have a hard time appreciating. They try to find the one experiment that's going to say this is it, but that is just so unusual. So it's, I think, really helpful to just hear you talk about that and how you have to be creative, thinking like okay, this is a novel approach, this is something I can learn how to use, but it still has limitations. And how can I keep building the story, keep building on the evidence I'm accumulating to build a stronger conclusion. Then ultimately, it sounds like, get back to what you're really interested in, which is the German matrix hemorrhage question.

Betsy Crouch Host 23:04

One of my colleagues and friends here at UCSF, david Raleigh, is a radiologist, physician, scientist, and he always says just do good science and the rest will follow. And I think that's a really good rule of thumb Do good science and be honest about your data. And if you do those two things and you can't answer the question that you set out to answer well, then you have other interesting things to go after. But I think you always have to just make sure that your experiments are done well and that you are truthful in your results, and then the rest will figure itself out and lead you to good places.

Misty Good Host 23:43

Agree with that statement, and there's always more science to be done, right? So even though the reviewers had you take out all of those things throughout your paper, I would say you know, it just leads you to the next paper and then go from there and I have no doubt you'll get to the bottom of it, because that's fantastic, I guess separate from your work directly in the lab, and I know you're doing such amazing work. But you also have leadership role in the AAP, the TICAN Research QI Chair, I guess. Tell us about, because we have obviously listeners that are interested in getting involved in national positions. Why did you apply for the position? And, I guess, more importantly, like what did you hope to get from the position and anything else you want?

Betsy Crouch Host 24:28

to tell us about that. Yeah, thanks, misty. You know I think I'm looking forward to hearing your answer to that question too, but you know I'll say as somebody. So you know I've been this is my fourth year as an assistant professor, so I'm definitely early in this journey, but I think, like the three of us on this phone call, I was really interested in community building. You know, I think I gave one of my favorite examples of how my friend Aparna and I swapped, you know, skills that we were good at for my paper.

24:59

But you know, I think that community really is essential to research productivity and what you will need from your community is different at different times. You know there's a women's physician scientist group here at UCSF and sometimes we talk about techniques and you know, hey, I'm interested in the. There's a there's an interesting back and forth going on right now between two different companies in the spatial transcriptomics space, and so sometimes with my colleagues, we talk about which machine that we're using or which platform and why. And sometimes, you know, with that group of women, we're talking about our childcare options and what our backup care options for, you know, for when your, when your regular childcare is unavailable.

25:41

So, yeah, I mean, I think the first thing I was interested in is just building community, you know, and then the three of us also are involved with many of these efforts which is just like how do we increase productivity at critical stages for neonatal physician scientists and this is something that I'm very much still working on. But we were talking about maybe building a website earlier and initially, something that I was interested in is kind of collating a list of grants that would be useful for neonatal physician scientists at a different time. So, stay tuned, we're going to try to get that out in the world. But I've been inspired by Johns Hopkins list of grants that are available for folks at every stages. So we're going to try to build something that's more specific for our community in that space.

David McCulley Host 26:24

That was great, betsy. I'm just wondering just because it's you know, our jobs are challenging. We are pulled in a lot of different directions, we're trying to do a lot of different things and you know what inspires you to keep going, what's in, you know, motivating you to do the work you're doing.

Betsy Crouch Host 26:42

Yeah, thanks, david, I think that's that's also an important question. Well, you know, I talked earlier about germinal matrix hemorrhage, but I think, you know, apart from kind of the science, one of my favorite aspects of my job is just working with students. I find it just incredibly inspiring to watch a different person who's not me take an idea and run with it, and almost always the job that they do is better and different than the job that I would do. And I find the fact that I get to lead, you know, a group of bright, creative, resourceful young people to you know to study different things and to teach them, you know troubleshooting skills and and how to, you know, overcome challenges and how to write and how to present, and like the fact that I get to be sort of a guiding mentor for a person who's already phenomenally talented. That's the other part of my job where I just really enjoy it.

27:40

I'll tell us a quick story that I was on clinical service recently.

27:44

It was really hard.

27:46

You know we all have those weeks on service where sad things have happened to your patients that are nobody's fault and you are just really, you know, trying to be a good doctor, which means that that you're going through some of that experience with your patients and your and your families, and it is incredibly sorrowful, I think, to see some of the things that that you know that we do research to cure because these things shouldn't happen to people.

