"The Coolest Scientist I Ever Met," by Megha Sehgal

As a young postdoc at UCLA, Megha Sehgal feels like she doesn’t belong.

Dr. Megha Sehgal is a neuroscientist at The Ohio State University who spends her days thinking about memory: how it forms, how it links moments across time, and how small changes inside brain cells shape who we are. She trained as a postdoctoral scholar at UCLA with Alcino Silva, where she learned to peer into the brains of animals as they learn, watching memory unfold in real time, sometimes through tiny microscopes that reveal small, glowing neurons.

Her research aims to uncover the basic building blocks of memory so we can better understand what happens when these processes go off track during aging and neurological disorders. But Megha is just as fascinated by the human side of science: the sense of community and shared purpose, the grit and curiosity that drive discovery, and the unexpected, sometimes testing and sometimes joyful turns that make it all feel almost magical. For her, science is not just about answers; it is about the joy of discovery.

New to Story Collider, she’s excited to share a story about brains, belonging, and the joy of figuring things out, one glowing neuron at a time.

Story Transcript

I grew up in India, in Delhi. And growing up, weirdly and in hindsight, some of my favorite memories are when we had a power cut. There would be a blackout and it would almost always happen on a hot, sweltering night. People would get home, turn on their water coolers and try to get cool. It would overpower the grid and we would lose electricity. We knew when that happened, it was gone for the night. Someone's going to get up in the morning and fix something and the power is going to come back on.

There wasn't much we could do. We would usually drag our dining chairs on the veranda, wind them up, curl up in a fetal position and try to get comfortable. We would hope that there's a breeze, no mosquitoes. It was just an impromptu slumber party. All bets were off if you're going to be productive in the morning.

So, we would get into these weird conversations. At one point, I was nine or ten and I remember getting into a conversation with my dad, where we started talking about god and the origin of life. If you know my father, you would know he went into these detailed explanations about what the Bible said and what the Hindu or the Vedic mythology said. And if you know me, you would know that I got really impatient at some point and I said, “Yeah, that's fine, but can you please tell me what the scientists say? Surely, they have the best answers.”

My dad probably rolled his eyes. We did not know any scientists. I don't think I could have named one. If you had put a gun to my head and asked me to name one, I might have said Albert Einstein as the guy with the crazy hair, but I probably didn't know he was a physicist.

I don't know why I was so fascinated by science, but I had this unshakable feeling that if you wanted to find answers to really difficult problems, we needed to follow the scientific method. We needed to look to science.

My fascination growing up with science never changed. I still didn't know many scientists. I put one foot in front of another. I was good at school, and as all Indian kids who are good at school, I was told, “Hey, you should become an engineer or a doctor.”

Somehow, I fell in love with how the brain works. I was fascinated. And my path was hardly straightforward, but somehow, through a series of fortunate events, I ended up in a PhD program in neuroscience.

I finished my PhD, and about seven, eight years ago, I was at UCLA. I was a younger postdoc. This place was magical to me. I was like a kid in a candy shop. There were so many famous neuroscientists. I had read about them in textbooks. I would see them, and I would act like I'd seen a celebrity.

And I lived in LA. I saw celebrities. I didn't react like that.

But I never talked to anybody. I had what people now call imposter syndrome. I didn't know it back then. I just didn't think they needed to talk to me or I could talk to them.

And in the last week, two people have asked me why I had imposter syndrome, and I could never answer that. I just know talking to people who are like me, when you grow up looking into a shiny world from the outside and you step into it, it's really hard to describe why you don't fit in, but you just don't feel like you fit in.

Anyways, among these really crazy, cool neuroscientists was this neuroscientist. Her name was Stephanie White and she was clearly my science crush. She was the coolest person I'd ever seen. She had multicolored hair. She studied birds. She studied why birds sing in the hopes of understanding that if we understood how birds talk to each other, we could understand how and why we talk to each other, how language evolves.

She talked a lot to students, and I had never seen her not be kind. She was like the kindest person I knew as well. I still couldn't muster up the courage to talk to her.

