Bryan Bryson was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. When he was three, he moved with his extended family to Miami, Florida. Bryson had a formative experience at the W.J. Bryan Elementary School in North Miami, which he describes as being diverse, having excellent teachers, and prioritizing math and science education. His mom advocated for him to be in the academic excellence class. Bryson was also on the math team and participated in science fairs. In addition to the educational environment at school, he grew up in an educational environment with family; his mother and grandfather had been trained as educators, and his grandmother had a scientific and technical bent. His grandfather often took him to the main branch of the public library after school. Bryson has three younger brothers and says that he was the one with the most intense interest in science.

Bryson’s family eventually moved from Miami to Houston, Texas, where Bryson started the seventh grade. Scoring well on an early SAT helped him get into a sleepaway camp at Skidmore College run by the Center for Talented Youth (CTY). Bryson was intellectually challenged by the courses at the camp, and he had a positive social experience. In middle and high school, Bryson had influential English teachers, and in high school, Bryson enjoyed his computer science coursework. He was on the debate team in middle school and competed on the computer science team in high school, as well as dabbling in soccer and track.

One day when coming home from high school, Bryson experienced racial profiling from the police. The encounter led his mother to move them to a more diverse neighborhood, and Bryson switched schools during his freshman year of high school. The incident led Bryson to consider leaving Texas after high school, and when it came time to apply to college, Bryson’s mother encouraged him to only apply to schools outside of Texas. When Bryson received a phone call about his acceptance to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he knew right away that he would attend. He had the “best time” attending MIT’s campus preview weekend.

Bryson describes the transition to MIT as “exciting” and “humbling.” He quickly became friends with his roommates and hallmates in his dorm. He was impressed by the academic caliber of his fellow students, and his classes were challenging. Bryson initially declared a major in aeronautics and astronautics. During a summer internship at Shell Oil Company, he received advice that led him to change his major to a flexible mechanical engineering major with a biomedical engineering minor. Through his coursework, Bryson gradually developed and learned to trust his engineering intuition.

One day, Bryson was reading research posters in a hallway on campus, and a professor, Linda Griffith, asked if he was interested in participating in undergraduate research. Bryson joined Griffith’s lab, working on a variety of projects, including research related to fluidic capacitors and research on the thick-walled cylinder problem. Griffith worked with Bryson to help him develop his ideas so that they were more at the cutting edge. During undergrad, Bryson presented a poster at a pharmaceutical company and on campus and was a coauthor of a paper.

Towards the end of college, Bryson decided that he wanted to go to graduate school and he applied to bioengineering PhD programs. During the application process, he considered a variety of schools but ultimately chose to stay at MIT for his PhD.

In graduate school, Bryson joined Forest White’s lab and conducted research on insulin receptor signaling in adipocytes and lysine acetylation. Though he had useful initial results, when he used a different antibody lot later, experiments stopped working. Bryson asked two postdoc mentors to test the experiment, and their results matched his. Changing his approach, Bryson shifted to learning new techniques in his fourth year, including cloning, making recombinant proteins, and making E. coli. Bryson was surprised and disappointed when a paper came out in a high-profile journal that was similar to his work. Bryson eventually presented at a lysine acetylation conference and at local meetings and had his work accepted and published.

During graduate school, Bryson was involved in activities and service in his department. He served as a TA for a class about transport phenomena, learning to prepare for and give lectures and to set boundaries around work-life balance. Outside of his graduate studies, Bryson enjoyed biking, running marathons, and spending time with friends.

As Bryson’s graduate studies were winding down, he applied to postdoctoral fellowships to do infectious disease research. He chose to work in Sarah Fortune’s lab at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he began research using single-cell technologies to study host-pathogen interactions in the context of tuberculosis (TB). He learned to ask big questions about his research and learned not to make unfounded claims. Bryson’s experimental results surprised him, but he went on to publish his results and present them at the TB research community’s Keystone meetings. During his postdoc, Bryson was in a running club and he ran the Chicago Marathon.

Towards the end of Bryson’s postdoc, he applied to and was offered a position in biological engineering at MIT. He accepted the offer, returning to his alma mater as a faculty member. Bryson began setting up his lab, recruiting lab members, and seeking research funding. Bryson describes teaching practices that he employs to engage students in the classroom and help them develop skills needed as a professional scientist. He describes a TB-related measurement technique that his lab, in collaboration with Forest White, came up with. Bryson mentions his hopes for designing a TB vaccine that takes into account human diversity. He discusses his use of proteomics and other research techniques in projects in his lab.

Bryson reflects on public perceptions of science, managing students’ expectations, and the role of failure in scientific research. He discusses competition and explains how he determines when research is ready to be published. He talks about animal models in research, including the use of non-human primates. Bryson describes his approach to mentoring students, the social atmosphere in his lab, and how he chooses scientific collaborators.

Bryson explains why he chooses to serve on a graduate admissions committee and do admissions blogging. He reflects on the importance of diversity in solving challenging problems in science and explains how he uses metrics to evaluate and improve diversity in science. Bryson has given talks and visited communities in South Africa that are impacted by TB, informing his approach to developing treatments for the disease.

Outside of work, Bryson enjoys visiting libraries, reading, running, and participating in other athletics. Bryson lives on campus in an undergraduate dorm as an associate head of house and has fun making homemade ice cream to share with students in the dorm. Bryson explains how he met his husband and mentions the interests they share as well as their differences. He talks about bringing his whole self to work and the importance of visibility.

Bryson shares his optimism about future innovations in TB vaccine development and his goals for contributing to a vaccine. He also discusses his hopes for training future scientific leaders and shares his teaching goals.

This interview was conducted remotely via Zoom.