In 1971 , Nancy Berliner , MD , and May Berenbaum , PhD , met as roommates during their freshman year at Yale University . Fifty years later , they are both leaders in academic publishing : In 2018 , Dr . Berliner was named editor-in-chief of Blood and Dr . Berenbaum was appointed editor-in-chief of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( PNAS ). ASH Clinical News spoke with Drs . Berliner and Berenbaum about their time at Yale and how they came to serve as editors-in-chief of journals in their respective fields . Dr . Berliner is chief of hematology and the H . Franklin Bunn Chair of Medicine at Brigham and Women ’ s Hospital and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School . Dr . Berenbaum is Professor and Swanlund Chair of Entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign .
Blood and Bugs An Interview With Nancy Berliner , MD , and May Berenbaum , PhD
● Do you remember your first meeting at Yale ? How did you come to be roommates ? May Berenbaum : Nancy and I were members of one of the first classes with female students at Yale , which went co-ed in 1969 . As entering freshmen , we filled out this complicated form : Do you sleep with the windows open or closed ? Do you keep late hours ? What food do you like ? I assumed the complex solicitation for information was meant to place people with compatible types , but then I realized my roommates were Berlin , Berliner , and Brooks . I thought , I could have figured how that room assignment came about !
Nancy Berliner : One of my first memories of that year was the WYBC radio competition sponsored by Naples Pizza . People had to come up with the name of a favorite celebrity ’ s favorite pizza . We were in tears laughing and you were there saying , “ I got another one !” I believe the winner was Neville Chamberlain ’ s “ Pizza in our Time .”
Dr . Berenbaum : I remember that ! I became friends with a few people through that contest and that competition is actually how I ended up transferring into a different residential college . But as freshmen , our suitemates in Vanderbilt ( the building reserved for female freshmen ) did have interests in common and a few of us were premed or biology majors . I don ’ t remember about the windows open and closed , though .
Dr . Berliner : I actually was not pre-med at that time . I was an English and French combined literature major – so clearly there was an early interest in editing . Around junior year , I looked around and thought , Why am I taking all of these science courses if I ’ m not going to medical school ?
Dr . Berenbaum : I knew I wanted to major in biology , but did not focus on entomology until I took a class during the second semester of freshman year . I took the This interview has been edited for length and clarity . entomology course because it was the only one to fit my schedule and , eventually , it became my life ’ s calling .
Tell us about your careers after your undergraduate education . Where did you each end up ? Dr . Berliner : Well , I was on the faculty at the Yale School of Medicine for 20-odd years before coming to Brigham and Women ’ s .
Dr . Berenbaum : I ’ m boring . I did my PhD at Cornell University , deposited my thesis , and two weeks later , in August 1980 , I joined the faculty of the Department of Entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , where I have been ever since . In some ways , it ’ s the shortest resume you ’ re ever going to see .
Has your research focus changed over the years ? Dr . Berliner : Yes , what I ’ ve done has changed a lot . I started out working on the basic science of transcriptional regulation in neutrophils , then anemia of aging , and now I do mostly clinical research . Actually , a couple years ago , after 30 years of National Institutes of Health – funded research , I closed my lab . The decision was due in part to my Blood responsibilities , but also because I had so many administrative tasks that I felt like I was not doing justice to the people who were training in my lab . For the last couple of years , I was mostly a cheerleader for everybody else ’ s research , and I realized I could do that without running my own lab .
Dr . Berenbaum : Conceptually , I ’ m still working on the same research I ’ ve been working on since I started graduate school : plant-insect interactions . For a long time , it was basic research driven by curiosity , but , as the world became mired in environmental problems , it became a priority for me and the people in my lab to do something useful to help the planet . It sounds like you did something similar , as new technologies and new science opened up all kinds of opportunities to answer questions that were totally intractable when we started school .
Nancy Berliner , MD
May Berenbaum , PhD
Dr . Berliner : It still blows my mind that we were in college when they discovered DNA sequencing . How things have changed .
Dr . Berenbaum : I think Yale made undergraduates feel like they could do anything . I now know that was totally misplaced confidence , but it has been useful to fall back on that sense . I also took the liberal arts education at Yale to heart . The entomology class I took with Charles Remington sparked my desire to communicate science to the general public . I could totally understand why people were afraid of insects because I was terrified of insects , but because of that class , I realized that fear was based in ignorance . That realization made me aware of why people should learn about insects – to understand which insects are truly dangerous ( including vectors of human diseases ) and why insect research is important for maintaining the quality of human life on earth .
You both share the experience of being women in positions of leadership in scholarly publishing . When did that interest start ? Dr . Berenbaum : For me , it was a compulsion to communicate . My first service as an editorial member was on a specialized regional journal called The American Midland Naturalist . Then I ended up as an editorial board member and then editor-in-chief of Annual Review of Entomology for 21 years . In 1998 , I joined the editorial board of PNAS . I was so staggered to be elected to the
18 ASH Clinical News October 2021