John W. Pham is an American molecular biologist and editor-in-chief of Cell, a prestigious scientific journal. He is an advocate for inclusion and diversity, and he represents LGBTQ and Asian communities.

Early life and education

Pham was born in the U.S. a few weeks after his parents and older siblings arrived as refugees from Vietnam, and he was raised in Florida.^[1] Pham earned a B.S. in music and biochemistry from Bates College.^[2] He completed a Ph.D. at Northwestern University under advisor Erik Sontheimer. He researched the mechanisms of RNA splicing and RNA interference.^[3] His 2006 dissertation was titled Building the Drosophila RNA-induced silencing complex.^[4] Pham completed postdoctoral studies at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital.^[3]

Career

Pham joined Cell Press in 2008 as a member of Molecular Cell's editorial team. He became the editor-in-chief of Molecular Cell in 2012. In 2018, Pham succeeded Cell editor-in-chief Emilie Marcus who had departed in February 2018.^[3] In June 2019, Pham was speaker at an Elsevier Pride and 500 Queer Scientists organized event at WorldPride NYC 2019.^[2]

Personal life

Pham is a member of the LGBT community.^[2] As of July 2018, Pham resides in Dorchester, Boston with his partner, Mike, and their two dogs.^[1] He likes to run and enjoys good beer. ^[1]

Involvement with inclusion and diversity

Pham has played a major role in making the Cell journal more inclusive. Since he started with Cell, he has helped shift the advisory board from roughly 20% women to 50% women. Additionally, the Cell reviewers have changed from 18% to 33% women during Pham's time with the journal. Pham's ideology is that more diverse science is better science, and including more women will lead to better ideas and talent. ^[5]

References