28:09

So I was in the middle of one of those weeks and then I had a quick Zoom meeting with a student who was rotating in my lab through the neuroscience program and in that week he had acquired this new data. That was just gorgeous. That was blowing open a new door and a new direction in the lab and I got to just take this little hour and be immersed in like the glory of something new that was just emerging and it was so fun and just kind of like a little breath of fresh air that I needed that day. So you know, I'm really grateful to the students and I very much you know all of the mentees enjoy working with them.

David McCulley Host 28:46

That's awesome, great way to recharge, for sure, and kind of refocus, regain perspective. And I'm sure, like you know, I helped you transition back to clinical care again too. Like that going back and forth between inspiring science, helping mentor new trainees or up and coming trainees, and then also then going back and taking care of patients, I find, you know, so motivating. So it's cool to hear how you kind of fit it in and make it work together.

Betsy Crouch Host 29:16

Yeah, it's an interesting thing about our job. Right Is that it is difficult to be excellent at two very different things, but I also find that it helps my, it helps me not be burned out, because when I get frustrated with one thing, it's usually about time to go do the other thing, and then there are things that I enjoy about that other. You know practice as well. So, yeah, I'm really you know it is a very challenging job being a physician scientist, but I would say that I'm very satisfied and, I think, in some ways less burned out than my clinical only colleagues or my science only colleagues.

David McCulley Host 29:57

I don't know if you feel this way, but I actually feel like I'm better at both because I do them both. Like I think I'm a better clinician because I've learned to be super detail oriented and doing my research, and I'm also patient because it takes so much patience to be a scientist. But then as a clinician, I feel like that I, you know, I'm faced with these high stress scenarios, but they're also super motivating because they open up questions that I don't feel like I can answer. That motivate me to, you know, do more, do more work in lab, and I just feel like that's. That builds synergy in me that I think is motivating but also makes me like better. I don't know if you agree with that.

Betsy Crouch Host 30:38

Thanks, david. That's really exciting and, I think, very encouraging. Maybe that's the perspective of somebody who's a few more years along. You know, I'm still kind of trying to keep my head above water a little bit, oh me too Sure. Yeah.

Misty Good Host 30:53

That's exciting part of our jobs to go from the bench to the bedside and back right and really try to hone in on the questions that we need answered for our science and for our patients.

Betsy Crouch Host 31:05

Yeah, I can't. I can't say that like each going back and forth, like I have energy kind of swinging between them because I have been away from the other one you know, necessarily for some period of time.

31:16

And then there's something like you know, getting back on the unit and like seeing my team around me and being like let's do this. Like you know, like let's run an excellent rounds, and you know, and just like executing, that feels really good. And then as you get longer and you realize your rounds aren't going to be that, aren't going to be that well run, you know, throughout the rest of the week, I'm like I'm ready to go back to laugh, so well, let's go ahead and tie this up and end on something fun and exciting.

Misty Good Host 31:47

And you know, in the lab we're always looking for different music to listen to. But, Betsy, what's your favorite music to listen to in the lab when you're doing experiments or inspired to write, for example?

Betsy Crouch Host 31:59

Yeah. So that's a good question. I actually can't listen to music when I write at all. I'm not that I will sing, not write, or I'll start writing a grant about Shake it Off or whatever I'm currently listening to. But when I'm making figures, when I'm doing visual things, then I'm, in fact I am very motivated by a tune with a fast beat. So I like a good girl power ballad, or I'm really into NPR's Tiny Desk right now, because I think that also exposes me to a bunch of different things. And you know, like many of us, I have a few screens so I can put that up on one of the screens and kind of look at it when I want to. So yeah, I really, I in fact really enjoy the evening where I plan to make figures and I get set up with my tunes and I have a very nice peaceful evening making my figures and I walk away in a good mood and having accomplished something. So yes, thank you for that fun question.

Misty Good Host 32:58

It's great putting the figures together, right? And you start with that blank canvas and then all of a sudden it's like this is an amazing figure one.

David McCulley Host 33:06

Yeah, that is so rewarding, Like putting the data together feels so good, like.

Betsy Crouch Host 33:12

All right. Well, thank you to your both for listening to me and my journey, and I can't wait for next time when we will interview Dr Misty Good and hear about, you know, her passion, her journey and her quest to cure necrotizing and her colitis.