Tackling concussions and Alzheimer's disease through bioengineering
Season 2 of Imagine A World kicks off with a conversation with Douglas Henze (2023 cohort), a former Harvard defensive lineman-turned-bioengineering PhD candidate who’s passionate about the study of aging. Douglas imagines a world where people do not have to watch those that they love forget who they are.
Imagine A World is a podcast from Knight-Hennessy Scholars that provides a glimpse into the lives of inspiring scholars who are making significant contributions in their respective fields, challenging the status quo, and pushing the boundaries of what is possible as they imagine the world they want to see.
Guest
Douglas Henze (2023 cohort), born and raised in Hoover, Alabama, is pursuing a PhD in bioengineering at Stanford’s Schools of Engineering and Medicine. He graduated with honors from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in engineering sciences with a focus in bioengineering. Douglas is passionate about metabolism, not only how it manifests in different chronic diseases, but also in how we can target it to treat diseases such as diabetes. He has conducted research in tissue engineering through Harvard University and Boston Children’s Hospital to create model systems of cardiac and metabolic disease.
He was a member of the NCAA Division 1 Harvard football team, where he was named a member of the National Football Foundation Hampshire Honor Society and received the player-voted Henry N. Lamar Award for teammate of the year.
Hosts
Imagine A World is hosted by Sydney Hunt, left, and Willie Thompson, right.
Sydney Hunt (2023 cohort), from Cornwall, New York, is pursuing a PhD in electrical engineering with a focus on brain-computer interfaces (BCI) at Stanford School of Engineering. She graduated from Duke University with bachelor’s degrees in electrical/computer engineering and computer science (concentration in artificial intelligence and machine learning), and a minor in gender, sexuality, and feminist studies.
Willie Thompson (2022 cohort), from Griffin, Georgia, is pursuing a master's degree in business administration at Stanford Graduate School of Business and a master's degree in policy, organization, and leadership studies at Stanford Graduate School of Education. He graduated summa cum laude from Morehouse College with a bachelor’s degree in economics and a minor in Chinese Studies. Willie intends to create and contribute to organizations using the arts as a conduit for community building and intercultural education.
Imagine A World's theme music was composed and recorded by Taylor Goss. The podcast was originally conceived and led by Briana Mullen (2020 cohort), Taylor Goss (2021 cohort), and Willie Thompson, along with Daniel Gajardo (2020 cohort) and Jordan Conger (2020 cohort).
Knight-Hennessy scholars represent a vast array of cultures, perspectives, and experiences. While we as an organization are committed to elevating their voices, the views expressed are those of the scholars, and not necessarily those of KHS.
Full transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated by machine and lightly edited by humans. They may contain errors.
Douglas Henze:
And when I stopped playing ball, I actually could focus on things for a period longer than 30 seconds, which was insane to me. And I just thought that was because I had a lot of clarity because I was losing the weight, I was slimming down, and then all of a sudden, I had my last concussion. I was working out. Hit it a little too hard, just lights out and woke up just bleeding on the ground there because I bashed my head against the dumbbell rack. And when I went to the hospital later that day, I was like, "Oh, man, this is how I felt like the last 10 years of my life. How much did I shorten the good years of my memory, not telling people when my head was hurting out there?"
Hi, my name is Douglas Henze and I am a member of the 2023 Cohort and I am a third year PhD candidate in bioengineering, which is in the Schools of Engineering and Medicine here at Stanford. And I imagine a world where people do not have to watch those that they love forget who they are.
Sydney Hunt:
Welcome to the Imagine A World podcast from Knight-Hennessy Scholars. We are here to give you a glimpse into the Knight-Hennessy Scholar community of graduate students spaning all seven Stanford schools including business, education, engineering, humanities, law, medicine and sustainability. In each episode, we talk with scholars about the world they imagine and what they are doing to bring it to life.
Willie Thompson:
Today, you'll be hearing from Doug Henze, a third year PhD candidate in bioengineering. During our conversation, you'll hear Doug's experience growing up in the Deep South, playing and walking away from football, what people get wrong about STEM folks and so much more.
Sydney Hunt:
Hello and welcome to season two of the Imagine A World podcast. I am one of your cohosts, Sydney Hunt. I'm a rising second year PhD student in electrical engineering here at Stanford in the 2023 cohort of Knight-Hennessy. I am joined today by two amazing, amazing individuals. One, my fellow cohost, Willie. You want to go ahead and introduce yourself?
Willie Thompson:
What's up, you all? Hey, I'm on the other end of this situation now. I am Willie Thompson, a member of the 2022 cohort. I just finished a master's at the Business School with the GSB and I got one year at the Graduate School of Education.
Sydney Hunt:
One degree wasn't enough.
Willie Thompson:
It wasn't, when you get ... I guess one degree wasn't enough. I'll leave it at that. And today ...
Sydney Hunt:
Today.
Willie Thompson:
... we got a very special guest kicking off the first season.
Sydney Hunt:
Drum roll please.
Willie Thompson:
Dddrrroooooo, tat-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta-ta ... Actually, I don't know if I should pay for that so I'll stop. To the royalties, but Doug Henze. Woo.
Sydney Hunt:
Woo.
Douglas Henze:
Hey, hey, hey, how we doing?
Willie Thompson:
I'm good, man. How you feeling? What's this, Wednesday? Hump day?
Douglas Henze:
Yeah, hump day. We're getting through it.
Willie Thompson:
What's your summer been like?
Douglas Henze:
Hey, man. It's just a lot of research, a lot of writing, a lot of staring at a screen. Occasionally, I get outside, but for the most part, just grind.
Sydney Hunt:
Grind never stops.
Douglas Henze:
Never stops.
Willie Thompson:
So you both are PhD candidates, right?
Sydney Hunt:
No, not yet.
Willie Thompson:
Not a candidate yet.
Sydney Hunt:
I'm not a candidate yet. Doug is amazing.
Willie Thompson:
Doug is a candidate. You are a PhD student?
Sydney Hunt:
Student, yes, yeah. And for those who need clarity on that, I guess transition from student to candidate is when you pass this test called quals or qualifications. Doug, if you want to maybe hint on what that means since you've passed it because you're awesome and amazing.
Douglas Henze:
Yeah, yeah. So the qualifying exam is this, "Are you fit to graduate?" thing that schools make people do. Depending on where you're at, it can be like a chopping block. They could be kicking you out. My department was a bit more chill than that, so pretty much everybody's going to pass or get a conditional pass here. And then it's just a weird name change where they're like, "Okay, you have a project. You're focused on your project and just work on that. Just get that done and you can leave."
Sydney Hunt:
It's like a reverse thesis defense almost.
Douglas Henze:
Yeah, it's like the defense before the defense.
