An intangible spirit of adventure and community

Megan Carey visited Portugal for the first time in August 2005. She and her husband, Michael Orger, had been invited to a wedding, and a Portuguese friend (André Valente) had promised to show them all the good things that Lisbon had to offer. At the time, Megan was a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School. Amidst some difficulty finding the Capela de São Jerónimo, the discomfort of walking in high heels on the traditional Portuguese cobblestones, and the heat, she remembers rolling her eyes when Mike first suggested: "Lisbon is incredible, one day we should live here!" 

Megan immediately pointed out that it would be difficult to find positions for both of them in Neuroscience. But Mike had heard about a donation dedicated to the creation of a centre for biomedical research. Incredulous, but thinking about the magical week they had spent in Belém, Megan replied in her determined and ambitious style: “OK, sure, if we could get two jobs here, I would live here. But it would have to be in this neighborhood, and I would want to live in one of these houses.” Even if this idea seemed very far from reality to Megan at the time, it eventually came true.

A few years later, Megan, with an offer in hand from New York, and Mike, with one from Vienna, received the news that the formerly imaginary neuroscience institute was indeed going to be built in Megan’s favorite neighborhood in Lisbon. Their friend André Valente (again), encouraged them to apply. They decided that they had to; it seemed like fate. And the two were invited for an interview in May 2009.

She recalls that the interview took the form of a symposium, something she had never experienced before and which made her understandably nervous. The interviews were held at the Gulbenkian Institute of Science (IGC), at the same time as a visit from the Scientific Advisory Board of the Champalimaud Foundation (CF), which included several Nobel laureates and, quite unexpectedly, two people who were trying to recruit them to New York and Vienna (systems neuroscience is a small world!).

On the way to their flight to Lisbon, they received the agenda for the day (which she still keeps and kindly shared with me). To Megan’s surprise, it showed that the session would open with a speech by the then President of the Portuguese Republic, Anibal Cavaco Silva and that she would be presenting immediately afterwards. She admits she was as impressed as she was terrified.

The whole day was photographed, and in the images she showed me, we can spot current CF researchers Zachary Mainen, Susana Lima, Mike Orger, as well as former President Cavaco Silva, neuroscientist Tony Movshon, and Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner, all smiling. The day ended with a dinner that offered her a glimpse of what her life in Lisbon might be like. To get to the dinner location, she accepted a motorcycle ride from Adam Kampff – the first of her life – and watched the sunset from Lisbon's riverside avenue: a small prelude to all the adventures that would follow.

Both Megan and Mike were selected for the positions of Principal Investigators at the CF. On their second visit, they toured the building's construction site and had dinner with a small group of researchers, whom she describes as "welcoming" and "incredibly creative." She recalls never forgetting something one of them said that night, as they ate together in a cramped space: "We're going to need a bigger table!". 

That evening made her think of the black and white photographs back in her department in Harvard, showing renowned neuroscientists such as David Hubel, Ed Kravitz and Marge Livingstone earlier in their careers. She realised she, too, was being offered a rare opportunity to help build something new – something special. “This Portuguese neuroscience venture might just succeed. And if we weren’t a part of it, we thought, we might always regret it”. They moved to Portugal with their two small children in August 2010, just two months before the inauguration of the Champalimaud Centre for the Unkown on October 5th that same year.

When I asked Megan about a significant challenge she faced during her career at the CF, she shared a story that, interestingly, was also recounted by another of our interviewees, Rui Costa, proof that, “inevitably, these stories touch and intertwine” (in 20 Years, 20 Stories editorial). In this case, it was a defining moment they both lived. One morning in February 2011, Megan walked into an otherwise empty CCU to find the open lab suddenly filled with equipment. “We were thrilled”, she tells me, until they noticed the people in lab coats, the bright lights and the cameras. The space had been rented out to film a commercial. They laughed and thought, “Well… someday.” But then a newspaper article came out – something along the lines “Champalimaud Foundation open for business”, complete with photos of the made-for-TV lab. That, she said, was the moment of real panic: what if the entire place had been built just for show? 

When Megan began her work, she applied for a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which supported projects led by early-career researchers. She told me how strongly her colleagues encouraged her as she prepared her innovative proposal: “It didn’t even have concrete aims, but rather outlined a vision for my research that would use newly emerging tools to dissect cerebellar control of coordinated movement, bridging levels of analysis from specific cell types through circuit computations and behaviour.” 

Both she and neuroscientist Rui Costa were awarded funding, and there was “enormous publicity around the announcement,” a moment she describes as pivotal, both for her own trajectory and for the neuroscience programme as a whole. “We were all immensely proud of each other’s achievements because we felt we were building something important, together.”

For Megan, another of her first big contributions to the CF was chairing the very first Champalimaud Neuroscience Symposium in September 2011. “We invited a remarkable group of speakers, and hundreds of participants came to experience the Champalimaud Foundation for the first time.” She still occasionally recognises some of the texts she wrote for that first edition, now adapted into the descriptions of what is today the Champalimaud Research Symposium, held annually at the CF. She tells me proudly that the event “played a vital role in introducing our institute to the wider scientific community.”

As we were wrapping up our conversation, I asked Megan which moment best captures her journey at the CF.  She didn’t hesitate. She reached for a black and white photograph of herself dancing, singing and laughing with other researchers at her very first annual retreat. They were dancing to MGMT's "Kids" after a late-night swim, and the image instantly brought to my mind something she had told me earlier: "Building a research institute where people can do good research and publish nice papers is the easy part. What’s harder, and what the CF has achieved, is attracting people with big dreams and big ideas, people who are willing to challenge themselves to participate in building something larger than the sum of its parts.”

Megan has worked in many neuroscience departments, but never in one with an atmosphere quite like this: "There’s a spirit of adventure and community that is intangible – and enviable." 

It is precisely this spirit that has shaped so many defining moments in Megan’s story and in the history of the CF. And may it continue to do so for more twenty years to come.

Megan Carey, Principal Investigator, Neural Circuits and Behavior Lab, Champalimaud Foundation

Text by Diana Cadete, Digital & Events Manager of the Champalimaud Foundation's Communication, Events & Outreach Team

Full 20 Years, 20 Stories Collection here.