Tam Pham

[Image Description]: Tam wears glasses, a striped shirt, and has a rainbow flag painted on their cheek.

[Image Description]: Tam wears glasses and a white button down shirt, smiling broadly in front of a large piece of equipment.

[Image Description]: Tam smiles in a professional headshot, wearing blue glasses and a teal shirt with ruffled sleeves.

Meet Tam Pham (they/she/chanh), an AuDHD, Viet, disabled PhD student studying at Dalhousie University who does cool stuff with proteins.

Tell us about your STEM? 

I started my undergrad in biochemistry. My previous honors supervisor was a chemist, but cross appointed with biochemistry. So my degree was kind of a double major in chemistry and biochemistry. I mostly did research in protein structure and software biology, characterizing structural dynamics and protein conformation. I was working with nickel binding proteins specifically, and it was really cool.

My supervisor now is a biophysicist working with NMR. It’s almost like I got drafted! I started out as a chemist, and then I got dropped into biophysics, and it turns out I enjoy doing biophysics work a lot more. I like learning about the instruments, tweaking the instruments, and creating new techniques. I started during the pandemic, and I really enjoy what I’m doing, learning about conformational changes and dynamic binding sites. I mostly work with peptides binding to membranes. I’m now in my PhD, hoping to wrap it up in a year from now. 

Biophysics is all about taking something that is theory based, and determining the biological applications for it. And I really enjoy the application aspect. You start with a theory that’s been around since the 1800s in some cases, some really basic principal theories, and then you apply it in the context of biological settings. There’s a lot of imaging involved. 

I really like the idea of capturing cool images. A big part of my project is to visualize interactions between peptides and membranes. That part is really fun for me, I enjoy the analysis, but I also enjoy it from an aesthetic perspective. It’s beautiful, I love proteins. 

I also have a knack for customizing things, I enjoy changing and tweaking things here and there to make the system work for me. The learning curve is not easy, and there are a lot of jargon and barriers that can be quite ableist, but I like the fact that I get to do something so well known, but put my own spin on it. There’s a customizable aspect to it that I enjoy. 

I’m currently working with a hormone peptide called apelin that is required for the formation of blood vessels and angiogenesis. It’s a peptide that has a variety of different sequence lengths, which all have different bio-affinities, a library of many isoforms. In my research so far, we’ve found very clear evidence that this peptide can bind to membranes at very specific interaction.

Working with membrane mimetics can be a battle, it’s a very niche field that people mostly avoid, because it requires a certain level expertise in membrane understanding. It doesn’t matter what membrane system you’re working with, they’re quite messy, and bringing that to NMR can be quite tricky. It’s not as straightforward as we thought, but it’s rewarding.

Tell us about accommodations that allow you to thrive in STEM. 

I have ADHD, and I’m also autistic. I found out that I’m autistic a lot later in my life, I always knew there was something “different” with how I view the world, but I didn’t expect that. I still have autistic traits even after taking medication. Now that I’m diagnosed, I go about things differently. 

Even with medication, I have a very low attention span, I can only last 10-15 minutes. That’s really low for a highly trained academic. When it comes to dealing with documents, I always use Word, which has a read-aloud feature. It’s an accessibility feature where you can run through text by letters or by words, or have it read the document out loud for you. It’s a good way to be able to keep track of text, so having something highlighting where I am is really helpful for getting through it. I hate it when folks are not accommodating by sending me information in PDF files, its text-to-speech feature is really terrible. This is also applicable to folks who are visually impaired. I always request that I receive documents in Word, where all the accessibility features are already in place. 

In terms of reading through website resources, there are a lot of apps out there that can help with that, which can read through text for you. But when websites are busy, and have a lot of extra text, it can be challenging.  It really depends on the web design, try to keep your text minimal to allow people to use these features. Don’t include redundant information when you can get straight to the point!

Deadlines are a big issue. A lot of AuDHD folks experience overwhelming anxiety and procrastination when it comes to deadlines. What I usually do is break my deadlines down into multiple smaller deadlines, which I discuss with my supervisor. It might be more work for them, but it helps me in the long run. I’m currently writing my manuscript, so instead of having a big deadline where I turn in an entire chapter in one day, let’s break that down into multiple deadlines. The great thing about the brain is that when you break down your tasks, it becomes easier for you to be able to complete them, because it’s not as overwhelming as having this big deadline. Having mini goals, it’s all about organization.  

