Meet one of our early-career scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute: Bastien Cimarosti, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Sanjeev Ranade, PhD. Cimarosti studies how the heart forms and what causes congenital heart defects.
When and how did you become interested in science?
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been curious about the world around me. For example, when I was growing up, I loved to visit castles from the Middle Ages to understand more about our history or read books about physics and engineering.
During high school, I fell in love with biology thanks to a couple of teachers. Later I went to medical school, and it made me appreciate even more that there are so many things we don’t understand yet about human biology. That led me to a research career where I could explore my curiosity about the unknown.
What are the key areas of research you focus on?
I have a lot of different projects, but they all have in common that we are trying to understand what leads to babies being born with congenital heart defects. And how these conditions will affect patients throughout their lives.
Thanks to advances in medicine and surgical practice, most children born with congenital heart defects will reach adulthood. Even after surgery, however, the disease is still present and affects how patients develop and age over time.
We still have a lot to learn about what causes congenital heart defects. By better understanding the genetic or environmental factors at play, perhaps one day we will be able to prevent the disease from occurring in the first place.
What motivates you about your research?
On a day-to-day basis, my motivation is to do the basic science we need to understand how the heart forms and how perturbations during pregnancy can affect the heart.
Also, I use a lot of what are called omics techniques that can capture the complexity of living systems. I’m using different bioinformatics tools and machine learning tools to analyze the large datasets produced by these techniques. Because the datasets are so wide and capture a large portion of the underlying biology, I like that I am never stuck and can switch very quickly between ideas based on what I see in the data.
What do you like about working here?
The training environment for postdocs is just amazing. The core research facilities are tremendous as well. I work a lot with the genomics core and the experts there are terrific. You can just keep advancing science without thinking about technical constraints because everything you need is on campus and available to you.
What I love the most, though, is being with my lab. I love being able to work with my mentors, peers and colleagues, and being surrounded by smart and talented people.
What are your career goals?
My goal is to stay in academia, become a principal investigator and open my own lab. I would like to continue working on cardiac developmental biology and how cardiac diseases develop.
What do you enjoy doing when you’re not in the lab?
I love nature and being outside. I love hiking in the mountains around San Diego, going to the beach and swimming. And I look forward to meeting up with friends whenever we can to explore national parks together.
Postdocs at Sanford Burnham Prebys are pushing the boundaries of science every day through curiosity, collaboration, and innovation. This series highlights their unique journeys, what inspires their work, and the impact they’re making across our labs.