Belkis Stambouli
Tell us about your work/research. What kinds of things do you do?
I trained as a pharmacist, and my research is about finding new medicines in nature. Venom is one of the best places to look. Venom is a mixture of toxins that an animal makes in a specialized gland and injects into another animal through a bite or a sting. Those toxins evolved to act fast and to hit particular targets in the prey's body: nerve signals, muscle control, blood clotting. Many of the same targets exist in us, which is why a toxin can become a useful starting point for a drug.
I study the venoms of octopuses, squids, and cuttlefish. Most people are surprised that these animals are venomous at all, but they produce venom in salivary glands and use it to subdue crabs and other prey. I am interested in how their venoms vary between animals, and how living in the deep sea shapes them.
This route to medicine is well established. A compound from a Brazilian pit viper led to captopril, one of the first widely used treatments for high blood pressure, and a Pacific cone snail gave us a medicine for pain so severe that nothing else helps. Animals have already solved problems we are still working on. The solution is usually out there in nature, and our job is to go and find it.
What sparked your initial interest in your career?
I got interested in medicine that comes from nature partly because of my own skin. I had eczema as a child and spent a lot of time in doctors' offices, and what helped most in the end were medicinal plants. I also spent a lot of that childhood mixing whatever I could find in the bathroom, convinced I was already a scientist. So I studied pharmacy, planning to go into pharmacognosy, which is the study of medicines that come from natural sources rather than being built from scratch in a laboratory. For a long time I assumed that meant plants. Then I started reading about venoms, and the more I read, the less I wanted to put the subject down. I have always loved forests, but nothing pulls at me the way the ocean does. That is how I ended up working on octopuses, squids, and cuttlefish, whose venoms almost nobody has looked at closely.
Who influenced you or encouraged you the most?
Mostly my parents, and my family more widely. None of them are scientists, but they were the ones watching National Geographic and other science programs, and I watched with them. Since then I have had several mentors, both personal and scientific, who encouraged me at different points. What I did not find, though, was someone who looked like what I wanted to become: a woman who worked both outdoors and in the laboratory. That is the part of this job I love: you go out and find something in nature, and then you bring it back to the bench to understand it. I did not see many people doing both, so I decided to try to be one of them
What element of your work/study do you think is the most fascinating?
The part I find most fascinating is how precisely evolution shapes these molecules. A venom peptide is not a blunt poison; it is built to fit one target. Some toxins work by blocking, jamming a particular channel in a prey animal's nerves so that no signal gets through. Others work by imitation. A peptide in Gila monster venom resembles one of our own hormones closely enough to switch on the same receptor, and because the enzyme that normally clears that hormone within minutes cannot break the peptide down, it lasts far longer. That single molecule is the reason a whole family of diabetes medicines exists.
How did you get involved with the Ocean Exploration Trust?
I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. The biological specimens collected during this expedition will be archived at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, so part of the role of whoever sails is helping to collect and care for them. Graduate students can express interest in sailing on expeditions like this one, and depending on timing and availability, an offer sometimes comes through. That is how I networked and was eventually invited to join this expedition.
What other jobs led you to your current career?
My path has been entirely in study and research rather than a series of jobs, but each step changed the question I was asking. I trained as a pharmacist, and for my final-year thesis at my home university, I deliberately looked for a supervisor doing laboratory research rather than industrial pharmacy, because I wanted to find out whether research suited me at all. It did. I then moved to another country to follow that interest, taking graduate classes and working in research laboratories, testing plant extracts on a tiny worm called C. elegans, which is widely used as a laboratory model, to see whether they had any biological activity. I moved again, to the City University of New York, where I worked on how butterflies use plants for their own chemical defense. That is where I started to see animals as chemists in their own right rather than only as consumers of plant chemistry, and it made marine animals an option to explore. I rotated in a venom laboratory, and that is where I stayed.
What are your degrees and certifications?
PharmD- University of Algiers, Algeria, 2018.
Masters in Biology- Lehman College, CUNY, USA, 2023.
PhD candidate- Harvard 2033
What are your hobbies?
Basically any adrenaline outdoor activity that goes from hiking to climbing, and now I've gotten into snowboarding!
What advice would you give someone who wants to have a career like yours?
First, accept that it is a work in progress. If you have a rough sense of what interests you but no clear idea of the path, that is a normal place to start. You may work toward one thing and end up somewhere next to it, and that is not a failure. Keep your mind open to perspectives that are not your own, because that is usually where the next idea comes from.
For my field, the starting degree matters less than people think. Pharmacy, biology, chemistry, or biotechnology will all get you there. What matters is the combination, and I would think of it as three areas that overlap: chemistry, including organic chemistry and some pharmacology; the organisms themselves, through zoology or plant science; and evolution, ecology, and biogeography. Each one changes how you read the other two. The two things I would call non-negotiable are statistics and some basic bioinformatics. You do not need to be an expert in everything, but you need enough of each tool to understand what you are looking at.
Classes are not enough on their own. Some skills only come from being in a laboratory, so get into one early and look for internships: the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, for instance, runs a paid summer research program for undergraduates.
The part people forget is networking, and it is the most valuable thing you will build. Go to conferences and events, talk to people about their work, ask questions and show real interest. That is what gives you access and opportunities that no application form will.
And at every step, stop and ask yourself whether you are enjoying it. Working in a field you love is wonderful, but it still has hard parts, and what carries you through them is genuinely liking the work. The difficulties are part of the journey, not a sign that you chose wrong.
