Arturo Castro Nava

A Light-Modulated Hydrogel System To Analyze Cell Durotaxic Behavior In A Dynamic Manner

De Laporte Research Group @ DWI – Leibniz-Institut für Interaktive Materialien

What did you learn in ME3T and how will it help you proceed in your further career?
I think graduate schools like ME3T offer a very interdisciplinary space for students to really dive into different topics. This is very important nowadays, because a lot of projects and collaborations are not done within a specific group or institute, but you have to cross borders and try to understand how the other scientists are thinking. You have to make your message clear to all of them, which is challenging, but very useful.

What do you want to tell your fellow PhD students?
Now that I look back, the PhD actually gave me a lot of tools, which at the given moment often seemed like rather time-consuming tasks (e.g. organizing conferences/meetings, supervising students etc.) These kind of things seemed obvious but looking back, I realize that I learned so much from all of them. Sometimes we need to zoom out, take a step back to see what we can take from each experience and how we can translate this into something that actually helps us grow, not only as a scientist, but also as a person.

What do you wish you’d known when starting your PhD?
I guess knowing yourself is a critical step for being successful. This took me some time, but once I reached that level, I knew what I wanted and what I didn’t want. I know my strengths and weaknesses and how I could tackle all of these difficulties to not really see them as a problem but as an invitation to work on myself or develop certain skills. You should be aware of what you’re doing and really enjoy the process. Not only try to get to the finish line, but enjoy the marathon as well.