Influential Woman · Biotechnology

Mariam Sticklen

PhD

President, President at Biobased Industrial Consulting and Research

Kailua-kona, HI

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Her Story

About Mariam

I came from a developing country, Iran, where I grew up in a village that had a high school for boys but not for girls. My mother, who raised us after my father passed when I was 3, was instrumental in my education. She got me books to study at home and arranged for me to take exams at continuing education with the boys. She brought in my cousin as a tutor to teach me mathematics and English, giving him a bedroom in our home. I completed 7th and 8th grade through continuing education, and then my younger brother, after returning from military service, moved my sister and me to a bigger city so we could attend high school. My success became focused on getting scholarships so I could attend college for free and continue my education through funded opportunities. I got interested in biotechnology during my college days in the mid-1960s, right at the beginning of DNA discovery by Watson and Crick. I developed two major areas of expertise: bioenergy and biofuels, where I hold 14 patents as lead inventor with some of my students and postdocs as co-inventors, and health-related biotechnology, particularly my work on SLPI, an anti-HIV protein found in human saliva. A company called Eden Space contracted my first 3 bioenergy patents and expanded the work. Between 2005 and 2009, I was invited as a speaker in 26 different countries, and I found that traveling and relaxing, whether on airplanes or taking walks, often led to new ideas flowing naturally. My philosophy in biotechnology is that evolution has already started the work for us, and we just need to see what's in nature, grab our interest, and promote and modify it rather than creating from scratch.

Her Interview

Ten minutes with Mariam

01What do you attribute your success to?

I attribute my success to passion first and foremost. The love for learning and education was natural for me from childhood. I had fun with my books, even carrying them with me to picnics, not story books or romance, but my reading books, just to have the confidence they were there if I needed them. Beyond passion, I learned that it's important to think about how to bring inventions to market. A lot of professors have good ideas and get patents, but it doesn't go anywhere because most universities are not good at marketing people's patents. I was fortunate that a company called Eden Space contracted my first 3 bioenergy patents and expanded the work. Another key to my success was allowing myself to relax and be in a good environment. When I was traveling as an invited speaker to 26 different countries, sitting in airplanes without the responsibility of teaching and supervising, just relaxing, ideas would come to me. I wasn't trying to come up with ideas, but once a scientist is relaxed and in a good environment, ideas just flow. Sometimes even when I went for a walk, it was relaxing and fun, and I wasn't thinking about goals, but ideas would come up. You have to let the ideals flow with the integration of what is already there. You don't have to put too much control within the science.

02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?

My advice for girls that go for higher education is that biotechnology now is very broad and so much fun. There's so much more to discover that if they are interested in learning, then go for biotechnology, because there's no limit, from medicine to agriculture to earth sciences to microbiology, just name it. What is the good part of the whole learning biotechnology is evolution has started it for us already. Think about what evolution has made. I'll give you the example of that SLPI, which is in our saliva, in our mouth. Evolution made it in our mouth so we don't get HIV and hepatitis. If you think about other diseases, there are genes already in our body, and even in plant sciences, it's the same thing. They have defense mechanisms, and all you need is to expand their defense mechanism. First think of what is in nature, which is problem solving, like in my case with SLPI. Then think about how you can produce it. You can change the DNA to humanize it, and you can produce it in plants, not only in microbes. Don't try to recreate something that is already there within nature. All you have to do is make adaptations to what's already there. It's all about making adaptations and promoting what evolution has already created.

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