The Art of Crossing Over: How Dr. Carol Mason Has Perfected the Role of the Interdisciplinary Scientist

Sophia Andreadis
Sep 2
5 min read

Writer: Sophia Andreadis

Illustrator: Annabel Anyang

Editors: Allie White, Sarah Brockway, Sam Alper

How do cells make decisions? How do they decide which direction to grow in, where to send information, and when? It’s a question scientists have attempted to answer over the years. As it turns out, cells make decisions in much the same way that we do: by considering a number of positive and negative influences (in the cells’ case, chemical signals that are either excitatory, promoting a cell’s action, or inhibitory, blocking it) and “choosing” based on the unique cocktail of information they get from those influences.

A good example of this is retinal ganglion cells (also known as RGCs) which are the cells that send information from our eyes to the visual region of our brain. Each cell gets a unique combination of inputs from the eye, and where each cell sends its information is vital to how we interpret the visual cues of our environment. Some RGCs send their signals directly from the eye to the visual cortex on the same side (that would be “ipsilateral”), while others send information from the left eye to the right side of the brain and vice versa (this is known as “contralateral”).

In 2016, Dr. Carol Mason of Columbia University, alongside others, published a research paper titled “Ipsilateral and contralateral retinal ganglion cells express distinct genes during decussation at the optic chiasm.” This paper highlights the question Dr. Mason has been working towards for years: how RGCs differentiate into distinct “ipsilateral” and “contralateral” groups. That it happens has been an established fact in the field for years; how it happens is what Dr. Mason and her lab are attempting to find out.

Dr. Mason is uniquely suited to answer this question. She is no stranger to moments of crossover. They crop up repeatedly, not just in her work but in her life as a scientist. Just as there are multiple signals that influence whether an RGC sends its information on an ipsilateral or contralateral path, multiple influences have informed Dr. Mason’s path through science. Just as Dr. Mason found that two genes work as a complementary pair to denote contra- and ipsi-, respectively, she also describes other pairs: the pairing of art and science, of mentorship and science, and particularly of feminism and science.

Art and Science

The intersection of art and science is a point of reminiscence for Dr. Mason. She describes animatedly the Jersey Shore beaches she grew up vacationing on, and how, under the guidance of her father, she loved sketching the various shells and creatures they encountered in the sand. Here is the first point of crossover: from aesthetics to biology. Dr. Mason conducted her undergraduate studies at Chatham University, a women’s college in Pittsburgh, with a focus in marine biology. For her, the key to both art and biology is understanding, on a thorough and intimate level, the structure of something. Both good drawings and good biological studies hinge on the observation and cataloguing of form and function.

From this love for structure comes another crossover: that from one scientific field to another. Following her undergraduate studies, Dr. Mason moved to the Bay Area to participate in a program conducting studies on marine shore life. But all too quickly, she discovered her passion lay more in the lab than in the field, and she decided to cross the midline and leap from marine biology to the then-budding field of neuroscience. Here Dr. Mason continued employing her artistic talent; only this time, instead of drawing crabs and shells, she was tracing neurons.

Feminism and Science

Another key piece of the retinal ganglion determination process is overcoming barriers. RGCs, by design, tend towards ipsilateral signaling and avoid the midline of the brain due to an inhibitory signal; only cells which successfully overcome the inhibition can change their path. This override is achieved by a complex of chemical signals, known as effectors, which work together to dampen the inhibitory signal and make the leap possible.

Inhibitory forces are certainly nothing new to any woman in a STEM field, and Dr. Mason is no exception. She has written and spoken extensively on the inhibitory forces she sees for women in her field, from mentors who expect favors of a certain type in exchange for their instruction to that internal voice telling them that, purely because of their gender, their contributions will be worthless. However, Dr. Mason is also one of the estimated eighteen percent of women with STEM degrees who has overcome the inhibitory signals of misogyny in science and ascended to a position of influence. Where did she get her complex of effectors? She credits her early professional role models with providing them to her.

Chatham University’s all-female student body, Dr. Mason says, broke down the first of the inhibitory barriers: the fear of being a “smart woman.” She recounts the profiles of many of her professors as fitting the stereotype of the “blue stocking woman” of mid-century STEM: severe, conservative, often-single women wedded to their work. And though these women certainly fostered a sense of confidence, Dr. Mason didn’t want to be restrained to the track of the laughless, stigmatized “career woman” and felt as though she could do better. She’d gained the confidence to overcome inhibitory forces; the piece missing from her complex was equal opportunity.

Mentorship and Science

Equal opportunity came in the form of Dr. Ray Guilery, Dr. Mason’s mentor and close co-contributor. Dr. Guilery guided Dr. Mason’s professional progression both in terms of the field she ended up in and how she viewed her own work. He developed his mentee’s confidence in their scientific investigation skills, she says, by mostly leaving them to their own devices. Regardless of one’s background or standing in the lab, everyone was given the same amount of leeway with which to approach their work. This experience of freedom and the meritocracy that comes along with it allowed Dr. Mason to inform and defend her value as a scientific professional. That, in turn, is something she imparts on other women in STEM (or in any professional field) as the most important tool to overcoming the barriers facing them: the conviction that what you have to offer is valuable to whatever conversation you might be attempting to join.

Personal value is also integral to Dr. Mason’s advice for budding scientists of any gender. As she has made the transition from learner to leader, Dr. Mason has stressed the importance of self-knowledge and understanding to her mentees. Having that introspective ability and, more importantly, the ability to apply it to one’s professional life is key to being a successful scientist. The main advice she gives her students, she says, is to have an ownership of one’s own body of work and one’s professional identity. Understanding both your strengths and weaknesses, as a person and as a scientist, is invaluable to obtaining a meaningful connection with others in your field.

Science and Society

The final point of connection for Dr. Mason is that of science and society. Just like how your brain needs both ipsilateral and contralateral RGCs in order to properly interpret the visual information provided by your eyes, communication between members of academia and members of the public is integral in Dr. Mason’s vision of scientific understanding. The scientific process, she says, is at its core not just about results but about the process itself, and making that transparent to those not in the scientific community should be what all scientists strive for. Seeing the process - the experience of collaborative, ongoing learning - as the ultimate goal is a distinctly artistic way to look at science. It emphasizes the value of diversity, interdisciplinarity, and a passion for understanding. But most importantly it demonstrates that transitional, connective ability that you can find both in Dr. Mason’s lab and in her life: the ability to cross over.