Sydney Hunt:
Exactly, exactly.
Willie Thompson:
But get you ready, I'm assuming, for the real thing?
Douglas Henze:
Oh, it just makes you write everything down. It makes you get your ducks in order.
Willie Thompson:
I love that. I guess said you're both in PhD programs. What is PhD life in the summer as opposed to during the school year?
Douglas Henze:
For me, it's like I always get a random undergraduate from some other university that comes knocking on the door and don't say, "Aww," don't say, "Aww." Put them to work. Put them to work. But no, it's a good chance to flex the leadership capabilities, it's a good chance to learn to mentor somebody and it's always fun to figure out what people do in other half of the country because I had one person coming from Switzerland at one point.
Sydney Hunt:
Oh, wow.
Douglas Henze:
That was interesting, this latest guy, he's from Brandeis.
Sydney Hunt:
Cool.
Douglas Henze:
So that's the only thing that the summer really adds on, is I just have to mentor extra kids.
Willie Thompson:
Got you.
Douglas Henze:
Students, not kids.
Willie Thompson:
Sydney?
Sydney Hunt:
Yeah, oh, for me, this is my first summer being a PhD student. Doug has two under his belt. I would say it's a lot slower on campus. It's a lot, lot quieter. You can find parking more easily ...
Willie Thompson:
So much easier.
Sydney Hunt:
... if you're driving.
Willie Thompson:
... everywhere.
Sydney Hunt:
So everywhere.
Willie Thompson:
Trade Joe's
Sydney Hunt:
Everywhere. Everywhere. And that includes bikes and cars, not just cars. So that is quite a plus. I do miss a lot of friends, I think, because right now, everyone's ... I guess especially within KH, not everyone's a PhD student, so some friends are working or interning in New York. So I'm excited for them to come back. But similar to Doug, it's just grind time, man. You're in the lab all day every day. Well, not every day. I do take the weekends off when I can. Sometimes I go in, I'll admit. There's an asterisk to that. But it's been good and it's been chill, but I'm excited for people to come back. I'm excited for the start of the new year when now I'm second year. No more baby.
Willie Thompson:
Nice. Speaking of excitement, we're excited to also learn more about Doug and your life and what you've been up to. A great Imagine A world statement, pithy, powerful. I can't think of a third P, but those are the two that came to mind initially. And before we start this conversation, there's a bunch of stuff we want to talk about. We want to start with basically your origin story. This is a holdover from season one, so folks who listened before will know where this question is going to start and then we'll just take our conversation from there. But before we talk about that world that you imagine and how you want people to be able to remember the folks that they love, we have to talk about the world you're born into and the world you've experienced thus far. So where are you from and what was your journey here to Stanford?
Douglas Henze:
Yeah, I'm from Birmingham, Alabama.
Willie Thompson:
[inaudible 00:07:04].
Douglas Henze:
205 until I die, man, and I grew up there to two loving parents, Diana and David Henze. My dad was a athletic trainer at the college in the area, so I always was around sports. My mom played sports in college. So-
Willie Thompson:
What sports?
Douglas Henze:
She's a basketball player. She was a guard.
Sydney Hunt:
Nice.
Douglas Henze:
She never specified if she was shooting or point, but so I grew up around ball of all kinds and ended up falling in love with it. Played football for basically my entire life since I was nine.
Sydney Hunt:
Wow.
Douglas Henze:
Luckily, I was okay at that.
Sydney Hunt:
More than okay.
Willie Thompson:
I'd say.
Sydney Hunt:
I'd say more than okay
Douglas Henze:
Luckily, I was okay with that and I was able to hold down some good grades. Ended up going to Harvard. From Harvard, I joined school as a pre-med as so many, so many do and then was no longer a pre-med and decided that math and science were pretty fun. Went the engineering route. Following COVID, I worked in manufacturing for about six months, got back to school, said, "Grad school is probably a good option here." And that's what led me to Stanford as it is.
Willie Thompson:
Well, an interesting thing about your time at Stanford is that you're one of the part of the first group of people who applied to Knight-Hennessy after you'd already been in your PhD program. So tell us a little bit about that.
Douglas Henze:
Yeah, I remember filling out my Stanford application in, I want to say it was like December 21 is when I officially hit submit and it said, it was one little checkbox that said, "Did you apply through Knight-Hennessy?" And I remember looking up what that was just in the Safari tab on my phone and it said exactly what it was. It was very abstract. It was just leadership. There was basically just that big word. That's all I could see in my phone. I was like, "Oh, that would've been cool," but I missed the application deadline by a long ways. And as I was coming in here, they basically told all the PhD students, "Hey, for those of you that want extra funding, look at all of these fellowships through Stanford." And Knight-Hennessy popped up and I had just toggled that website for a while thinking it would be super cool.
So had a very fortunate stroke of luck that my year was the first year they let people in first year their PhD program. So just applied for that and it was a super life-giving experience actually, doing the application. So I was stoked no matter what happened and I was fortunate enough to meet people like Sydney in my cohort.
Sydney Hunt:
Oh, you're so sweet. No, Doug is being so humble right now. I'm waiting for him to brag about himself.
Willie Thompson:
Super. Well, isn't humility a Knight-Hennessy value, I believe.
Douglas Henze:
I feel like it's really hidden.
Sydney Hunt:
It's hidden, it's hidden.
Willie Thompson:
It's nestled in there.
Sydney Hunt:
But there are a lot of humble people here for sure, for sure.
Willie Thompson:
Makes it a healthy place. Then we'll talk more about your application later, but-
Sydney Hunt:
A question about, I guess, this balance that you had I guess throughout your life, but also more specifically in playing D1 football at Harvard and being at Harvard as an engineering major, and then now at Stanford, you didn't just decide to stay with the PhD program in bioengineering, which already in itself is a lot, but you added Knight-Hennessy on top of that. And I was just wondering, generally speaking, how/if you find that balance, how do you stay sane? How do you ensure that your day to day is not to the point where you're working at peak maximum efficiency all the time?
Douglas Henze:
A lot of caffeine, but no, I can start with ball because that one just made a lot more sense to me. Everybody remembers those first few weeks of college where you're just trying to make friends, you're reaching out for anybody that's out there. I was very fortunate in that they just sort of plot me on a campus and they said, "So you have these 30 guys that are all coming in the same time as you. They all have to be your friend. You got to be with them for the next four to five years of your life. And everybody else on this team, you kind of have to rely on them." So I had this really, really good support system for basically my entire time in college. So it was either trying to find an easy class. Yes, I had to do that. Trying to find out how to take this engineering class and figure out how to work the timing around practice. You could just walk into the locker room and shout out a question and somebody would ...
