Caroline Mauvezin
BIO
Postdoctoral researcher in cell biology at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (Spain). Mother of 3 fantastic kids.
Instagram: @cmauvezin
Caroline Mauvezin
“This was a challenging time in terms of logistics as well as recognition in the scientific community.”
I’m a cell biologist, passionate about autophagy and cellular metabolism. I fell pregnant with our first daughter a year after I got into my PhD program in Barcelona. This was a challenging time in terms of logistics as well as recognition in the scientific community. After defending my PhD, my husband, our 3-year-old daughter and I moved to the USA for a first postdoctoral position. The changes and challenges of moving from Barcelona to Minnesota were considerable.
I continued working on autophagy but changed the model of study. I learned Drosophila genetics and had a beautiful experience. A few months after starting my postdoc, I got pregnant with our second daughter, who was born in the middle of an extremely cold winter (for us). Again, the logistics were tough, especially since I only had 6 weeks off for maternity leave. Luckily my supervisor was very understanding and I could swing back into work step by step.
Leaving our 2 months old baby was one of the hardest challenges for me. Dealing with breastfeeding/pumping was not easy but I had my priorities clear and I managed to reach my personal goals.
At the end of my postdoc, I got pregnant with our son, and left the USA when I was 5 months pregnant. My husband got a position back home, so I started applying for another postdoctoral position. I got lucky and found a research group that accepted to hire me even in my last trimester of the pregnancy.
Dealing with incorporation into a new lab, a new addition to our family, together with the picks of pregnancy hormones was incredibly difficult. Three months after our son was born, I went back to the lab and started dealing again with breastfeeding/pumping and starting a new project. But slowly I developed my own research project, was awarded a Marie Curie fellowship and I am now looking at a tenure-track position at the University… although I know there is still a long way to go.