Going Through Research, One Step at a Time

Accessibility in chemistry has the potential to benefit everyone. Would your lab be more accessible if you approached accommodation with an innovation mindset?

In this episode of the EDII Catalyst, Dr. Blaine Fiss (Killam Postdoctoral Fellow, Dalhousie University) joins us to discuss how his experiences as a chemist with cerebral palsy have shaped his approach to accessibility, mentorship, and innovation in the lab.

Hosted by Dr. Jordan Bentley and PhD candidate Eden Goodwin, this episode explores what inclusion looks like in chemistry, the importance of open dialogue, accessible research environments, and visible representation in STEM.

Transcript begins below video. 

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The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. 

Thank you all for coming today. We’re very excited to have Dr. Blaine Fiss, Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at Dalhousie University, joining us for our episode.

Dr. Blaine Fiss obtained his Bachelor of Science (Honours) in 2016, majoring in nanoscience at the University of Guelph. He then went on to obtain his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Audrey Moores and Prof. Thomas Friščić, which focused on applying mechanochemical methods for sustainable phosphorus chemistries. Dr. Fiss then obtained a Postdoctoral Research Associate position at the University of Western Ontario under the supervision of Prof. Paul Ragogna and Prof. Johanna Blacquiere, working on novel bidentate ligands.

In 2023, Dr. Fiss became a member of the Canadian Society for Chemistry’s Working for Inclusion, Diversity and Equity Committee (CSC WIDE). He is currently a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at Dalhousie University, working under the supervision of Prof. Mita Dasog on novel synthetic routes to plasmonic metal nitride nanoparticles and their applications toward clean energy solutions.

Dr. Fiss was recently featured in Nature and Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN) regarding his journey as a chemist with cerebral palsy. In 2024, Blaine was named a top 100 candidate of the CAS Future Leaders program and has published a broad range of reports on the application of mechanochemistry for more sustainable materials syntheses. Welcome, Dr. Fiss.

Across your career, you've been vocal and open about your cerebral palsy. How have your experiences in academia been shaped by your access needs and your identity?

This is an important question both for myself and my own position, but also for other scientists that have to deal with disabilities of any variety, whether they're visible or invisible. To give the audience a sense of where I've come from and how that's brought me to where I am now: as both Eden and Jordan have mentioned, I grew up with cerebral palsy. I didn't actually take any independent steps until around seven or eight years old, and even then it was heavily assisted. I had lots of assistive aids up until I was about ten or twelve, so wheelchairs, walkers, canes. I really didn't have independent mobility up until I was about fifteen or sixteen years old.

That journey—apart from the physical challenges posed—gave me a lot of insight into how to be resourceful when moving through my world on a day-to-day basis. I think that resourcefulness which came as a result of my disability has really impacted my career in terms of how I approach lab spacing, equipment accessibility, developing presentations or conference materials, and how I approach solving problems. The way I look at doing science is deeply rooted in that resourcefulness that I grew up with as a result of the challenges that I had to face.

Thank you for sharing a bit of your journey with us. In our pre-interview conversation, we chatted a bit about your feature in Nature and how visibility was a double-edged sword there. You mentioned that although there were many positive reactions, you also encountered some bad actors when it came to being a scientist within a research lab. Did you want to share more about that?

Certainly. The Nature piece in particular was an interesting one, as you've hinted at, because that was the first scientifically-associated or scientifically tangential interaction that I had where people wanted to know more about my journey as a scientist and not just the science that I was doing. So, in that sense, when Nature reached out to me and wanted to do this piece and hear about my experiences, that representation for me was really eye opening and I wanted to do that justice.

For me growing up, the representation really wasn't there. When I was coming up through the system, I didn't have any benchmarks of what a scientist with a disability could look like or what sort of resources are available to us. In that way, the Nature paper really provided a groundwork for me to discuss some of those things. The other side to that was that we had a lot of pushback on the article (at least online).