Sydney Hunt:
Oh, nice.
Douglas Henze:
... pop their head around a corner and try and answer it. So being in that environment, it felt so hard to fall behind. It was just all the help was there. It was absolutely amazing and it made you want to start reciprocating that, start putting out help and start putting out the feelers to help other guys. And then when you get to Stanford, it's like there's that void in every athlete's life once they lose their sport and you're like, "Okay, okay, how do I fill that? I am working in a research lab," we're not going to talk about how many hours anybody works. That's a very dangerous game when you start talking to PhD students, but it's like I basically filled up my entirety of time. There was no football work, and as you mentioned, it's a dangerous game to be playing.
Sydney Hunt:
It's a fine line.
Douglas Henze:
Very fine line. So I keep my sanity by doing, just working out in the mornings, always chasing towards something athletically, pick up a marathon twice a year, pick up an Ironman on occasion.
Sydney Hunt:
Oh, wow.
Willie Thompson:
That's just not very casual.
Douglas Henze:
Because that's the latest goal. The Ironman is the latest goal.
Willie Thompson:
Nuts. Ironman sounded like groceries.
Sydney Hunt:
Oh-
Douglas Henze:
The marathons are chill at this point. Ironman, that's what we're working towards.
Willie Thompson:
The marathon is chill at this point. All right, cool, cool, cool.
Sydney Hunt:
I remember there was ... What month was it that you ran the 30 miles? What was it?
Douglas Henze:
That was November or something, a little ultra action.
Sydney Hunt:
Do you want to explain that story real quick?
Douglas Henze:
Yeah.
Sydney Hunt:
This is one of the very first interactions I had with Doug and I already knew he was a star just from the vibes I got when I met him, but this moment for sure clarified.
Douglas Henze:
Yeah, so I help run this committee back at Harvard. It's commemorating a guy that was on the team when I was there, actually from my hometown, and he suffered a devastating spinal cord injury when we first got there. And so we do fundraising efforts either mainly centered around the fall. There's this big event in Boston or New York depending on where the Harvard-Yale game is. And additionally around that, we do a 3.2-mile run because it's just a little bit more than a 5k and his number was 32. And I remember sitting there, I was like, "Why do we only do 3.2 miles?" And I was like, "It's because everybody's too soft to run 32 miles for this."
So I just decided to rip a 32, just really spamming the stories, just trying to make sure people were aware of what was going on and try to get as many people to sign up and show out as possible. There was a decent showing after that. I will admit there was a lot of interaction on that post, but it was a super fun experience. Running 32 miles with minimal training is not fun.
Willie Thompson:
I could imagine.
Sydney Hunt:
But you did it.
Douglas Henze:
I did do that. That was fun. Sydney was there at the finish line, "finish line," which was just mt apartment.
Sydney Hunt:
They made a makeshift finish line.
Willie Thompson:
Where was the finish line?
Sydney Hunt:
I think it was Kevin and Tom, right?
Douglas Henze:
Yeah.
Sydney Hunt:
Who came with us, who are also 2023 cohort scholars and we tied two people's sweatshirts together, the sleeves. Doug ran through and then we had a little phone playing I think it was We are the Champions or Eye of the Tiger, one of those songs. I forget which one it was-
Douglas Henze:
I was blacked out by mile 30. I don't remember.
Sydney Hunt:
But I think the best thing that we did is we had a Powerade at the finish line and so Doug was able to chug that down and recover.
Willie Thompson:
What flavor?
Sydney Hunt:
Blue, I think.
Willie Thompson:
Blue? Blue Frost?
Sydney Hunt:
Yeah.
Willie Thompson:
I like that.
Douglas Henze:
No, just straight blue, I think.
Sydney Hunt:
Just straight blue, yeah.
Douglas Henze:
It's crazy that people ... They're actual flavor names, but everybody just says the color.
Willie Thompson:
Like purple.
Sydney Hunt:
It's true.
Willie Thompson:
And no one remembers the Cherry Limeade Gatorade for sure. So all that story, perseverance in balance, one thing I'm interested in learning about you even happens before Harvard and you mentioned you're from Birmingham, specifically Hoover and Hoover is ... I'm from the Deep South too and I remember Hoover from Two-A-Days, the MTV reality show that was covered ... You didn't go to that high school, did you?
Douglas Henze:
No, I did not go to Hoover, no.
Willie Thompson:
But it was ... Anyway, I won't go down the rabbit hole about Two-A-Days.
Douglas Henze:
Don't worry.
Willie Thompson:
That was my brother and I were in front of the TV watching that every week. Well, what was Hoover like in growing up in Birmingham and the Deep South?
Douglas Henze:
It's hot, it's hot all the time, but it's one of those weird places where you got what you see on the media. You got a lot of people trying to tear down the Southeast, but at the same time, when you go down there, there are little pockets. There are little pockets where everybody knows each other's names and you can walk down the street and a smile is actually a smile where it's like ... You know what I'm talking about?
Willie Thompson:
I feel that deeply, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Douglas Henze:
So growing up in just the Southeast in general, I feel like you get that vibe, Hoover specifically. So I went to the red-headed stepchild high school, I went to Spain Park, and basically, the city would throw on all these events. They were like the Hoover High School event and we were over there like, "Woo." But nah, we were fortunate, we ended up beating them. My time there, we went to the state playoffs ...
Sydney Hunt:
Wow.
Douglas Henze:
So the city actually had to recognize us for a little bit. It was a good time.
Willie Thompson:
Nice, but no state championships?
Douglas Henze:
No, no. See now that we got that, you get a blue map if you win. You get a red map if you're runner up.
Sydney Hunt:
Nice.
Douglas Henze:
That red map hurts. That red map hurts bad.
Sydney Hunt:
Oh, man. Oh, man. What position did you play in football?
Douglas Henze:
I was a defensive tackle.
Sydney Hunt:
For those not particularly familiar with football terms, what does that mean?
Douglas Henze:
Okay, so explain this for Sydney.
Willie Thompson:
Sydney's Corner, that might be your current segment.
Douglas Henze:
For laymen here, defensive tackle is ... You know the guy that snaps the ball?
Sydney Hunt:
Yes.
Douglas Henze:
So I'm the guy that hits the person that snaps the ball.
Sydney Hunt:
Oh, snap. Oh, pun intended.
Douglas Henze:
So it's like, literally, I'm just trying to go tackle a guy with the ball. And the closer you are to the center of the field, the heavier you have to be. So I was rocking about the scale, never said 300, I was 297 on the scale officially and that's the heaviest I got in my playing days.
Sydney Hunt:
What got you into that position? Is that just something that-
Douglas Henze:
I'm slow.
Sydney Hunt:
Oh, man.
