When Dr. Susan Bullman last year told her husband, Dr. Christopher Johnston, that she wanted to leave her job at Harvard’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for a faculty post at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, he was, well, less than enthused.
“We are not moving to Seattle, we’re not leaving Boston. My research is notgoing to the rain,” was his response, Johnston recalled with a grin, as he chatted with his wife in his new office at Fred Hutch, overlooking Seattle’s Lake Union on a sunny spring morning.
Yes. They both got jobs at the Hutch.
In April, each joined the Fred Hutch faculty, and since then, they have been staffing and stocking their own microbiology labs. With different areas of expertise, each is a leader in research on the microbiota, the trillions of bacteria that inhabit our mouths, our gut and just about every square inch of our bodies.
“I want my work to be meaningful. I want it to be impactful. And I think the Hutch is the place to make that happen,” Johnston said.
Solving the ‘two-body problem’
They both come from County Cork, in the south of Ireland, and for years their work lives had followed a parallel track.
They met as graduate students at Cork Institute of Technology, but for the first two years, they barely knew one another. As the most studious among their colleagues, eventually they became the only ones left in the lab late into the evenings. “The security guards hated us,” Johnston said. “They were telling us, ‘C’mon, wrap it up and go home.’”
Thus, a romance bloomed.
After graduating, they traveled the route of many European scientists: get a Ph.D. in the home country, and then seek a postdoctoral fellowship in the United States. Johnston called it “getting the BTA” (Been to America), often sought to burnish a newly minted researcher’s credentials.
They both sought fellowships in the Boston area. With so many schools and research labs there, they felt it gave them the best shot at staying together. This was their first experience with what is called in academic circles the “two-body problem.” Because highly educated young people often seek love among those with like interests, couples often face heartbreaking choices when a career takes one of them to a different part of the globe. Good academic jobs are hard enough for one person to find, let alone two.
Boston, of course, came through for Bullman and Johnston. But five years into that chapter, with both holding good jobs, they realized they loved living in the U.S., and their work lives were taking off. But what to do when the next career decision arose? The two-body problem, it seems, is lifelong.