But luckily, while I was at UCLA, I got to work on this really cool, what I considered cutting‑edge technique. During my PhD, I had studied how we learn things and how we remember things. So what changes in our brain when we take in new information, how our brain encodes it, and then what changes when we are not able to recall this information? I legitimately left my entire backpack in my office yesterday after the rehearsal. I only realized it once I got home.

We also try to understand what happens when our memories don't work as it happens in devastating diseases, like Alzheimer's. In order to understand how the brain works, it's really important to know how the brain acts when it gets new stimulus or new information.

I was working on this technique that we could go in, I worked with mice, rodents, we could go in and carefully remove a part of their skull. We could replace it with a glass window. We could glue it in place and we could do this in a way that the mouse really wakes up and doesn't feel anything. He wakes up, he's recovered, and we have access to the brain for weeks and months.

We could combine this with a way where we can basically sense neuronal activity or neuron activity. We could put sensors in the brain that made brain cells glow or twinkle, and we could tell which cell twinkled in response to which stimulus.

While I was trying this, we had this one mouse that really jived to Despacito. He only cared about the Spanish version and would not really care about the English version. I can't say I blame him.

My work was also really, really collaborative, team science. I was working with these two engineers, Daniel and Federico. They were engineers, and what they were doing was taking these big microscopes that we used to look inside the brain and miniaturizing them. So we made them about this big. They were three grams. They were small enough and light enough and cheap enough that we could put them on the mouse's head. The mouse kind of lived with it, and we can see as it made not one, not two, but memories across a lifetime.

Really, it was cutting edge. Everybody wanted a piece of it. And as and when people would approach Daniel to get access to these microscopes, he'd be like, “Yeah, I'll be happy to collaborate. But you should really talk to Megha for surgery. Her surgery is the best I've seen.”

This was a big deal for me. I'm the kind of person who runs into stationary trash cans. I did not grow up thinking that I had any motor skills. If you threw a ball at me, I would duck. I do not like flying objects. But it turns out, doing these surgeries made me realize that even if I don't have gross motor skills, I have really good fine motor skills. I could do this, and I could do this really well.

One day, I get an email. I get an email from Stephanie White, my science crush. Stephanie says that she's heard about my surgeries and she wants to get this technique up and running in birds. She wants to know if we can record while the birds are singing to understand why they sing and how they sing differently. And she was writing a grant that was going to be due in two months, and could I help them?

This is such a big deal for me. My immediate response was, yes, capital Y, capital E, capital S, and a gazillion exclamation marks. I was so excited. I obviously clearly looked up to Stephanie. I wanted to impress her. I wanted to do a good job.

However, the longer I sat with it, I also started doubting myself. I was like, “What if I work with her and she thinks I'm not all that good, she finds me out, she figures out I'm posing and I'm an imposter?” All of that stuff.

Eventually, I calmed down the devil and the angel on my side. I deleted the capital Y‑E‑S, and I said, “Of course. Happy to help in any way I can. Best regards, Megha.” I was really formal back then.

Anyways, I got together with her postdoc. We meet a few times. I show them what I do. She shows me how birds work. And we figured out a way to do these surgeries. She does the surgery. She gets a couple of birds ready so they can collect some pilot data.

I don't meet Stephanie during this time, but I think I've done my due diligence. I've talked to everybody. Seemed a little anticlimactic, but so is science sometimes.

Then a couple of weeks before the grant was due, I get an email from Stephanie. I get all these emails, SOS emails. She emails me and says, “The postdoc has got another job. She needs to leave immediately,” and can I help them image?

Of course, I want to help Stephanie. I will do anything that Stephanie asks me to do. I say, “Yes,” gazillion exclamation marks. At the same time, I was like, “I don't really know anything about birds. I don't know if I can image them. I work with mice. I work with rats. That's cool.”

Of course, I delete my yes with gazillion exclamation marks, and I say, “Of course. Happy to help in any way I can. Best regards, Megha.”

A couple of days go by, we go to Stephanie's lab. It's a really small space. There's a bunch of chambers on one side with birds. They're singing, they're cackling, they're chirping. It's really loud. There's a bunch of equipment that looks vaguely familiar, but still different. Makes me realize that birds are very different than mice.