Douglas Henze:
It was fun. So it's like everybody has a body type when they play football. It's like your position's going to be tailored towards your body type. So I'm about, I can't say was, I'm about 6'2", 6'2 and a half if I'm wearing cleats and I was always a bit heavier set and I remember one coach just looked at me, he was like, "You get up to about 270, you'd be a decent defensive tackle." I took that to heart. I ballooned up from 210 to 260 between my sophomore and my junior year ...
Sydney Hunt:
Sure.
Douglas Henze:
... and put a little bit of gut on myself. It was all good. But I just let one coach dictate what I did in football and let that rock for a bit.
Willie Thompson:
And you've done what a lot of ... I know I've seen a lot of offensive linemen, like Jeff Saturday, for example, of the folks, he played for Indianapolis Colts, he looked the size when he was playing and then he totally shrunk after he retired. And I can say the same trend tends to hold for the defensive side of the ball too.
Douglas Henze:
We try our best, man. It's this one thing where you want to do the opposite of what you did when you were playing. So sometimes skinny guys will blow up a little bit. Sometimes the big guys will get smaller and sometimes you just stay the same size.
Willie Thompson:
If you were this proportionality when you were starting to play football, what position do you think you'd play?
Douglas Henze:
See, I would say linebacker, but I know I wasn't fast enough for that.
Sydney Hunt:
Maybe, you never know. You never know.
Willie Thompson:
Might start a KH football team. See what he's got. I play flag football.
Sydney Hunt:
Flag football by cohort?
Willie Thompson:
Yeah.
Sydney Hunt:
I'm down.
Douglas Henze:
I can get behind that. I did one round of IM football here and all I did was watch. I never went full speed on running in any capacity.
Willie Thompson:
I love that context on your story. Let's maybe transition a little bit to your time here at Stanford and your Imagine A World statement. What sparks you to come up with you thinking of a world where nobody has to watch those they love forget them? Where's that come from?
Douglas Henze:
It goes way back to 2010, so I'm like 11 years old right now in this context and that's around when there was a major uptick in people being very conscious of concussions and head trauma and what that does in sports. And I would always joke with my mom, I don't recommend joking with your mom about this at this at the age of 11 that, "Oh, I'm just going to go and get a bunch of concussions, mom, and it's not going to do anything." After you get a few and you hide a few and you keep playing through them, you get a little ditzy there. You don't quite remember everything and then you hear the stories of all the guys that make their way totally through, they play ball for years and years and years and can't even remember their own kids' names. We got the Mike Websters of the world, the Junior Seaus of the world, people that ended up committing suicide because things just got so bad.
They basically developed Alzheimer's at age of 40, 40 to 50 range, and you hear those and you just get terrified as a football player. And then going on top of that, normal people, people that didn't bash their head against other human beings for years of their life start getting forgetful at the age of 60 in the case of some of my family members. It starts to break your heart a little bit knowing that you could either willingly shorten this amount of time that you got a decent memory or you can do everything in your power to try and resist it and you're going to start losing memory, you're going to start losing your cognitive ability. So that's what prompted that. It's just fear, I guess.
Sydney Hunt:
I know you did a storytelling on this topic, and for those who don't know storytelling is, this class that the first year Knight-Hennessy cohort takes together and every morning or once a week in the morning, we'll have a improv/presentation workshops with Dan and Lisa, and Doug did a story on this, which was really powerful and I was wondering if you could maybe touch on that a little bit of when, I guess, this statement started to really become personal to you because you started to actually see the effects like yourself.
Douglas Henze:
Yeah, I mean it started, I'd say, after my playing career is when I really realized because I played football for 10 to 12 years of my life, averaging something around 30 hits to the head every time I put on a helmet. Accumulate that over years and years and years. I was rocking north of 10,000 hits to the head because I was an idiot and hit with my head almost every play, never officially went to the training room to get these diagnosed, but it was like concussions, definitely north of the standard four where people start making you consider things. And when I stopped playing ball, I actually could focus on things for a period longer than 30 seconds, which was insane to me and I just thought that was because I had a lot of clarity because I was losing the weight, I was slimming down. And then all of a sudden, my last concussion, I was working out, hit it a little too hard, just lights out and woke up just bleeding on the ground there because I bashed my head against the dumbbell rack.
And when I went to the hospital later that day, I was like, "Oh, man, this is how I felt for the last 10 years of my life. How much did I shorten the good years of my memory, not telling people when my head was hurting out there?" It was so bad that even when I was playing ball, one of my friends would look at me, "Hey, did your head feel okay?" "No, give me like five minutes." And it was just that understanding of, "Hey, give me five minutes. I probably hit somebody way too hard with my head and I should not be in here, but here I am."
Sydney Hunt:
That's a lot to grapple with. How do you grapple with that? Part of it is right through the research you're doing, I'm assuming, but I guess on a more personal level.
Douglas Henze:
Yeah, you got to hit it with the research. I study aging, so it's a lot like the Alzheimer's impact that comes from all the blows to the head. So I'm looking basically at the same symptoms that I potentially could be dealing with, that people like me, people that I shared a field with could be dealing with down the line. But I think on a personal level, really dealing with the mortality of myself. I'm a man of faith. It's like, when I close my eyes every night and I pray, I'm not necessarily praying for myself. I'm praying for those around me. And it's like it's knowing that there are things bigger than yourself and that chance to have prayer and to give thanks makes you realize that you're not central. And when you're not central, it's a lot easier to grapple with things like that.
Willie Thompson:
I hear you talk about that makes me wonder, what's your relationship with gratitude like now or thankfulness now considering the experiences you've had? And it feels as if what I'm hearing is an appreciation for things that you have because of the things that have come and gone in terms of your life and how you experience your day to day and so I'm wondering what that experience is like for you.
Douglas Henze:
When you realize how fleeting everything is, when the people that you love go suddenly, when you have sort of this existential loss of one of your buddies is not the same after something, you really start to cherish every day for what it is. And I think it's like it makes it so much easier to say, "I should not be complaining about anything that's going on in my life." If I have a bad day at work, my girlfriend's so quick to say, "Oh, I'm sorry," I'm like, "What are you talking about? Life could be so much worse. I'm in this beautiful place. I'm surrounded by wonderful people. I get to just go spend basically grant money to study things that I find interesting, things that are ever present in my life, in the life of people that I love. There is nothing to complain about. I'm so thankful to be here." And it's just having that perspective on life has been very valuable.
