Spurred by the desire to solve the mystery of what causes cancer, graduate student Ashwin Bale splits his time between the Beckman Institute and the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology as he wraps up a Ph.D. in chemical engineering. When he’s not busy working, he dreams of spending time at the beach and seeing his favorite soccer team become champions once again.

Tell us about yourself.

My name is Ashwin Bale, and I’m from India, specifically Goa. I describe it as the Miami of India. It's India’s vacation destination, the land of beaches. For everyone at the end of the semester or academic year, or whenever someone has a vacation, Goa is the place to be.

I did my undergrad at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, which is in a different state. It’s in the city of Hyderabad, in the southeast, and I’m from the southwest. While there I did my undergrad in chemical engineering, and a minor in material science.

How long have you been a student here?

I’m now a sixth-year Ph.D. student. I just finished five years in August of this year. It’s been a ride! I'm looking forward to defending in the spring.

What do you study here at the University of Illinois?

I wanted to apply for a Ph.D. in chemical engineering, since that was my background, which I did. My Ph.D. is in chemical engineering, and a lot of the work I do is centered on that because I did a lot of research in that area during my undergrad. My previous work involved simulations, like sitting on a computer running computer-based simulations for polymers and different types of materials.

But when I came here, I saw an opportunity to try something different. The lab I work in is primarily an experimental lab, which means that what I do now is not necessarily directly linked to chemical engineering, but it's more based in biology, bioengineering and designing biomaterials.

Who do you work with?

I'm co-advised. One of my advisors is Brendan Harley in chemical engineering, and Rohit Bhargava here at Beckman and in the Department of Bioengineering. This means I have two office spaces, one at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and one here. Depending on what work I'm doing during a given month, I switch between the labs.

What are you researching?

My research is on chemical imaging. What that means is I focus on the biology of cells. I use a technique called infrared imaging, which can discern and localize chemistry inside cells. The instrument I use for my research does this at a nanoscale resolution.

This means I can get down to the details. I apply this method of imaging to different illnesses such as glioblastoma, which is an aggressive form of brain cancer, and different breast cancers. I use infrared imaging as a technique to study how these changes happen when you compare them to healthy cells.

How did you get interested in this research?

When I came here, I figured that if I ever switched to experimental research, it would be for cancer research because I was fascinated by the fact that there are thousands of people working in this area and billions of dollars of investment, yet we still don’t fully understand cancer. The root cause remains a mystery. If one compares each cancer patient, the same cancer can arise due to different factors. No expert can nail down why cancer occurs in a person. There are genetic factors, there's environmental factors and other different changes that happen. But we can’t pinpoint a singular reason.

During the open house at Beckman, a lot of kids were coming around our booth, but one little girl was hanging around longer than everyone else. She and I got to talking and I realized she was there because she’d lost her grandmother to cancer, and she wanted to know why people get cancer.

That was a unique experience I had, talking to someone, a little kid who had been affected by this illness. 

What do you want to pursue once you’ve finished?

I decided to pursue a Ph.D. because I tried an industry internship during my undergrad in my sophomore year, and in my senior year I tried a research internship. I found research to be more interesting. I thought academia would be the place to be because I was 100% sure I was going to be a professor.

Over the years, I've gotten to know more about the field. And if you ask me right now, it's 51-49% in favor of academia. But I just did another internship this summer at the Dow Chemical Company, and now I think my internship during undergrad was not an accurate reflection of what an industry job is really like because what I worked on then wasn’t necessarily research and development.

I'm exploring both options, but if I can do research, I think I'll be happy.

How would you describe the role that Beckman plays in your research?

I think the Beckman Institute, and specifically the Center for Quantitative Cell Biology, has given me the opportunity to be collaborative in the way I approach research. Being a part of Beckman means I've had the opportunity to talk with so many different professors and their students. A lot of research crosses the boundaries between disciplines.

Just being in IGB or just being at Beckman wouldn’t have fostered that, but being between these two institutes has allowed me to meet different researchers in biology, chemistry, physics and especially chemical imaging, which I do at Beckman.

Also, the Beckman Institute Open House has been a great experience. Connecting with the broader community, kids exploring science — I love that!

What do you do when you're not in the lab?

I’m a big soccer fan, especially FC Barcelona in Spain. I haven’t missed a single game in the last six years. In fact, I was just watching one before this interview! I got into them around 2014 when they were the best team overall. I was just getting into soccer, and I wanted to support the winners, but after that the slump began, and they were bad for several years. I kept supporting them, thinking it would be the last bad year, that the next year they would go back to winning. Year after year, I've watched all the games with this hope. My keychain is FC Barcelona. My license plate is FC Barcelona. I have an FC Barcelona flag in my apartment, too.

Other than that, during vacations I like to travel. I've covered more than 25 states so far. Whenever I get a few days of vacation, I go to different places like national parks or visit different communities.

I love Yosemite. I was lucky because I visited during a period when it had the prettiest waterfall in 25 years. I didn’t realize this happened to coincide with my visit. Now I have an incredible mental picture of Yosemite, and I've made it a point to never go there again because I want to keep that amazing picture.

I like Miami, too. Coming from somewhere where there's a lot of beaches, that’s the kind of place I want to be!