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PhD advice from Rishika

Building skin in a dish: the PhD journey of Dr. Rishika Agarwal

Rishika Agarwal is a scientist specialized in human skin organoids, who obtained her PhD at the University of Basel, Switzerland.

This scientific field is far from mine and it sparked curiosity in me. Before meeting her, I read that organoid culture technology has advanced at an impressive pace in recent years, earning the title of “Method of the Year 2017” by Nature Methods for its transformative potential in studying human biology in both health and disease (Lancaster & Knoblich, 2014). These miniature, self-organizing 3D tissue models offer an unprecedented opportunity to bridge the gap between traditional 2D cell cultures and complex in vivo models, revolutionizing biomedical research (Agarwal et al., 2023). 

They sound like the perfect subject for a Sci-Fi story, right? 

This illustration was created by dr Pedro Velica, who kindly landed to me for this blog post.

She explained during our conversation that skin organoids mimic the complex architecture of human skin, incorporating multiple cell types like keratinocytes, melanocytes, fibroblasts, and immune cells. These models allow scientists to study conditions such as genetic skin disorders, skin cancer, infections, and inflammatory diseases, paving the way to a (not too far) future personalized medicine (Lee et al., 2020). 

Despite how interesting organoids may sound, this story is about Rishika and her PhD path. So here we go!

A personal mission: science with a purpose

Rishika’s passion for skin biology is rooted in her personal story. Her father suffers from psoriasis, and she wanted to contribute to research that could help people like him. Yet, her journey was far from straightforward. After earning a Biotechnology degree in India, she pursued a Master’s in Biotechnology at the Northwestern University in Illinois, United States. At this stage, a PhD was not in her plans—she simply wanted to do research.

Her career took off in an American biotech company, where she worked from 2014 to 2019. However, as she grew professionally, she hit a plateau—without a PhD, advancing into senior scientific roles was nearly impossible. This realization made her reconsider pursuing a PhD. She applied for programs in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. And eventually, she secured a position at the University of Basel, within the group of a professor she had never met before — a risky decision but her only option at that moment. 

A rocky start: the challenges of a PhD

Moving to Switzerland at 29 was far more difficult than her earlier transition from India to the USA at 22. Cultural differences, language barriers—Swiss-German was spoken everywhere—and an unfamiliar environment made her question whether she had made the right choice. 

Additionally, she was facing a difficult scientific challenge: at the time, the literature on epidermal skin organoids was not extensive, which meant that, on one side, her project was very innovative, but also she couldn’t rely on much prior knowledge. And so, her project started from scratch, and for an entire year, nothing worked. Every experiment failed. She began doubting herself, feeling lost even in everyday activities like grocery shopping in a foreign language.

Yet, her PhD supervisor remained supportive, never discouraged by the lack of results. A turning point came when she traveled to Utrecht (the Netherlands) to collaborate with experts in the field. Upon her return, she finally succeeded in developing her first organoid—a true Eureka moment! But just two weeks later, COVID-19 hit. A six-week lockdown forced her to pause lab work, which, unexpectedly, allowed her to reset. By the time she returned, she felt like a different person—more acclimated to Switzerland, more confident in the lab, and with a better support system of friends and colleagues.

Publishing, mentorship, and new directions

Once her experiments gained momentum, the next challenge was structuring her research into publications. Fortunately, she had a colleague in the lab who guided her in breaking down the process—starting with figures, followed by captions, materials, and finally summarizing the results.

However, she didn’t have the same luck navigating all interpersonal relationships in the lab. She faced challenges collaborating with her first-year daily supervisor and, although she enjoyed supervising her students, she encountered one particularly difficult to mentor. Yet, she remained resilient, overcoming also these obstacles to successfully complete her PhD and transition into a postdoctoral position.

Looking ahead: beyond academia

Now as a postdoc, Rishika is exploring new possibilities beyond traditional academia. She became involved with Nucleate, a student-led organization that helps PhD students and postdocs commercialize their research through workshops and networking opportunities. She initially joined to expand her connections but gradually took on more responsibilities, from social media management to event organization, til now managing director responsibilities. Kudos to her! 