Sydney Hunt:
I agree with that, for sure. I feel like I also have that mindset when approaching difficulties in life/the PhD because there's a lot of experiences in life that, like you said, really touch upon the mortality of humans especially. But I also, from my perspective sometimes, again going back to that fine line of gaslighting yourself of never letting yourself have a bad day, I know Johnny in a previous episode I talked about, when he came to grad school, he started to experience toxic positivity for the first time or being told that he can express that. And I don't think I get that from you ever, but I wonder what's your line of not gaslighting yourself but also still having an immense amount of gratitude because it is a privilege to be here, especially as a PhD student and especially as a Knight-Hennessy scholar at Stanford?
Douglas Henze:
Sydney, I'm going to answer that with a question real quick.
Sydney Hunt:
Sure.
Douglas Henze:
If I were to ask you, "How are you doing today?" how would you answer it?
Sydney Hunt:
Yeah, I would always say great because life is great in the context when you zoom out and you had mentioned, think about on the day-to-day level where you... other options that your life could be.
Douglas Henze:
So that's part of the problem, is everybody says, "Great. Oh, I'm doing good," and I've made it a habit recently to give just very candid, "No, I'm tired right now. It's like there's a lot going on," and I think, when you're just real with yourself in that capacity of, "Yeah, it's a bad day, but it could be worse," it's so easy to pull back and just realize that, "I'm not gaslighting myself here. It's a day, it happened. It's a day that I'm going to move on from tomorrow." And that's how I grapple with that. It's like, "Can I be candid and say, 'Is it a bad day?' or do I have to say to everybody, 'It's an amazing day'?"
Sydney Hunt:
Sure, sure. I guess that breaks down the ... I guess encourage people to be more genuine with each other as well, which something I definitely feel like you've expressed in KH. I feel like a lot of people who are friends with you feel that genuine friendship connection and it's not the small talk surface level stuff. It's real stuff that people talk about and I think has benefited you a lot in allowing yourself to feel more connected to people and people feel connected to you.
Willie Thompson:
It definitely resonates with me around the specificity of language to use that I use around describing my state of mind or where I am. And some of that came to me from the pandemic where I think we were on Zoom for everything and say, "How you doing?" "I'm good." I'd be like, "There's no, 'We're living the global pandemic. You've been like on lockdown forever.'"
Sydney Hunt:
"There's no way you're doing well."
Willie Thompson:
Or maybe you are, I don't know. The pandemic did illuminate some people had better living situations than others and I think the thing that I came up with was like, "I'm decent, I'm decent." That was the thing that I would go to, is decent, feels very ... Clearly not like, "I'm doing great," but it's not horrible either. And even using that language allowed me to access different aspects of my emotional state as opposed to just going quickly into the, "I'm good, I'm cool." So that makes a lot of sense to me.
Douglas Henze:
The pandemic was a dark time for a lot of people.
Sydney Hunt:
Oh, man.
Willie Thompson:
For sure.
Sydney Hunt:
Did you graduate during the pandemic or-
Douglas Henze:
No, that's when I took time off from school. So to maintain eligibility, I had to take a little bit of time away and I had asked Harvard for permission to do so.
Willie Thompson:
So talk about that experience, like taking off from school to maintain your eligibility and just what led to that decision and what was that ... I think you said it was a year. What was that like?
Douglas Henze:
So I took six months. It added just a year onto my whole trajectory though, given the nature of grad school, but I would not recommend doing what I did to anybody. I ended up working the ... So for those that don't know how a manufacturing shift works, you're supposed to have people manning a plant at all hours of the day and you run on 10-hour shifts. So there's the 6:30 to the 4:30 crew and then there's the 1:30 to 11:30 crew. But if you're leaving at 11:30, you're not actually leaving until midnight. And they said, "Okay, well what do we put the intern? What do we put the intern on?"
Sydney Hunt:
Oh, boy.
Douglas Henze:
"We're going to put him on the second shift. We're going to really make sure he's getting out there really enjoying his time." And most people on 40-hour work week, so you only work four days a week, "How do we make sure the intern is really learning what's going on? Let's make them work five days a week, man. It's a global pandemic. You really can't be doing that much outside of this."
Willie Thompson:
Where is this manufacturing role? Where were you interning?
Douglas Henze:
I was interning at Sanofi, more specifically the Genzyme acquisition of Sanofi.
Willie Thompson:
Okay.
Douglas Henze:
So it's a plant in Austin, Massachusetts, just off the river and it was basically right across the street from Harvard Football. So it would have perfect had I just had that little internship as a side gig over the summer before my final season. And luckily enough, that company was super, super generous and let me continue working. I actually flipped departments in order to work for the full six months. So it was like-
Willie Thompson:
So you moved?
Douglas Henze:
Kind of. The thing about working the second shift is everybody else is asleep by the end of it. So I reached out to the data analytics portion of the company. I was like, "Hey, can I do some work?" So this is them/manufacturing engineering and it's like they let me do a little bit of work as a trial and it worked out well. So they said, "Hey, since you're staying here for a little bit longer, you want to work for this half of the company? I think we can swing that." So I was like, "Oh, thank goodness. I do not have to stay up this late anymore." Because I was still training. I was still getting up at crack of dawn training with my boys that were up there, sleeping for three hours in between training and getting to work.
Sydney Hunt:
Oh, man.
Willie Thompson:
That's crazy.
Douglas Henze:
It was an interesting time in my life. A lot of character growth.
Willie Thompson:
There's one thing that's clear about your experience that I want to get your take on. Like Sydney said at the beginning of the episode, we're in the beginning of season two, you are someone who's from a STEM background, science, technology, engineering, mathematics. Sydney's also from that tree of discipline as well. And surprisingly, we didn't have a ton of STEM people last season, which I think was actually cool to see all the ways that people choose to come to Stanford that aren't related to something that people would normally associate with Stanford. And I can imagine we'll definitely have more STEM folks this season as we get things rolling. What do you think people get wrong about STEM folks?
Sydney Hunt:
Oh, that's a good question.
Douglas Henze:
It's a really good question. I'm not necessarily the right person to answer that question though because I was very fortunate in undergrad and that Harvard had a wonderful liberal arts backbone to the whole education system. And so I like to consider myself well-rounded.
Willie Thompson:
At Morehouse, we call that well-balanced, it's one of the five wells.
Sydney Hunt:
Jack of all trades.
Douglas Henze:
I think one of the things that people get wrong about STEM individuals is that we can't necessarily talk about literature. Please do not talk to me about literature in any capacity.
Willie Thompson:
I have a question...
Douglas Henze:
Well, we are capable of reading a book. We are capable of understanding something and intuition. It's not all monotone, it's not all numbers. We still got to tell a story. We still got to have fun with it. So I think that's one common misconception people have about those in the STEM fields.
Sydney Hunt:
Were you always a STEM person? Did you ever have a transition?
Douglas Henze:
I think the closest I ever got to not being an engineer was when my mother looked at me and said, "You'd be wasting your brain if you weren't a doctor."
