In memory of Sherlock Lam (Entry on April 9, 2020)
Sherlock was one of the few mentors that I have had that we maintained a friendship outside of the laboratory and of the school. He was also one of the very few mentors that I have had who actively repressed power dynamics during our interactions -- even though he was more established and more knowledgeable. He truly saw his students as his peers and allowed them to be as vocal and open as they could without reprimanding them. I truly admired him as a PI for his management style as well as a mentor, let alone as an educator.
How I met Sherlock was some what of a twist and turn. This page is to dedicated to him for me to remember his role as a supervisor, a mentor, a friend.
Photo with Dr. Sik Lok Sherlock Lam at the student office of SLAM Group, April 2011.
In 2010 Fall, I went back to Hong Kong and took classes that I need to fulfill my bachelor's degree requirements at UCSD. I chose to go to CUHK as a visiting student (for a year) for many reasons, and one of the simplest reasons was because CUHK campus was geographically closest to home (~1 hr commute one way by public transit) and the campus located right across the river from my high school. As I returned home and started school in September, I slowly feel perplexed -- the familiarity of being home and the completely strange feeling of being disconnected from the surrounding at a college campus. I registered as a Chemistry major and took classes with predominantly 2nd year (junior) students. I find it almost impossible to connect with the rest of the 80-something classmates. There are many reasons for that: 1) they have their own cliques since freshman year, as they took the same classes throughout their degrees; 2) some may live in dormitories and actively engaged in extracurricular; 3) most of the students were not pursuing a Chemistry degree to prepare themselves for a STEM career (in fact, quite the opposite). Learning their aspirations different than mine -- where I wanted to get a Ph.D. and have a career in science -- it was unexpectedly demotivating. In the first week of the semester. the number of professors with who I met and connected was significantly more than my classmates.
At the time when I wanted to prepare myself for graduate school to learn X-ray crystallography, I reached out to multiple PIs at CUHK. Although there were two labs that used X-ray crystallography to study protein structures, neither of the PI foresee me being able to complete a project in less than a year (besides the weird fact that it was extremely uncommon to have an undergraduate volunteer in their research labs, or any research labs on campus, where most labs consist of master students and doctoral students/candidates). As a result, my search of joining a research lab for the year slowed down a little until I met emeritus professor Wai Kee Li, who I sat in his advanced inorganic chemistry course with 3rd year (senior) Chemistry students. Wai Kee Li was a very approachable, friendly person. I visited him at times to ask him questions about materials that covered in his lecture (again, not formally registered as his student), and during one of the conversations that we have had (about computational chemistry and computation biology, which was not popular in Hong Kong), I told him that I was looking for research opportunities that prepare me to study structural biology. He recommended me to reach out to Sherlock, who I did not know at the time, and said that "Go talk to Sherlock and you will be just fine." I am forever grateful for Wai Kee Li to put me in a place where I can continue my scientific journey.
When I met Sherlock and he asked what do I want to do -- I basically told him that "I hated NMR (in theory) but I'm opened to give it a try". There were too many reasons to explain why the dislike, but the experience at a graduate-level course on the appreciation of mathematical and the physics behind Nuclear Magnetic Resonance at UCSD was daunting. Sherlock smiled, however, as I was explaining to him my understanding of the three major approaches in structural biology (at that time) and their pros and cons (p.s. if only DED was popular then). He was happy to let me get my hands dirty despite all the things that I have said, which may have offended many NMR aficionados in the field. Sherlock used solution-state NMR to study nucleic acids with non-traditional folding and non-Watson-Crick base-pairing with interesting biological significance. He was one of those PIs that are actively involved in the wet lab by conducting experiments on his own while being laid back / hands-off from his students. Hence, despite being a undergraduate volunteer, I got to learn a lot of nucleic acid synthesis (from DNA synthesizer) and nucleic acid purification experiments directly from him and tried my best to understand solution-state NMR as well as to analyze 1-D and 2-D spectra. He has always been patient with me infinitely and has been very encouraging. There was never a second where I felt like Sherlock was talking (down) to me as a supervisor, or someone who "knows more than I do". Power dynamics never existed during my time in his lab. He just genuinely loved science and happy to share his joy with others. Aside from the photos that I took with him, there were times when we played full-court pickup basketball (after I left CUHK), countless time of eating and chatting over lunch or afternoon tea on campus (during and after I left CUHK)--and we would talk not just about sciences, but careers, life, U.S. politics, or being a human being--just about everything. I was in his lab, SLAM Group, for about 4-5 months in 2011, and we never seem to skip a beat when we reunite in 2012, 2014, 2017 as friends. Losing him as a mentor, a PI, a friend was nothing but tough. And that he played a major role in the memory of my time at CUHK.
Sherlock was a great human and is gone way too soon. His spirit will always be with me, with us.
May you forever rest in peace, Sherlock.