Ive Learned to Learn
when i was 5 years old
i was walking to preschool with my dad
i was holding his hand and we were
walking
there was this park on the way to school
where my brother and i used to go and
play regularly
we were walking and i was looking at the
park
and what happened was i hit the corner
of my eye
into one of these parking ballards you
know these black structures they put
into pedestrian walkways to not allow
cars to come in
i hit the corner of my eye i immediately
started bleeding
my dad in panic mode held me carried me
ran
all the way to the doctor’s office i got
stitches
and i still have that mark as a reminder
that that day i was curious to go to the
park
a few weeks later i was coming back home
from preschool
so i was holding my dad’s arm and
we were passing the park and i was
looking at the park again
and as you can guess
i hit the other corner of my eye into
one of the parking ballards
my dad in panic mode held me carried me
ran to the doctor’s office
i got stitches my mom was not happy
and i have another mark on the other
corner of my eye
as a second reminder
now i’m not here today to talk about the
injuries that i’ve had in my life i’m
here to talk about
curiosity and the empowerment in
learning
let me tell you a little bit about
myself my name is leila danish mandy
i’m a phd candidate in biomedical
engineering
and i’m also the chief operating officer
and co-founder of encapsulate
a biotech startup that is working in the
field of cancer therapy
at encapsulate we’ve developed automated
biochips
that can take a cancer patient cells
from when they’re initially
diagnosed with cancer grow them outside
the body in their native state
and test all the possible chemotherapy
drugs that an oncologist may want to
test
to determine the most effective one from
the very beginning
in an individualized basis
because what happens currently in
clinics now is that when a patient is
diagnosed with cancer
the oncologist will choose the
chemotherapy drug based on the type of
cancer
and what has worked well in previous
patients
but what works well for one person may
not necessarily work well for the other
and so that’s why in ovarian cancer for
instance
the first round of chemotherapy fails in
70
of the cases
so the oncologist will try additional
rounds of treatment each time with a new
drug
until they get some sort of response
from the patient
or the patient passes away and in
all these unnecessary chemotherapy
cycles
the patients are enduring unnecessary
pain
with our biochips we can determine the
most effective drug
from the very beginning on an
individualized basis
and avoid all these complications
so we’re currently partnering with
hartford healthcare to run our clinical
studies
on colon cancer patients which is
exciting
and we were recently awarded the
technology and space prize by the
international space station in
partnership with boeing
and it’ll allow us to send our
technology
into space on the international space
station
and test how cancer cells behave up
there
so i’m going to be able to
watch real astronauts work on technology
that i
built up there
and all the time and thinking how did
this happen
so let me back up a little bit i said
i’m a biomedical engineer
i’ve been a biomedical engineer for
almost 10 years now
four years of undergrad three and a half
because i was in a rush i don’t know why
one year at temple university in
philadelphia
and i’m five and a half here at uconn
where i’ve been for the past few years
i am ashamed to say that until two years
ago
and before encapsulate i had
never stepped foot in a hospital to see
what the issue is
that patients are dealing with
i came into engineering because i love
solving problems but after eight years
in the field at the time
after all these studies and experience i
didn’t even know what the problem was
that i was supposed to solve
what kind of an engineer was i
i didn’t suddenly come to this
realization
it happened when i took a course on
entrepreneurship at uconn
the course was titled technology
innovation and entrepreneurship
i don’t even know why i took the course
to be honest i think someone told me
about it
it’s interesting i took it i was curious
and so in the course we were paired into
teams
and we were asked to identify problems
to which we could provide solutions for
and i won’t go into the full details but
that’s kind of where encapsulate was
born
and in one of the programs that we
participated in we were asked to speak
to potential users and customers
of our technology in our case that means
the oncologists the patients the
pathologists
insurance companies hospital procurement
people
so when i say we were asked to speak to
these people i mean we were forced to
speak to these people
i am not comfortable speaking to new
people at all
but every week i would muster up all my
courage
and approach all these different
individuals
and set up a meeting and i would ask
what their work is like what their
challenges are
what they do in a day what they wish
could make their life easier it’s not
that hard right it’s just a few
questions
but why hadn’t i done it sooner
again eight years in the field and i had
zero input
from the people that my target was to
help
now i don’t even know why i did it why i
did all of it
i think in general that’s how it is i
was
i was curious i was curious to go to the
park
i was curious to take the class i was
curious to see what i could learn
i never thought that i would be pushing
myself to these limits
i didn’t even know what the limits were
an introvert who would cold call people
to set up a meeting to talk
that’s like our biggest nightmare
but i was eager i was i was eager to
learn i was eager to grow
and i did it i set aside all my personal
insecurities
however hard it was and i would throw
myself out there
and when i say throw i mean throw so
when we would get done with
events or meetings or gatherings where
we had to talk afterwards i would just
crawl on
the couch under a blanket and not do
anything for a while
you have to have courage
it’s hard i know it’s it’s so much
easier
to not do what you don’t want to do
but it’s so much more rewarding when you
do
it’s like ziplining for me so
i’m afraid of heights everyone knows
that my friends
but for some reason i have this inkling
to push myself i love ziplining
so when i get on that platform
my hands start to sweat like they are
now
my knees start to shake my mouth goes
dry
and i think why am i doing this
i mean i even took a dna test a 23andme
test
and it said you’re more likely than
average to be afraid of hikes
okay it’s science i’m afraid of heights
but then i push through i mean those
black level
like the highest platforms the most
difficult ones those i turn back there’s
no way i’m doing that at this stage but
anyway i pushed through because i enjoy
standing on that platform looking at the
path ahead of me
and trying to figure out what steps i
need to take to solve the problem ahead
of me
so have courage
have the courage to start and it’s not
just about having courage
it’s about wanting to grow