Willie Thompson:
You weren't a doctor.
Douglas Henze:
I was not a doctor. I'm going to be a doctor in a different capacity. It's not like a real doctor. You know what I'm saying? But they don't let me work on people, but-
Sydney Hunt:
It'll still be Dr. Henze.
Douglas Henze:
I'll still be Dr. Henze. I will write it on my airline ticket one time, one time. That's a mark of every PhD.
Willie Thompson:
Oh, really?
Douglas Henze:
You have to write it.
Willie Thompson:
Is that a thing?
Douglas Henze:
It's like the first time you ride a plane after you get your PhD, you put doctor one time just to have people say it.
Sydney Hunt:
Some people even put on their credit cards, they order new credit cards, so it says comma PhD after or Dr. in the front.
Willie Thompson:
Are either of you going to do that once you have your-
Sydney Hunt:
Plane ticket for sure.
Douglas Henze:
Plane ticket, 100%. Everything else, no.
Sydney Hunt:
It feels like a lot of work to change everything and I also feel like, I don't know, I'm not just doctor. I'm Sydney.
Willie Thompson:
For sure.
Douglas Henze:
And at the same time, I feel like when people ask, "Is there a doctor here?" it's for like, "Hey, somebody's dying over here."
Willie Thompson:
You don't want to set yourself up.
Douglas Henze:
I don't want to set stuff up that one.
Willie Thompson:
That makes sense.
Douglas Henze:
I know first aid, I don't know it that well.
Willie Thompson:
What do you think, Sydney?
Sydney Hunt:
Oh, about STEM people, what people get wrong? I definitely agree with Doug that there actually is a side of us that not only appreciates but understands the humanities. I think what people also get wrong is ... I guess it's more what engineering feels like as a whole. For example, I'm doing PhD in electrical engineering and everyone just imagines that being circuits and hardware and you're in a room by yourself with no lights and-
Douglas Henze:
That is 100% what I pictured.
Sydney Hunt:
Exactly. And that is true for some people who are doing their EE PhD, but for me, I work in the hospital and I work with people and individuals and I work I guess more on things that are related to coding as well. And so it's similar to what Doug said of being well-rounded. I guess, attempting to be a jack of all trades in many areas, and of course, you have your specialty, but engineering actually encompasses a lot of different things and whatever your degree, especially in the PhD. Whatever that major or subject says oftentimes can mean so many different things.
Willie Thompson:
For the folks who need to know more about the STEM folks, I think this is a good starting point. And last question I'll ask before you probably start going to some of our closing topics. You were mentioning a lot of the more darker aspects of what people experience when it comes to memory and how memory's affected by age or by affliction via lots of headbutting, little headbutting. What are some of the things, and I know because even in bioengineering, I know a lot of the ideas are really hush-hush because you don't want someone poaching your ideas if you go deep into the research in what you're doing. What are some things that are giving you hope about society's ability to create the kind of world that you imagine?
Douglas Henze:
Man, when you look at all the research it's coming out, I think one of the things that science has done so well recently is all research is basically open source at this point. Everybody that has research coming from the NIH, that has research coming from these different philanthropy organizations, they all end up putting their research on some called bioRxiv. And basically what bioRxiv is is just this whole repository of papers that it's like the second somebody has something that they want to submit somewhere, they put it on bioRxiv when they submit it. And it's done a really good job at breaking down these barriers of making research super accessible.
And basically what that does is it's making all the datasets available to everybody. It's making it to where you can really start mining and understanding and really starting to figure out what is leading to these very negative repercussions that come with age or head trauma. And I think the more readily available that data is, the faster we're actually going to be able to see people start pushing towards solutions. And I think we're reaching the age of the cell atlas. You look at the Allen Brain Institute, you look at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, they're constantly pushing out stuff that's, "Can we understand the body better? Can we understand cell types better?" and if you can understand these systems, only then can you start to build a better future. And I think we're reaching a point where we have enough data to where that's finally possible.
Sydney Hunt:
I agree with Doug. It's actually quite a good time to be a grad student right now. I feel like we're really lucky that a lot of data is out there and openly available to us, so that we can push the boundaries forward and not have to wait five years for something to be published because we know the review process takes forever. But instead using things like bioRxiv right away allows you to get the information out there more readily. Cool. So you applied to Knight-Hennessy as a first year PhD student, so you started as a second year. How did your experience at Stanford change in between the two years?
Douglas Henze:
So I don't think you all understand how expensive food is. The amount that my food budget has just shrunk. I have not needed to spend anything on food since getting to Knight-Hennessy. There are so many events going on. And it's like, through those events, I get both the enrichment of going to events and I also get the fun little savings that also results from not having to buy food all the time.
Sydney Hunt:
Sure.
Willie Thompson:
You get physically nourished, you get mentally nourished as well.
Douglas Henze:
Exactly.
Sydney Hunt:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Douglas Henze:
It's amazing. On top of that, it's really nice to be able to interact to people that are not just in a STEM field. As much as I love my STEM people, it's super nice to be able to interact with the humanities again, to interact with the business people, to interact with the lawyers. And it's like you just learn so much more about the world when you get outside of that little bubble, when you get outside that little silo that grad school can be.
Sydney Hunt:
And it's really easy to talk to people too. I think here, when you come to the many events, you have people from every background sitting at the table next to you. Absolutely. Speaking of KH and the many amazing things that come with it, if you were to give advice to someone who is considering applying to Stanford and/or Knight-Hennessy, was there anything that you would've done differently? Was there anything that you would've wanted to know before joining?
Douglas Henze:
I think if I were to give advice to anybody that is thinking about a postgraduate fellowship in general, it is to be unapologetically you in that application process because I think it's so often that people are putting on paper what they think an admissions committee wants to see and not who they actually are. And I think the second you show that bit of you, it is both a lifegiving and life-altering experience, I think. I understood more about my background throughout filling out this application than I did before. It is a chance to look very introspectively at yourself and to understand what makes you tick as far as what people should know about joining the community.
One, it's a tossup, but once it gets to the point where you're here, everybody who applies is so amazingly qualified, and once you're actually in this space, it's not a time to gatekeep. It's a time to give back. It's a time to really breathe into the Stanford community. And I think the more you lean into that when you're here, the better this community is perceived to the greater good and greater community.
Sydney Hunt:
Beautiful. That sounds great. My next question for you is related to, I guess, what you're talking about on the giving back and not gatekeeping. So how do you think the Knight-Hennessy community has supported you or helped you in your personal/professional endeavors? And do you feel like ... I mean, I definitely know there's a lot of ways you've given back to KH, but maybe if you had to pick your favorite of how you feel like you're paying it forward?