A lot of the community, both directly involved with science and those outside of it, would bring up points like, ‘isn't this a safety issue if you have balance or coordination challenges? Does that make it more high risk as opposed to less high risk? And is that something that a lab manager or principal investigator (PI) can really afford to do?’ For me personally, I’ve grown up with this type of discourse and these types of comments—not necessarily in a scientific context, but in the sense that being set apart or separated from society at large was how I felt moving day-to-day.

While I think it's important that I use platforms like this to continue sharing those experiences and using my voice to improve the sciences in general, yeah, there's definitely going to be bad apples and negativity around those things. I've learned to take those as they come and understand that, regardless of how certain groups may feel, I'm still doing this for the right reasons, and it is a change that ultimately needs to happen. It needs to happen whether we think [about that change] directly on a regular basis (like somebody like myself), or if we only realize we need that change later in our careers or later on in life. Balancing the positive and negative is definitely something that I've had to navigate throughout my career, and it’s been the main hurdle that I typically run into.

Thank you for sharing that. In our pre-interview, you mentioned that the first time you encountered a disabled chemist was only after you had gotten into graduate school: another chemist in your PhD who was a wheelchair user. Why do you think that representation was so important for you in grad school? How do you think not having that during your undergrad may have affected your perception of chemistry?

I think that even when I was very young, before I could walk—and my parents will often retell this story—I wanted to be a scientist when I was about five or six. I knew, for whatever reason, that this was the path that I wanted to pursue. Again, at this point in my life, I would have been in a wheelchair and so I didn't really know of any scientists through my undergrad that had that type of challenge, that had faced the types of things that that I had run into. Obviously, in time, that became more apparent. The challenge with not having that representation in undergrad (especially when you're going through very formative research years and you’re going through stages, like all your practical labs) is that you will oftentimes internalize that in a way of, ‘do I belong? Is this really a space that I can make better or that I can improve upon?’

At a more practical level, there's a lot of pressure put on how we perform in our undergrad and early graduate years in terms of the papers we may publish, the grades we may get, the types of connections and resources that we develop in those years. I didn’t have a direct mentor to tell, ‘these are the physical challenges that I face, but also more than that, these are some of the emotional and psychological challenges that I'm running up against. How do I properly navigate those things?’ I'm not saying that a mentor who isn't disabled can't provide those resources, but there is a nuance and a uniqueness to having scientists with disabilities in those roles.

When I did eventually meet a professor at McGill who was wheelchair-bound, that gave me a perspective shift, even subconsciously, in my brain. I was suddenly thinking, ‘okay, this is now a position that I can actively see myself in.’ More than just having the visual representation of it, I could understand, ‘okay, this is someone else has gone through the system. They've been able to navigate very clear physical challenges, but more than that, they've been able to develop a lab group which has functioned and worked around their challenges as well, whether that's the layout of the lab or how they manage certain resources that other able-bodied chemists may not actively run into.’ Having that framework gave me an example, and over time, I've learned of more chemists in similar positions. But having that first example definitely spurred me to believe that [chemistry] is something I should pursue. The ground was broken when that happened.

As a side note: I'm speaking a lot about visible disabilities and obviously have lived a very particular set of challenges, but disabilities can be both visible and invisible as well. I've had to deal with my fair share of both. Because my challenges are more visible, it’s more obvious what barriers exist and how we need to address them. I recognize that's not always true for everyone, but I believe having that clear representation for me in grad school made it obvious to me people have succeeded in following this path, and this is definitely something I can achieve.

You’ve mentioned tangible ways we can address both visible and invisible disabilities. Are there any tangible changes you would encourage us to make within our larger systems (like conferences, committees, and institutes) and smaller systems (like lab groups and departments)?

Certainly. This boils down to how I was raised and sort of the environment that I grew up in, but I believe that all of this has to start with a conversation. We have to be open to talking about these things. The second we begin to put stigma behind having open conversations or potentially villainize others who want to learn more about how to help or what those barriers may be, we silo people and hinder the path to making tangible effort.