Advice for aspiring PhD students

Reflecting on her journey, Rishika emphasizes the importance of self-awareness before committing to a PhD. She advises prospective students to ask themselves: Why do you want to pursue a PhD? Are you genuinely curious? Do you enjoy problem-solving and experimentation?

She also recommends gaining work experience first—whether as a research associate or in industry—to understand if a lab environment suits them without the intense pressure of a PhD. 

A story of growth and resilience

Rishika’s journey illustrates the resilience required to navigate a PhD. From failed experiments to cultural adaptation, from personal motivation to professional reinvention — her story serves as inspiration for aspiring researchers. The path of scientific discovery is rarely smooth, but as she has shown, perseverance, curiosity, and the right mentorship can make all the difference. 

Last but not least: what’s her favorite coffee?

For Rishika, coffee was never something she needed to stay awake—it was more of a comfort, although in stressful times, it would sometimes made her anxiety worse. In India, she enjoyed it simply as a teaspoon of instant coffee mixed with warm milk and sugar, or in the summer, served cold with ice. She also liked making Dalgona coffee, whipping coffee and sugar into a fluffy foam before adding hot or cold milk, making it rich and creamy like a cappuccino. 

If you like to dive in the articles cited, here are the details:

  • Lancaster, M. A., & Knoblich, J. A. (2014). Organogenesis in a dish: Modeling development and disease using organoid technologies. Science, 345(6194), 1247125.
  • Method of the Year 2017: Organoids. Nat Methods 15, 1 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.457
  • Agarwal, R., Dittmar, T., Beer, H. D., Kunz, M., Müller, S., Kappos, E. A., … & Navarini, A. A. (2023). Human epidermis organotypic cultures, a reproducible system recapitulating the epidermis in vitro. Experimental Dermatology, 32(7), 1143-1155. 
  • Lee, J., Rabbani, C. C., Gao, H., Steinhart, M. R., Woodruff, B. M., Pflum, Z. E., & Heller, S. (2020). Hair-bearing human skin generated entirely from pluripotent stem cells. Nature, 582(7812), 399-404.

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    PhD advice from Dr Fabio Porru on mental health in academia

    I belong to that category of people that had a difficult time during their PhD, not that I was depressed or unhappy, but I felt under constant strain. Every day. 

    Although, I am sure a big portion of graduate students recognize this situation, I think it was not right to feel that way. 

    The problem I see now is that what we experience during the PhD has consequences also afterwards. It is not going to go away just because we graduate. For this reason, taking care of your own mental health is important if you think about your whole working life in a sustainable way. 

    Mental health is far from my field of study but I met somebody who has focused most of his research on this topic, particularly mental health among university students. 

    Meet Fabio Porru, who is a medical doctor currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in Rotterdam. Talking to him has been extremely educational for me. I hope to pass on to you, who are reading, some of the most inspiring points of our conversation.

    First of all, I noticed a spark, common in researchers: that extraordinary passion about his research and a feeling of fulfillment to be able to make of his passion his work. The type of work he does is meaningful for himself and has an impact towards others. 

    From what he told me, he had a wonderful supervisor during his PhD, somebody who had an inspirational influence on him, which has planted a give-back purpose. He opened a Facebook group where people openly discuss their mental health problems: https://www.facebook.com/groups/219150905409114. You are welcome to join it, if you feel this topic is dear to you!

    Fabio has identified, among others, three important causes for mental health problems among students: 

    1. Perfectionism
    2. Workload
    3. Academic climate

    It is known that burnout is one of the most common mental health problems nowadays and a major occupational concern. It is clinically characterized by emotional exhaustion, cynic attitude towards the job, and reduced personal accomplishment. There is often an overlap with depression, but the two conditions are different. While in the last few years growing attention was given to mental health among university students, much less was done about PhD students.

