BY BLAKE MAULSBY
Paula Kavathas has led an illustrious career that has charted new ground in both immunobiology and diversity in science.
Since a young age, Kavathas was always fascinated by science and medicine and thus aspired to shape her career around these interests. While at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a friend of Kavathas was working in a lab studying immunity, which Kavathas then joined. “Immunobiology was a bit of serendipity” says Kavathas about the subject matter that would begin to define her scientific career. In Wisconsin, immunity labs were more frequent because of connections to the thriving dairy industry.
Despite Kavathas’ burgeoning interest and success in research, her career was marked by significant obstacles. As one of few women involved in research both during her time at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and later at Yale for her postdoctoral training, Kavathas had few female mentors and often felt her voice was ignored. Kavathas recalled that when women tried to ask about scheduling meetings in the lab, their concerns were disregarded and only the men had a true voice. In general, “as a postdoc, people thought you couldn’t succeed if you were a woman in research at a top university,” said Kavathas. Beyond that, a culture of sexual assault permeated research which was yet another barrier to women taking part in scientific research. Kavathas noticed that many female colleagues were frequently discouraged from having families.
Despite these obstacles, Kavathas produced high quality immunobiology research as a postdoctoral student and later as a faculty member at Yale studying CD8 T cells – cells important in the adaptive immune system. Specifically, she and her colleagues cloned the gene for CD8 T cell receptors and studied how the receptor signals, where they are expressed, and how the receptor interacts with its ligand. Overall, these studies provide the basis for developing powerful T cell therapeutic strategies.
Beyond her invaluable contributions to the growing field of immunobiology, Kavathas worked tirelessly to spearhead change toward creating more diversity in research. Throughout her time as a board member of the Status of Women in Medicine and Women’s Faculty Forum, Kavathas led efforts to increase parental leave time and the presence of Title IX officers, which has since been attributed toreduced prevalence of sexual assault. Although much positive change has occurred, Kavathas notes that many departments at the Yale School of Medicine still have fewer than one-third women faculty, with relatively few female department chairs. In these ways, there remains work to be done.
Among Kavathas achievements, her favorite hangs in the nave of Sterling Memorial Library. As chair of the Women’s Faculty Forum, she organized a symposium to celebrate forty years of co-education at Yale. Kavathas commissioned a painting to symbolize this. After holding a competition, artist Brenda Zlamany won and painted a portrait of the first seven female PhDs at Yale. Kavathas felt strongly that the women’s scholarship be clearly depicted, so each of the women has a symbol such as a telescope or flask that indicates their scholarship atYale and beyond.
In closing, Kavathas offers advice to the younger generation to always have confidence. Despite any obstacles that may exist, Kavathas thinks that believing you can do something is essential to success. Importantly, she says that having mentors that have confidence in you is necessary and is a role she now cherishes for younger researchers at Yale.
As a young and upcoming researcher, Kavathas never was deterred from reaching her goals, and in the end it changed Yale.
Blake Maulsby is a first-year in Morse College.
Yale Global Health Review 