That's a very hand-wavy way of explaining it, but I have an example from when I was in grad school that I spoke about in the Nature paper as well. When I was working at McGill, a lot of the NMR spectrometers that we had were accessible only by a step stool. For me, as someone with balance and coordination issues, having to step up onto a step stool, put a sample in, and then step back down poses a lot of balance issues that I just didn't feel comfortable doing. In that moment, I decided I would just have an open conversation with our facilities manager and be very honest and say, “I'm not comfortable doing this myself. Would you be willing to load samples? Would you be willing to have somebody come in on my behalf and load samples?” To their credit, our systems manager at McGill right away said, “I'll do you one better. We'll talk to facilities and get a full wooden staircase built.” And so within a week, all of those step ladders had been replaced by physical wraparound staircases that essentially served the same purpose.

The benefit—and something I want to highlight for the audience, which I think is really critical—is by starting with that conversation, we had inherently fixed a barrier that I was facing, but we also ended up benefiting the whole of that university. I had friends from McGill years later come to me and say, “you know, we really felt a lot safer and a lot more stable using these stairwells. And we had no idea that that was the result of a conversation you had.”

When we think about tangible things that need to happen, a lot of it is conversation-based. Much of it absolutely is equipment- and structure-based, for sure.

That's a more complicated conversation because a lot of that revolves around funding and where funding comes from, and how we could find viable alternatives that may or may not exist. But I think, again, the reason I said all of this is because just having those open conversations, first and foremostly says that we're not here to judge people. We're just actively asking, “where are the gaps that we need to work on, just like we would for any sort of scientific problem?” A lot of the behavior and the practices that we use in the lab can be reflected in solving similar problems. It's just in this case, it had to do more with infrastructure and accessibility as well.

We touched on the general community's opinions on accessibility your experience coming up through the system. Throughout your time, what support systems have you leaned on during difficult points in your career? How did these supports help you, and how could they have been better?

I've been very fortunate in all stages of my career to have a really good support network in my corner, whether that was as a grad student, in undergrad doing my Honours work, or even now across a pair of postdocs at two different institutions. A couple of key players in particular have been my supervisors in grad school, Prof. Audrey Moores and Prof. Thomas Friščić. They really paved the way for me to have representation of what a supervisor could do in these types of positions, but also wanted to follow up on this in tangible ways, whether that was in how they developed subsequent centres or how we laid out the lab and access to equipment. In a lot of ways, principal investigators have more control than they may realize when it comes to making those tangible changes. They have had a major impact on my career.

Another major player more recently, and you touched on this in the introduction, is my involvement with WIDE. Being a part of CSC has really opened my eyes and created a lot of opportunities within a community that values science, not only for the things we put on paper, but for the people behind it and how we can work towards improving accessibility for all manner of people and sciences.

This combination of factors—a really good upbringing, supportive principal investigators when I started graduate school, and now CSC WIDE—on a broader scale, from a community perspective, has really helped to support me through my career thus far.

In your experience, have you found that younger PIs are more observant of those things? Has involvement and self-awareness varied for you across faculties?

I think so. The irony of this (for me, at least, coming from a physical disability standpoint) is that every single one of us in this room is going to face some physical disability at some point. Just by aging and getting older, our bodies are going to say, ‘I'm done doing the things that I used to do.’ Generally, I’ve found that the younger generation of faculty coming through now have a better understanding of what barriers exist, the reality of those barriers, and a better willingness to help. That's where the some of the irony lies: a lot of the more established faculty may one day need or require those assistive aides. I'm not only talking about in-lab; I'm talking about writing grants, access to resources—there's a whole list of things we could get into.

In general, I feel that the younger generation of faculty coming through are much more involved. I think it's part and parcel because of pieces like the Nature article and the fact that journals, by and large, are putting more visibility behind these challenges. That might not have been the case when more established faculty were coming up through the system and were going through that process. I think [willingness to help improving with each generation] is a byproduct of age and of how the community at large is giving more of a voice to those with disabilities.

Before we open the floor, we have one final question for you that we always ask our guests: what is your favorite element or molecule and why?

I couldn't necessarily pinpoint when it happened exactly, but my favourite element absolutely is phosphorus. The major reasoning behind that is in part the versatility in which phosphorus can behave; we're seeing new research now demonstrating that phosphorus can do redox switching similar to transition metals, so we're seeing a lot of catalytically relevant examples in that regard.

