CÉDRIC BLANPAIN
Professor of Stem Cell and Developmental Biology, Interdisciplinary Research Institute, Université Libre de Bruxelles - Brussels, BelgiumCOURTESY OF CÉDRIC BLANPAINCédric Blanpain is nothing if not dogged. During his first year of a 7-year medical school program at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Belgium, the 18-year-old did a rotation in a molecular biology lab and decided that he wanted a career in research. Yet, first, Blanpain finished his med school stint and completed a 2-year residency in internal medicine, though he never subsequently worked as a practicing physician.
“It was a lot of effort, being on call often and working 80 hours per week, while knowing that in the end I would never end up a general practitioner, but I wanted to finish what I started,” says Blanpain. In fact, he was so determined that even after completing a 4-year PhD, Blanpain went back to medicine for a year to get his board certification, which required returning to work in the intensive-care unit and riding along in ambulances to horrible accidents. “It was extremely stressful. It was awful, to be honest,” he admits.
Yet once his medical requirements were completed, Blanpain poured his tenaciousness into research, in 2002 starting a postdoc in the lab of Elaine Fuchs at Rockefeller University, one of the ...