wanting to learn wanting to try new
things
wanting to experience life
if we don’t know what’s out there
how do we know where we’re at is good
so you have to care care about yourself
what it is that you do care enough
to give yourself the chance for
something more
and that brings me to my second point in
addition to having courage
and being curious you have to be open
open and receptive you have to listen
and not just listen to hear words come
out of someone’s mouth
or listen to think of an answer to
respond with
listen to internalize take it in
whatever it is that the other person’s
saying take it in
think about it reflect on it
it’s not about the answer you give it’s
about what you receive from it
when we first started encapsulate we
were developing our biochips for a
completely different purpose
but then when we were asked to talk to
all those people we realized that
oh there’s a problem in cancer therapy
and chemotherapy
that we could solve with our biochips
and so we talked we listened
and we changed and i’ve learned that
i’ve learned that
everyone has something to say even if
i think i have the answer or
i’ve made up my mind about something
i could still be wrong i could
improve i could learn
back in undergrad i used to go to this
group discussion thing
with a bunch of students and we would
just talk about our daily lives and
you know honestly it was just a grumble
party so
everyone would come in and start
complaining about something their
major their coursework their dorm their
dog
but then whenever it was my turn i could
only talk about the positive
so positive stuff positive events
positivity
and a friend once told me
leila you’re too positive i fear that
you’re living in a fantasy
and you’re not seeing the world for what
it is
i mean it could be right it could be
that i’m a happy bunny
i walk on air and i’m having the time of
my life
what happened after was a few weeks
later one of the students came
and he said you know i’ve been thinking
i’ve been thinking why is it that
whenever it’s our turn to talk
we always start by complaining
but then layla over here is so content
and gratified
is it really that my life is so bad that
the first
the first things that i want to say to
it about someone
is the negative stuff i mean i like my
major
i love my parents
i love my friends we hang out a lot
life is good life is
good
and i’m not saying to you know put on a
smiley face and be happy all the time
forget about your worries
no i’m saying
what’s the alternative
create your own fantasy the world that
you want to live in the one
within the limits of what you can do and
even beyond the limits of what you can
do
or in the world or in the words of
bring your own sunshine
i think it’s important to care
in addition to being courageous to being
brave
curious to being open and receptive
you have to care care about yourself
care about others care about
cancer patients that you happen to know
are enduring
painful treatments care
empathy is one of those traits that we
need more of
i know it sounds cliche but can you
really put yourself in the shoes of
someone else
and try to understand or feel their
experience
you may not agree with it you
may not do it yourself
you can’t even support it but can you
understand why they did it
can you listen
back at temple when i’d first come to
the states i
was feeling very subconscious
academically
i wasn’t sure of the stuff that i knew i
had just come to a new country
i was shy uncomfortable
and i had this class
with this instructor slash advisor
and you know it happened to be that i
knew the core stuff i was i was doing
okay
but whenever he would ask a question i
would never be the one to respond
i did not have the confidence to respond
i it was
what if i said the wrong thing it would
be too embarrassing
and it happened that a few times he
would ask directed questions
and you know he asked questions directly
at me
and you know it turned out that my
answer was correct
and so after that whenever you would ask
the class a question
he would look at me as if you were
waiting for me
to answer the question
and then eventually his patients would
run out and he would say
layla i know you know this why aren’t
you answering
i know you know this speak up why aren’t
you answering
and you know i look back at this as one
of those defining moments
speak up
and you don’t need someone else to tell
you to speak up
you can tell it to yourself you have to
tell it to yourself
be brave be bold
make mistakes we’re supposed to
one of the lines that i’ve recently come
across and it’s become one of my
favorite lines
is to be brave be brave enough to be bad
at something new
this semester fall 2020
the instructor of that class that
technology innovation and
entrepreneurship class that i took two
years ago where encapsulate was born
contacted me and said would you be
willing to teach the course with me
now i had no experience in teaching a
course i’ve mentor students
but a classroom student sitting there
listening to me
what i have to say no
and then i came across the quote be
brave enough to be bad at something new
and i accepted it i taught the course
i developed lectures assignments tasks
homeworks and to be honest
i went in thinking that i wouldn’t like
it i i was ready to
not like it
i still did it i persevered and i did it
and the first class was terrible
i came in late i set up the computer
late
half the students were in person half of
them are online i didn’t know where to
stand where to look
who to talk to the mic wasn’t working it
was just
a disaster and i was thinking oh my god
how am i going to be able to do this for
the next few weeks
and then two sessions later i absolutely
love the class i love the students i
love their questions
their thought processes they were taking
notes when i was talking
and they would call me professor layla
which was like the highlight
one person called me professor layla
still the highlight
i went in with the preconception that i
would dislike this
but i ended up loving it i learned to
love it
and you know it’s kind of full circle
for me i
started in that course shy uncomfortable
to talk
uncomfortable to share i didn’t know
what an engineer was
what i was supposed to do with my degree
were i supposed to do with my life
would anyone ever benefit from my
presence in the world
i mean i don’t have the answer to those
questions now
but i’ve learned so much
i’ve learned to
take on new experiences
to be brave to be open and receptive
to listen to be humble and kind
to be curious i might have had that for
a while
but most important of all i’ve learned
to learn
to never stop learning to never stop
myself from learning
even when i’m at the end when i think
i’m at the end
there’s always more
and so i want to leave you with one
thing
or actually three let’s make it fun i
want you to after this
think of three things that you normally
wouldn’t do
that are uncomfortable challenging
difficult awkward
and be brave
and give them a try it doesn’t have to
be perfect
you just have to find the courage to
start
allow yourself the chance
to learn thank you
you