Howard Garrison Advocacy Fellow

Victor Ruthig, PhD

Victor Ruthig is director of Developmental Biology Microscopy Consortium at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

Describe your interest in participating in the program:
Ruthig: I am very interested in participating in FASEB’s Howard Garrison Advocacy Fellowship because I see it as the next stage of my science advocacy and communication training, which I need to continue broadening and enhancing my work. Recently, being able to network and succeed at the interface of science and policy has become even more critical than these skills already were. I increasingly find myself in situations where my rudimentary, self-taught understanding of science policy and legislation is not sufficient. Currently, science policy is a major weak point in my skill set, which hinders my professional and extramural work. As a junior faculty and director of a microscopy core, policy training would improve my ability to grow my facility and provide microscopy training and support to my user group, which is predominantly trainees. As a scientist who does a lot of volunteer and committee work at the campus, society, and community level, the policy training would expand what I could offer to these groups, broaden the scope of the volunteer work I could do, and deepen the type of mentorship I could offer. 

FASEB’s Howard Garrison Advocacy Fellowship is of specific interest to me because the fellowship was brought to my attention by the current Society for the Study of Reproduction (SSR) president, who nominated me to apply so that I could serve as a representative to SSR and bring these new skill sets back as a new way I can continue to support SSR through extramural work. I am also a member of the Society for Developmental Biology (SDB) and am eager to help further SDB initiatives with advanced science policy skills as well. Much of science is under threat right now, and reproductive biology and developmental biology are under even higher scrutiny than usual. I feel strongly that this training would significantly increase my ability to support, promote, and protect SSR and SDB. 

Additionally, as junior faculty, I see this training as a key part of my long-term strategy to be able to stay in the field and in academic research. Times are changing, and young faculty like me need a wider arsenal of skills to account for all the new rules, if we are to both remain in academia long-term and train up the next fledgling generation of scientists to effectively navigate the new landscape. For me, this mentorship portion is important for both my direct mentees who are doing mentored research with me, and my larger user group of trainees who use my facility and receive secondary mentorship from me. 

How do you plan to use the knowledge and experience gained through your participation in the Howard Garrison Advocacy Program?
Ruthig: Since I was nominated to apply by SSR, my primary duty is to bring the knowledge and experience gained back to SSR to serve, at least initially, as a primary advisor on how the society needs to shift and expand our efforts to more effectively advocate for ourselves in terms of science policy. From my currently naïve perspective, I think this will likely involve increasing our public outreach and education efforts, and augmenting how we build and keep our network of political allies. I expect these skills also to translate to volunteer work I do with other societies such as the Society for Developmental Biology (SDB) and the American Society for Andrology (ASA). At the campus level, I expect these skills to be useful when advocating for funding and making new allies for my clinical department (Pediatrics) and my basic science department (Cell & Developmental Biology). I also anticipate being able to incorporate these skills into the graduate courses I teach and my direct and secondary mentorship of trainees, especially trainees who are interested in science policy and advocacy careers. 

Using no more than 250 words, describe your research as you would to a non-scientist.
Ruthig: I am a developmental and reproductive biologist focused on the genes critical to an embryo’s commitment to female or male development, known as sex determination. Specifically, I am most interested in, and passionate about, how genes control the sex specific development of the female and male reproductive tracts, how many of these same genes generally regulate urinary tract development in both sexes, how genes establish and maintain fertility, and how gene mutations cause birth defects related to these structures (genitourinary birth defects) and cause infertility. My overall goal is to understand these developmental pathways and how gene mutations affect those pathways so that malignant mutations can be identified early in a pregnancy and corrective solutions can be offered, and to assist infertile couples concieve. 

I am also the director of a light microscopy imaging facility. I maintain a fleet of 12 advanced microscope systems which support imaging research projects from about 175 trainees in about 30 research laboratories. I am a full-service facility for all things microscopy. Trainees spend time with me as a secondary mentor to: develop imaging experiments, troubleshoot bench work in protocols, train on specific microscope imaging systems, troubleshoot imaging experiments, assess quantitative analysis for rigor and reproducibility, publish their results, use preliminary data in grant submissions, and everything in between. I am also responsible for securing funding to maintain my equipment and purchase new equipment, and for microscopy education in the form of courses, seminars, and workshops. 

Briefly describe any past or present participation in additional career exploration activities, experiences, and/or programs.
Ruthig: As a postdoctoral fellow at both Duke University and Weill Cornell Medicine, there were many alternative career fairs, seminars, and workshops too numerous to list, many of which I attended. I used this broadened understanding in the four different years I went on the job market to simultaneously apply to academic and industry jobs. In my own extramural work, I developed and oversaw SSR’s New Investigator Bootcamp webinar series and Alternative Careers in Reproduction podcast series over a three-year period as the co-chair and chair of SSR’s virtual education committee. I have been on many career panels and given “life of a scientist” type talks. These have included events such as Postdoc Pub Talks, Elevate NYC, and various events at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, including the North Carolina Science and Engineering Fair. I have also mentored seven high school and undergraduate students in career-exploratory research programs, usually geared toward disadvantaged and/or underrepresented students in science. I received the American Urological Association scholarship for the 2021 American Urological Association Early Career Investigator Workshop (ECIW). In 2022, I served on a FASEB Focus Group on the Needs of Early-Career Scientists.

Victor Ruthig is a member of the Society for the Study of Reproduction.