Douglas Henze:
I would say that it's basically just talking to people. It's like when you are here at night working, people are in their zone, they got the headphones on, and I feel like it's just so easy to go about your business, not interrupt anybody because it looks like they're grinding, it looks like they're working and it's just so easy to go up to them, say, "Hey, how busy are you, scale of one to 10?" 90% of the time somebody's going to say, "Oh, I'm just watching Netflix right now" or "I'm not really doing anything." And it's just a chance to talk to somebody. It's a chance to have open conversations about who they are, where they came from. Because I guarantee you, you don't know everybody that walks through this house. You don't know everybody that walks around this campus. So getting a peek into somebody's life is a chance to just let them open up, let them have this conversation they wouldn't have had otherwise.
Willie Thompson:
And the conversation definitely is a gift in this space in Denning House and whether it's happening in an event where you bring in someone who's an exemplar or you're doing it over lunch with another scholar, with a member of the team or even doing it with prospective admits, I think you always get something out of that and you always find yourself reflecting or thinking back on those conversations a lot more than you would initially think in the first place. As you get into our wrapping-up segments, one thing that we're keeping from the first season is our improbable facts dissection here. So what's an improbable fact or two you want to share with the audience?
Douglas Henze:
I think my favorite improbable fact that I ended up putting on there was going into my junior year of college, I was in a three-bedroom house.
Willie Thompson:
How many baths?
Douglas Henze:
Two baths. Three baths, three baths. Decent, decent, decent accommodation. How many people do you think we could fit in there?
Sydney Hunt:
Oh, boy.
Willie Thompson:
So three-bed, three baths. So there's three bedrooms. How many common areas were there?
Douglas Henze:
There were about three common areas.
Willie Thompson:
Three common areas.
Sydney Hunt:
Oh, wow. That's a big place.
Willie Thompson:
Three common areas. So you're at least doing ... I'd imagine you can double up definitely in the bedrooms. It's at least six. And then common rooms, assumes like a living room in a mid, high rise or whatever. Midrise apartment at Stanford, you could probably get another two. So six, 12.
Douglas Henze:
12 on the dot.
Sydney Hunt:
Dang.
Willie Thompson:
Whoa.
Douglas Henze:
On the dot.
Sydney Hunt:
That's crazy. I would have said eight.
Douglas Henze:
It's not comfy. It's not comfy in the slightest.
Willie Thompson:
Wait, so where were the 12 people? So was there at least two people in each bedroom and the people in common rooms, common spaces?
Douglas Henze:
So the one bedroom that was originally what I believe to be the master ... Oh, we actually did with two bedrooms. Two bedrooms had three people each, one bedroom had two people, so we got eight upstairs, and then for some reason, we let some guys talk us into ... Basically they ran the whole common areas by themselves and there was a stretch of three weeks where some incoming freshmen were trying to find a place to crash and they were like, "Hey, can we just crash on the couch or something for a week or two? We'll pay rent." "Oh, you said rent." So we had some income frosh sleep on the couch for a few weeks and that bumpered us up to 12.
Willie Thompson:
Crazy.
Sydney Hunt:
Would you do it again?
Willie Thompson:
That's must have been so affordable.
Sydney Hunt:
Would you do it again?
Douglas Henze:
Would I do it again? I don't got that in me at this point. If I was a young buck, I could do it again, but-
Willie Thompson:
You're still spring chicken.
Sydney Hunt:
Good. I like it. I like it. So now that we've gone over the improbable facts, we have a very new segment that we're starting in season two called Rapid Fire, where we sent out this little form for people to just ask you a bunch of questions and you can ideally answer in one sentence. That's the goal. If you need a little bit more, there's some wiggle room. The first question is, when you're eating a bowl of cereal, do you pour the cereal or the milk first?
Douglas Henze:
Cereal first.
Sydney Hunt:
Good answer. That's the right answer.
Willie Thompson:
Okay, yeah.
Sydney Hunt:
Do you pour milk first, Willie?
Willie Thompson:
No, no, I was thinking about, "Don't pour milk first." No, I don't think I've ever done that.
Douglas Henze:
I think you're supposed to pour milk first.
Willie Thompson:
Well, it's hard to get the ratio right then if you don't pour the cereal in first-
Sydney Hunt:
Exactly.
Douglas Henze:
But I think you're supposed to pour the milk first. I don't do this, but I have heard that you're supposed to pour the milk first, a, to X portion control, b, to make sure the cereal is still crunchy.
Willie Thompson:
Well, I think that depends if I want the cereal crunchy and I don't necessarily want the cereal crunchy.
Douglas Henze:
I like the little soggy cereal. I'm a fan when it reaches that point.
Willie Thompson:
What's your favorite cereal?
Douglas Henze:
I haven't had cereal in years. I think-
Willie Thompson:
Bad for your health.
Douglas Henze:
If I could fill up a bowl of cereal, just give me the Apple Jacks, man.
Willie Thompson:
Apple Jacks is so crazy.
Sydney Hunt:
They're good.
Willie Thompson:
I love Apple Jacks. Sydney?
Sydney Hunt:
They're good. Frosted Mini-Wheats, hands down, hands down. I think they're so good. Even the Trader Joe's knockoff version is also really good.
Willie Thompson:
Frosted Mini-Wheats. I don't think I've heard anyone-
Douglas Henze:
I've heard of them back when it was like there was Special K or something, whatever that place was. They used to sell them there. I remember because they just had a big K on them. I had the knockoffs. That just occurred to me.
Sydney Hunt:
I like the Trader Joe's knockoffs, they're very good and they're much more affordable than buying actual Mini-Wheats.
Willie Thompson:
Mini-Wheats. I don't think I ever saw a young person eating Mini-Wheats growing up. That's crazy. That's crazy.
Sydney Hunt:
I just aged myself 20 years.
Willie Thompson:
You probably keep Mini-Wheats in business.
Sydney Hunt:
Probably, honestly. Definitely. Willie, you?
Willie Thompson:
So many cereals. Apple Jacks definitely would've been up there for me. I'll probably say Pops. Do you remember Pops?
Sydney Hunt:
Oh, yes, I have ... Oh my gosh.
Willie Thompson:
It was a corn-based cereal.
Sydney Hunt:
I haven't had those in like 10 years.
Douglas Henze:
I know what you're talking about.
Willie Thompson:
I think it was up there with Apple Jacks in terms of the after-cereal-milk flavor.
Sydney Hunt:
Yes, that's very true.
Willie Thompson:
I would easily make an ice cream flavor.
Douglas Henze:
What was the mascot, Willie? Because every cereal had a mascot.
Sydney Hunt:
Let me see, definitely it was yellow.
