Mustafa Sahin, MD, PhD, a neurologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, directs the Translational Neuroscience Center, which he founded several years ago to accelerate neuroscience research to the clinic. He also directs the hospital’s Translational Research Program. In this interview with Boston Children’s Technology and Innovation Development Office (TIDO), Sahin talks about his motivations as a clinician-scientist and how he works with industry partners to move discoveries forward.

What drives you as a scientist? 

What drives me as a scientist has changed over the course of my career. It was my fascination with experimentation that first got me interested in biology. In high school, I took vials of fruit flies to a radiation oncology department and tested the effects of radiation on the mutation rate. When I came to the U.S. to study biochemistry in college, I was drawn to the mysteries of the brain. While my PhD and postdoctoral work continued on very fundamental questions about how neurons connect to each other, advances in genetics and neuroscience allowed me to bring rigorous basic science approaches to clinical questions. So more and more, my science is driven by a need to bring treatments to the patients I see in the clinic. Fortunately, this is no longer a long-term, aspirational goal, but something within reach in my career. …