King alumna Dr. Joy Gaylinn Reidenberg LHT’79 was raised by extraordinarily patient parents. Her father, naturally squeamish and prone to seasickness, braved persistent nausea to serve as captain of the skiff that ferried her on childhood fishing voyages.
“He was an incredible sport,” she said. “I could fish as much as I wanted, so long as I baited the hooks and filleted the fish for dinner. Of course, when dinnertime came, I remember my mother yelling: ‘Hurry up with the fillets! We’re hungry!’ I was always late because I was so caught up in what I found in the dissection.”
Fascinated by the natural world around her, she combed the beaches for shells, the quarries for rocks, and the forests for feathers. She cataloged her collections in the family basement, creating a stockpile that might have rivaled the American Museum of Natural History.
“My mom drew the line at roadkill,” she said, “frequently repeating the mantra ‘don’t touch the dead things.’ But I did, anyway!”
Reidenberg followed her curiosity to become a world-renowned biomedical research scientist who studies comparative anatomy. Today, she is a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and has served as a guest investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and as an associate scientist at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution.
Having dissected thousands of animals, Reidenberg has learned to anticipate what she might find. The variety in composition captivates her. She finds invertebrate animals infinitely curious.
“When you look at an octopus, its arms come off of its head,” she said. “When they eat, the food passes through the middle of its doughnut-shaped brain. I had no idea that a giant squid has three hearts. Understanding these distinctions is informative.”
Exploring why an animal is structured a certain way leads to practical discoveries. This process helps her understand how animals have adapted to manage environments that pose a challenge to humans. Her goal is to offset these challenges through technologies developed from her research.
“I want to come up with something brand-new. The way to do that is to look at animals that look nothing like us, that have adaptations that are so different from ours. By mimicking these adaptations, maybe we can come up with new protective devices that would allow humans to work in those extreme environments.”
The ocean is still her favorite place to explore.
“Whales are mammals, but they have to do all of their functions underwater,” Reidenberg said. “They have to hold their breath for a long time. They mate, give birth, nurse babies, play, navigate, migrate, find and swallow food, make and hear sounds – you name it, they are doing it underwater. And they are doing it at different pressure levels as they dive.”
By understanding how these species survive such conditions, she might be able to create a treatment for people.
“Human lungs have a fixed flexibility,” she said. “Whales can change the flexibility of the lungs – a useful trait for varying pressures during a dive. If we learn how they do it, we might be able to develop treatments modeled on whales to help people with lung diseases like emphysema.”
Recently she saw a nature program about bighorn sheep. Watching them collide in battle using their heads, she wondered what protective mechanisms kept their brains from concussing.
“Animals that battle with their heads have incredible horns that they use as weapons,” Reidenberg said. “Their skull is modified so it can support carrying these horns, and these changes also protect it from cracking during combat. But what is protecting the brain?”
Her goal is to develop a way to protect the brains of football players, among others. “You can have a great football helmet,” she said, “but the brain still shifts on impact. We need something that wires the brain in place, and that is what we are trying to figure out. What is inside these animals’ heads? Do they have something like an airbag for the brain? What did nature do, and how can we copy it?”
Her discoveries are used in both medical and technical developments. For instance, similarities between the tentacles of a giant squid and the trunk of an elephant, both highly flexible organs that bend, twist, shorten, lengthen, and curl despite not having a skeletal structure, inspired work she is doing to create soft, robotic arms.
Reidenberg is as committed to teaching as she is to research, and not only at the university level but also to the broader public through television and documentary films.
“I feel very strongly that scientists need to share their findings beyond academia and directly with the public:” she said. “Research is largely taxpayer-funded, and the taxpayers deserve to know what we found. TV documentaries give me a chance to educate on a grand scale – literally teaching millions at a time.”
She has had as much success in front of the camera as she has in scientific discovery. Her research has been featured in programs on PBS, BBC, National Geographic, and the Discovery Channel. She has been awarded multiple British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards (the British equivalent of an Oscar and an Emmy), a World Gold Medal Television and Film Award, a Thomson Reuters/Zoological Record Award for Communicating Zoology, and a Royal Television Society Award.
At the heart of Reidenberg’s success is passion. Her passion carried her through childhood, helped her to graduate fourth in her King class, led her to carve out a unique career, and is serving humanity at the same time. Her advice to students is built on what has worked for her.
“Stick with passion,” she said. “Do not let grades limit passion. Let passion determine your path. You don’t have a ton of time to live, so spend it doing something you love.”