    In a recent study, German researchers have shared the worrying results of a survey conducted on a sample of 16.000 PhDs from the Leibniz PhD Network, Max Planck PhDnet, Helmholtz Juniors and IPP Mainz PhD Network. This study shows that 15% of PhDs report suffering from moderate to severe depressive symptoms and roughly 40% of the PhDs report a high level of overall anxiety symptoms. The situation is Germany is not dissimilar from that observed in other academic institutions, especially in the USA. 

    So, if working should be overall good for your life, when the opposite happens, it’s an important warning sign that something needs to be done.  

    Of course, this does not mean that you should strive to live a life without any stress or anxiety. Being exposed to a certain level of stress, actually, is good. It also shows that you care about what you are doing. In the right amount, stress helps us to pursue our goals by increasing our performance (eustress), and actually helps us in the long run to learn how to cope with life challenges. However, above a certain threshold and/or for a prolonged time (distress), stress is harmful.  

    Many life challenges have the potential of being stressful, but they are not perceived by everybody in the same way because the individual perception is influenced by many other factors. Research in occupational health has showed us many factors which may help to explain these differences. Some of them are individual characteristics, others are organizational. The two types often interact with each other.

    For example, a deadline is likely to be perceived more stressful by a perfectionist person. For the same person, the very same deadline may be perceived even more stressful if the work climate is less supportive or toxic, or if the person is not satisfied about her/his own work and underestimates her/his own abilities, or if the organization does not provide the proper resources to manage the work.

    Workload is a major topic, while talking about stress. Decreasing the workload is not always possible, although recommendable. Luckily, it is not just about the objective workload. Like for the deadline, also the same workload can be perceived very differently. 

    Fabio mentioned the effort-reward imbalance as one of the most successful models used to study work-related stress. According to this model, the key of fighting stress lays in avoiding an imbalance between effort and reward. If decreasing the workload is not possible, increasing the reward may be a feasible solution. Reward is not only about the salary but also means being inspired by the work. Reward is the feeling that we are achieving something, that we are developing our expertise and building up the career we want. Moreover, in a society where we often require so much from ourselves, reward comes also from recognizing our hard work and giving ourselves a little treat! For Fabio, a little treat at the end of the day is a glass of wine and a good piece of cheese. For me, a dinner at one of my favorite restaurants with good company! What about you? Do you remember sometimes to give yourself a little treat? 

    Another important consideration (especially for the perfectionists among us): how to let good enough be good enough? An idea could be to define three levels of performance in a task: the max, the min and the mod. 

    For example, you are drafting the discussion of your paper. If you go for the max(iumum) level of performance, you want to write this paragraph taking all the possible articles that are dealing with your subject, which might take several days or months to go through if the subject you are working on is a well-studied one. If you go for the min(imum) approach you could just use the info you know and that’s it, which takes the least amount of time and effort. While, if you take the mod(erate) level of performance, you would involve adding one or two elements above the minimum.  

    The fact that you can choose among a few performance options can feel really liberating! Try it to find out what is your best suited level of performance, or what is the best suited level of performance for the situation you are in!

    Finally, Fabio gift-wrapped three very wise advices for all the PhD students out there:

    • Embrace the downs. Life is about ups and downs, not only about ups. Downs are needed too. They help us to understand what we want and what we do not want. Downs push us to self-reflect. We need to remind ourselves that it is ok to experience them, and we need to look at them as an opportunity instead of as a problem.
    • Take care of yourself and of your passion. It is the biggest investment you can do for your own productivity. Take care of your health, mental and physical so that you feel enriched instead of drained. Being healthy and passionate allows us to enjoy both our private and professional life. They are basic ingredients to do more, and to do better.
    • Enjoy the PhD journey by taking it for what it is: a wonderful and complicated period of your life which has incredible moments of growth for your personal and professional life. And take time during this journey to think about who you are and why you are doing a PhD. Be open to what comes out, without any judgment.