Phosphorus is also a cornerstone element for humanity at large. It's used in our bodies to form and store energy, and it's also used in all the fertilizers that we use to feed the planet. I think it’s such a unique and yet paramount element for humanity at large. I've loved researching it throughout my career. It's been a great adventure. If I had to boil it down to one, that would be my favourite.

Audience Member: Once you establish your position as a PI in your own group, do you have any ideas for implementing resources or accessibility measures within the group that might facilitate disability disclosure and accommodations while ensuring privacy and discretion?

That’s a really great question. In part thanks to my time with WIDE, I've thought about how once my own group gets off the ground, I want to consolidate a lot of these accessibility resources, be it in a tab or resource list on our website or through a formal contract. This is something I've seen implemented by other professors in Canada; when new folks join, they will have everyone sign what is essentially a lab contract. It doesn’t necessarily aim to contractually outline what they're expected to do or serve the classical purpose we associate with a written contract, but is more so to do with how they conduct themselves as teammates and lab members.

Apart from having those resources, I also want to give my students and researchers a way to openly and anonymously tell me what I'm doing, things that aren't right, or tell me when other lab members might be stepping over that line. It’s not intended to make people's lives miserable or act as a witch hunt. I just think that if people are dealing with these types of challenges and internalizing that, it will have a major impact on their career, regardless of whether they like to think it won’t. I want there to be a vehicle through which people can actively get that off their chest so we can address problems at face value and be able to really effectively make those changes. Those are some of the ways that I hope to make my lab space more accessible, once we get there.

Audience Member: One of the major things that come up [in accessibility discussions] is the lack of financial ability to implement building-scale physical accommodations for people with disabilities. You said you had a very supportive PI team that helped accommodate your needs. Do you have any suggestions for PIs who want to take on students with disabilities on how they can improve accessibility measures beyond their physical environment?

That’s a great question. First and foremost, PIs who are taking this on need to be celebrated, firstly, but they also need to be recognised for the additional work this creates in some cases. This is a partnership between the researcher and the lead investigator to have those conversations around, ‘how do we make this the most successful degree or time with our group as we possibly can?’ It's going to vary from person to person, but in my experience, some of the more tangible things that we’ve done have been even working within teams or having teams that can almost work like small cohorts or even a buddy system.

If you had, say, a setup that was just inherently inaccessible for one reason or another, you could say, “okay, I'm going to work with a senior researcher on this until that student is comfortable in their own right to do it.” If it was something where we're beyond any sort of systems design and we couldn't actually make the science accessible (and that could just come down to the technicality of the science that we're doing), then I would make the argument—and I know this is a bit of a stretch—that it then falls on the PI to become creative in how they're approaching doing that chemistry. Even though we may think of doing chemistry the same way for hundreds of years, there are still ongoing novel ways of doing chemistry that have become more accessible (like in the case of automated systems).

Again, this isn't always accessible to everybody, but speaking from my own experience, applying mechanochemistry to a lot of these very reactive or potentially more hazardous chemistries has made them infinitely more accessible to people, both physically and in terms of the technical know-how that they need. I think it really falls on PIs first and foremost to encourage those open conversations and say what's working and what's not working and hold nothing back, really letting the researcher be brutally honest about where the hurdles are.

Beyond that, I think it comes down to really reassessing as best we can, are there other ways that we can address access to this center? How we're using the equipment, how we're designing experiments? That’s a whole other level of involvement, but I think a lot of these challenges—at least at the scientific level—come down to creativity and how creative we're willing to be about them.

Audience Member: I think that's a really good point. I think the argument always stops with, ‘we can't do anything with the space. The space is simply not accessible.’ But I really like your point about thinking about the experiment and how you can do it differently. We shouldn't just close the door on the conversation.

If the audience or other folks from C2MCI want to reach out to me by email with further questions or discussion points, they're welcome to do that. That's totally fine with me. So folks who have more questions: please reach out. I'm happy to help.

Thank you to Dr. Blain Fiss for joining us today and for sharing in this important discussion, and thank you so much to our audience for listening in on today's episode.