Willie Thompson:
Apple Jacks was crazy because it was definitely Jamaican CinnaMon Stick.
Douglas Henze:
And there the angry apple with him.
Willie Thompson:
I don't even want to see the writer's room for that.
Douglas Henze:
They still have CinnaMon Stick mascot, I believe. I saw this-
Willie Thompson:
He's still Jamaican?
Douglas Henze:
No, he's not so Jamaican.
Willie Thompson:
Because that was... at the time, I didn't think it was anything that deep. As an adult, it's crazy. They were just like... I don't even know if there are apples in Jamaica. I don't know they... Anyway, all right, let's see, the Pops mascot, I'm not seeing a mascot. I'm seeing Sugar Pops, but those aren't the Pops I'm thinking of. Maybe they got rid of the mascot before. Because I know, I'm thinking like Lucky Charms had the leprechaun, Rice Krispies had the three things.
Sydney Hunt:
Snap, Crackle, Pop.
Willie Thompson:
Snap, Crackle, Pop. Thank you. Smacks had the frog. Captain Crunch-
Douglas Henze:
But every cereal back early 2000s, late '90s all had a mascot.
Willie Thompson:
I'm not seeing anything for Pops.
Sydney Hunt:
Maybe it's an old man cereal and they don't have mascots.
Willie Thompson:
It might be, but you know what I'm saying? It's real popular with the kids. You what I'm saying? We'd definitely tear it up. I'm looking at it. Rooster, leprechaun, Count Chocula, the rabbit for Trix. Even the Mini-Wheats had a little situation there.
Sydney Hunt:
See, mine's young.
Willie Thompson:
We're going to have cereal. You're great, Tony the Tiger and then you got Grape Nuts, there was no ... Anyway, all right, we're going Rapid Fire. Go ahead, Sydney, just the next question.
Sydney Hunt:
So the next question is from your big brother Eric, whose side comment says, "I admire Doug for how he inspires not only me, but also everyone else around him!"
Douglas Henze:
Love the exclamation point on that.
Sydney Hunt:
It's much needed for context. So his Rapid Fire question for Doug is, "After being a college athlete and running a marathon for the first time last year, are you training for any other athletic competition? If so, what are they?"
Douglas Henze:
I already dropped the ball there. It's a little Ironman. That's the next thing. I got the bike up to two hours at this point. I got the smooth little 10 mile long run every week, so it's not too bad. The swim, we got to work on that technique.
Willie Thompson:
Hey, bro, that's crazy.
Douglas Henze:
We got to work on the technique on the swim.
Willie Thompson:
Where are you swimming?
Douglas Henze:
There's a little Redwood City gym that is Stanford-affiliated.
Willie Thompson:
Cool.
Douglas Henze:
Lanes are empty. You don't gotta battle with the normal people. For those that do not have the context here, there's one place you can swim on the Stanford campus without being an athlete and the lanes are always packed. You can't get in. Even when it first opens, you're not getting a spot in that pool, but-
Willie Thompson:
Is this Far-illaga, like the outdoor one?
Douglas Henze:
This is Far-illaga, the outdoor one over here, but-
Willie Thompson:
It's mad nice over the summer. I'll tell you that right now.
Douglas Henze:
It is nice over the summer. You still can't get in at 7:00 AM. I tried.
Willie Thompson:
At 7:00 AM?
Douglas Henze:
7:00 AM.
Sydney Hunt:
Wow.
Douglas Henze:
People were banging down the door at 7:00 AM.
Willie Thompson:
Oh, wow, I didn't know that.
Sydney Hunt:
Dang.
Willie Thompson:
Guess my 10:00 AM shift's been going great.
Douglas Henze:
But that Redwood City gym, wide open. That's the goal right now. I'm actually going to try and do a little mile this weekend, see if I can if work on the technique a bit.
Sydney Hunt:
That sounds good.
Douglas Henze:
That's the next goal. I got to get an actual road bike to do that one though. My mobile hybrid ain't going to make it for 100 miles.
Sydney Hunt:
Oh my gosh, did you say 100 miles?
Douglas Henze:
The bike ride is like 100 and something miles.
Sydney Hunt:
Oh my goodness. Wow. That will keep you busy for a while, training for that. Wait, I'm so proud of you. That's awesome. The next and final question I have, for those out there who want the right context, Doug does research on the metabolism at the single cell level and mitochondrial function. I hope I said that correctly. Is that accurate?
Douglas Henze:
There's an old one here, but I'll reach back in my mind for this one.
Sydney Hunt:
So the Rapid Fire question is, if you could have a conversation with a single cell about its metabolic processes, what would you want to know or ask?
Douglas Henze:
So this is kind of a selfish question in that, if I'm looking at a cell, I really want to know, does he know what the deal is with the mitochondria? Because bear with me.
Willie Thompson:
Okay, go for it.
Sydney Hunt:
Sure.
Douglas Henze:
Mitochondria are theorized to come from some random bacteria that said, "Hey, let me get buddy-buddy with this cell," and then they just got swallowed up and they don't look like they look in the textbooks, like these big weird network-y things. So if I were to talk to a cell, I would just say, "Okay, how are you talking to the mitochondria?" Because the mitochondria is still basically a separate organism that lives inside of a cell. So it has its own genome, it's just ripping around in there, talking to the nucleus. So it's very much a separate entity acting within each individual cell. So I would want to know, is it like our microbiome? Are they aware of it? Are they not aware of it? Yeah, no, I'd want to figure out the origin. Does it know what's going on in there?
Sydney Hunt:
That'd be a good podcast. Gene interview, gene interview.
Willie Thompson:
I guess, interview a cell.
Sydney Hunt:
Interview a cell. That sounds perfect. That sounds perfect.
Willie Thompson:
Well, Doug, thanks for spending time with us for kicking off season two with the KH Imagine A World crew. I'm very glad to have you kick us off here. And so thanks for spending the time. We're grateful for your story and can't wait to see what you do with the research in the world you imagine.
Sydney Hunt:
Thank you for coming on this podcast. It was an honor to have you.
Douglas Henze:
Sydney stole my line there. Thank you for having me you all.
Sydney Hunt:
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Imagine A World, where we hear from inspiring members of the KHS community who are making significant contributions in their respective fields, challenging the status quo and pushing the boundaries of what is possible as they imagine the world they want to see.
Willie Thompson:
This podcast is sponsored by Knight-Hennessey Scholars at Stanford University, a multidisciplinary, multicultural graduate fellowship program providing scholars with financial support to pursue graduate studies at Stanford while helping equip them to be visionary, courageous and collaborative leaders who address complex challenges facing the world. Follow us on social media @KnightHennessey and visit our website at kh.stanford.edu to learn more about the program and our community.