For example: I need to get this whole experiment by the end of the day. Break it down into mini experiments. How many steps do you have? Can you finish steps one and two in the morning, potentially do other steps another day? Breaking things down helps folks in the long run, but requires a very considerate supervisor who is aware of your disability and is willing to accommodate. Not everyone is willing to look at small sections of things, but sometimes with your disability you have to communicate your work capacity and what works for you. When you make it very clear, it can be a good educational moment too for your supervisor. 

When it comes to instructions, a lot of the techniques we use require extensive learning curves, and long hours of trying to understand them. For a person with a low attention span, it can be really difficult. I always request when receiving training that we stop after each step, and I explain back in my own words what was just discussed to make sure we’re on the same page. If someone explains a really important concept involving a really expensive instruments, we can make sure that I understand it before moving on. It’s a lot easier to simplify terminology, and instead of using jargon, explain it in your own words. Biophysics is notorious for jargon that’s unnecessary and redundant. From a disability perspective, I think we can simplify things a lot further.

I also have auditory processing issues. If someone bombards me with a paragraph of information or things I need to do, I can’t process that. So I get a pen, and I write. And then I ask that person to look at what I’ve written, or I describe it, to make sure that I’ve got the main ideas. If I get information in a meeting, I often ask if we can discuss it briefly after the meeting is over. Or maybe I ask if we can have another separate meeting where we can discuss the nitty gritty details of what needs to be done. It’s just about communication and letting people know your situation and what works for you. 

As a super ADHD person, I end up doing things at the very last minute, and let the stress of it all push me through finishing. But that’s not sustainable, you can’t just pull out a last minute thesis, no one has ever done that, it’s not going to work! Instead, I would recommend having many smaller deadlines. You might end up missing them, but at least having mini goals puts some pressure into finishing things. Having that sense of urgency of a mini deadline will pressure me into finishing each one.

What do you want people to know about being disabled in STEM?

I think that a very big theme in the majority of my discussions with disabled folks when it comes to accommodation is compassion and understanding. Not everyone has the same number of spoons. Every time you do something, you give away a certain number of those spoons. Not everyone is born with that same set of spoons. Let’s say for regular people the spoons start at 10, but for us, maybe it's 7 or 5.

If you're upset by the fact that we can't do a certain task because we don't have the capacity or the spoons for it,  then you need to start checking your privilege as an able-bodied person. That's something that requires empathy, compassion, and understanding. 

Accommodations are great, but it's not going to completely help us unless you have some understanding of our condition first. If you're a researcher, it's not that hard to do a quick Google search if someone discloses their disability. When I disclosed to my supervisor that I have ADHD, he thanked me for letting him know, and then he started looking it up. He started learning about the condition and understanding how he could best support me. 

I think it's all about wanting to learn about someone else and their condition. Educate yourself. You can never learn everything there is to know about it, but it’s about the mentality of wanting to learn about it and wanting to help, wanting to do better to support someone.

What types of science communication work do you do?

I’d like to use this platform to promote my work in science communication initiatives. I’ve been in discussions with the Biophysics Society of Canada, and we're hoping to launch an Instagram account accessible for all students including for students with learning disabilities and a passion for biophysics to submit videos or media pieces discussing their challenges, and what they love about their biophysics fields. It’s going to be amazing, and I really hope that folks will participate. 

I’m also working on a column in my Tik Tok and Instagram accounts to break down NMR concepts for folks with learning disabilities. I really enjoy making things accessible, especially for disabled folks. Social media can be a good tool for science communication, because it’s very accessible for a lot of communities including the disabled community. There’s text to speech features, and lots of other things that are really helpful for different people. I want to use this to condense information, and provide explanations for people with low attention spans. 

What have been your experiences with your intersectional identities?

Outside of those initiatives, I want to share my experience as a disabled student, and also as a Queer, Trans, BIPOC student in academia. My message for those folks who are sitting in those intersectional identities landscape, it’s not easy. I recognize the challenges. I’m always aware that the system is built against me. But I’m still here! And a lot of you folks are still in the system too. You are all very resilient for being able to do that, you’re amazing! And I’m not glorifying resilience, I do think we need to move away from the idea that you need resilience to survive the system, because the system has to change to accommodate us and make rooms for us. Being in this field is already an achievement. It’s an amazing feat in and of itself. Be proud. Embrace that pride.

I want to connect with all the folks that are in this circle of disabled academics. We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to keep being in this space, and every other space as well. We’re everywhere! We’re often the ones who speak up, and who are driving changes in a lot of spaces. I feel like we’re often overlooked, but we’re also often the ones who are very vocal about our needs, because other people don’t speak up for us. We always have to do it for ourselves.