Heidi Elmendorf

What is the greatest challenge in your field?
When you work in global health, there are so many challenges. I study a disease that’s referred to as a neglected tropical disease. They’re called the “NTDs.” I think one of the greatest challenges is getting people to recognize that this is actually a real problem. We fund research on global health challenges disproportionately to their actual impact. And so the neglected tropical diseases are called that because they have a huge impact, but for a variety of reasons are not well-funded. The challenge is to “un-neglect” these neglected tropical diseases.

What is the most fascinating question in your field?
In a larger perspective, I think drug resistance could be one of the biggest problems and also one of the most important areas. We are definitively losing the war, and drug resistance is sweeping. From a strictly selfish side, I do think the research we’re doing is fascinating. And I’m not just saying that because we’re doing it. My lab now has moved orientation, and we’re now working at the intersection of physics and biology. Really important research now is going to happen at those intersections.

What led you to focus on infectious diseases and giardia?
It was a complete accident. I graduated from college and didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life other than follow my boyfriend out to California from New Jersey. I can’t say my dad was terribly thrilled. But I got out there and took a job as a technician in a research lab because I was a biology undergraduate major and the lab happened to work on malaria. And then I thought it was cool. Giardia was actually more strategic. I wanted something that not a lot of people were working on and that would be safe for undergraduates to handle. Oh, and giardia is beautiful, which is important because I do a lot of microscopy.

What drew you to Georgetown?
After my postdoc, I only applied to schools that valued undergraduate education as a very visible part of the job, not just the lip service. But also research. So I was really looking for that duality. This is such a great place to be a faculty member, and I hope that it feels as unique and special a place to be a student as it does to be a faculty member. Georgetown faculty are way more passionate about Georgetown. Most of my other colleagues see it as just a place they teach.

What is the greatest challenge in teaching?
It’s really easy to focus on what we know on the facts. And it’s not that I think they’re unimportant, it’s that I think they are inherently not as interesting as what we don’t know. So, I also don’t think they’re as important as what we don’t know. The reason I’m a researcher is not because of what we do know about giardia but because of what we don’t know. That’s why people become scientists. For the most part, in education, we teach science as a set of facts and I think that that quickly becomes boring. The sea of facts becomes boring. Little kids love science, because to them science is about asking questions and doing “experiments.” Every kid who drops Cheerios off the end of their high chair is both testing the laws of gravity and their parents’ patience. But kids are forever doing experiments in school, we make science about facts and I think that turns off a lot of people. It’s hard because you also want information to think with, but striking that balance is hard.

What have you learned from working with other departments on your research?
Simplistically, we just do smarter research. I do the biophysics work with Professor Urbach in the physics department, and he and I can look at the exact same giardia parasite doing something under the microscope and we will see completely different things in that video. I’m looking at it as a cell and life, and he sees the physical forces. That just means that, collectively, we’re a lot smarter. That duality of perspectives is valuable; I would never think to ask some of the questions he asks and they’re hugely important.

How do you balance teaching and researching?
Balance is hard. I think it’s the same answer it is for students. You all have many demands on you. It’s not just research and teaching; I have a daughter, I have a husband, I do things like science education outreach, which has nothing to do with my teaching or my research. So I think I’m trying to keep a dozen very different balls in the air at one time. The really short answer is that I don’t to it well and I drop a lot of balls. That’s a completely honest answer, and I think at any point in time, you focus really well on one of them and all the others you accidentally drop. And then you realize, and shift your attention.

What would be your ideal course to teach?
The courses I teach! I teach three courses. I love the Biology of Global Health class, but Professor Rosenwald and I started that class so of course I love it, we invented the whole major. I was a high school teacher previously, and I think we have a desperate need for our very best people to be in education. The course I wanted to teach was RISE&Teach, so I created it and now I teach it. And I asked to teach Foundations of Biology, because I love it. For better or for worse, I’m very stubborn and all the courses I’ve wanted to teach, I’ve taught or created them.

What would you be doing if you weren’t in academia?
That’s actually very simple. I’d be teaching high school.

Has Georgetown’s Jesuit identity affected how you teach?
I’m not Catholic, and I am now passionate about the fact that I teach at a Jesuit institution. I think a lot about what makes Georgetown such a great place to be a faculty member, and I hope students, is the Jesuit ethos. I think it’s all over the place in lots of ways, but I’ve tried to make it more visible in my life and in my students’ lives through the Engelhard project. I think that the idea that as a campus we’ve declared that issues that are normally relegated to the dorms — mental health in this case — are part of the central intellectual fabric of our lives is very Georgetown. We do the Engelhard project in two of the three classes that I teach. It’s not that it couldn’t happen somewhere else, it’s just such a Georgetown version. What makes the Jesuit identity important is its emphasis on the common good; it’s not so much care of the whole person as an isolated entity, but it’s really care of the community, the people within it and the people around you. I guess you don’t have to be Jesuit to have that idea, but it’s such an integral part of who we are because we are Jesuit.

Interview by Sheena Karkal