#SoCaltech: Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz

“I was born in Poland in Warsaw at the time when our country was behind the Iron Curtain. My parents didn't have either an apartment or a house, so the institute where my father was setting up his laboratory allocated a room for my family to live in. All of us were living in this one single room, but when you come out of this room, you step into the corridor of the institute where the scientists in the white lab coats will be moving from one room to another doing the research. I must have thought that science is ubiquitous, that everybody is a scientist.

“In my lab, we are trying to understand how it is possible that one single cell at the beginning of our life can create something as complex and as beautiful as we all are, and what are the major principles that have to be fulfilled within a strict window of time to create our perfect human being? When I'm thinking about these early stages of our life, I think of a dance, because the first cells that our little egg creates have to interact—'dance'— with each other. I love dancing, so I like this analogy. When cells are entering these interactions, they touch each other, and this touch is very important form of communication. We are trying to understand this touch and when cells have to do it, when they should let it go, to create our body.”

Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz is Bren Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering. She will deliver her Watson Lecture, “The Dance of Life: How Do We Become Ourselves?” on Wednesday, November 2, 2022, at 7:30 p.m. The lecture can be viewed both online and in person. A recording will be available soon after the lecture’s completion on Caltech’s YouTube channel.