I kind of go to the edge of the room, try to take up as little space as possible because I don't want to be in anyone's way. And Stephanie takes the bird out that they prepared. They anesthetize the bird and the grad student tries to take these tiny three‑gram microscopes and tries to position it over the brain so they can see these twinkling stars.

I noticed that her hands are shaking, and I knew this was going to be a problem. We were trying to image brain cells. The brain cells are about 10 micrometers big. That's really tiny. That's one hundredth of a millimeter or half a human hair's width. So if your hands are shaking, you're not going to be able to focus on them. You're not going to be able to see the twinkling of these brain cells. All you're going to kind of see is imagine seeing twinkling stars through a telescope that's shaking. It's not going to be good.

Eventually, everybody gets on the same page. We realize that we need to really stabilize this microscope.

The engineers, Daniel and Federico, they're like, “Oh, this is easy. We'll engineer something that will hold this microscope steady.” And I'm thinking, “That's really not required. I do this every day with mice. Microscopes can be held steady.”

Eventually, I gather the courage. I peel myself off that wall and I say, “Do you guys mind if I try?” And everyone is like, “Of course. Come, please do this.”

I hold on to the microscope. I put it over the window. It's immediately obvious to me and everybody else that it's stable. We can see the brain. We can see blood vessels in the brain. We can see blood going through. But still, we don't see any twinkling brain cells.

This is a problem, but I'm just going to rearrange where this microscope is, and I'm sure these cells will emerge.

As I'm doing it, I feel like something is not quite right. So as one does, I get closer to the bird to see what's going on. This bird flaps its wings on my face and just starts flying in the room. I do not like flying objects. This bird is disoriented. It's banging into things. I got disoriented. I started banging into things. I squealed. I ducked under a table. It was not my finest hour. I don't even think Daniel and Federico have realized what's going on.

Meanwhile, Stephanie White, the coolest neuroscientist ever, steps back, grabs the bird out of thin air, and we're all just like, “What?” She takes the bird down, she anesthetizes it again, and we all calm ourselves down a bit. We put the bird, and we look at the brain again.

Turns out, unfortunately, all this commotion had just lodged the window a little bit. We weren't going to be able to image the bird. The grant is due in seven days. There is no way we can get more birds ready or get any data for this grant.

So, after a back‑and‑forth, Stephanie looks at me and says, “Hey, you're the cranial window queen. Can you fix this?”

In my head, I'm like, “No,” a gazillion exclamation marks. I clearly don't know anything about birds or their brains. This is not going to happen. Somehow, I found myself saying, “Of course. Happy to help.”

So I get on the rig. Four people are watching me. I fix this bird somehow. It turns out, I figured out for the first time that bird bones are hollow. Their skulls are very different. It was a torture session, but we get through it. And pretty much to the amazement of everybody, the surgery looks beautiful. I'm amazed. They're shocked. We kind of celebrate and decide we'll come back and try to image this bird as it sings tomorrow.

We come back. The bird looks great. We put the microscope on. Eventually, the bird starts singing. It's a male bird that's singing to the female bird. That's how they mate. It's all cool.

We look at the brain, but the brain is pretty dark. All we see is blood vessels. We troubleshot and we figured out what happened over the next seven days. Turns out, the sensors we were using have never been used in birds. They don't work in birds. We actually never sent out the grant.

On the surface, all of this might seem like a giant failure. However, I don't think so. Science or scientific progress is hardly straightforward. It's almost always two steps forward, one step back.

Now, there are many people who record regularly from birds. We figured out the sensors that work in birds. I like to think in part that's possible because Daniel, Federico, Stephanie and I have talked to people at workshops, at conferences and told them what our experiences are. And now, people record even from bats as they echolocate.

I have also become friends with Stephanie since then. I still sometimes feel like I'm an imposter. However, then I remember that Stephanie has been a lifelong mentor since then. If I just peel myself off the wall, I can belong.

I'm also extremely obsessed with birds. I know a lot about their behavior and their brains now. And then, finally, I realized that I can surprise myself. We all can. I have decided that I want to be the kind of person who tries something difficult even if I fall on my face, rather than stay comfortable and never grow.

Thank you.