Bluesky

Facebook

You have full access to this article via your institution.

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Download MP3See transcript

Baking bread during Covid-19 lockdowns provided Chantle Edillor with some career inspiration. “I knew I wanted to do something different and an exploration in sourdough presented an opportunity that I felt uniquely able to pursue,” she says.

In 2022, after completing PhD research into metabolic diseases at the University of California Los Angeles, Edillor began a postdoc there, where she researched the anti-inflammatory properties of fermented foods.

She now works as a fermented food scientist at Microcosm Foods, a non-profit research organization that maps connections between fermented foods, microbes and human health, a role she combines with assay development at the Astera Institute, a similar non-profit based in the Bay Area, San Francisco.

In the third episode of a six-part podcast series about creativity in science, Edillor says fermentation techniques re-ignited a childhood interest in cooking: “I have early memories of sitting and watching the Food Network with a metal bowl full of egg whites in my lap, holding a whisk and attempting to make stiff peak meringue, but also to understand how proteins capture air to create volume and texture.”

Edillor’s culinary and scientific creativity extends to adding kombucha to leftover dinner party wine to make red wine vinegar, and making miso from blue tortillla chips. “Because the chips had been deep fried and fat does not necessarily ferment super well, it had this off flavour, kind of oxidized fat. I’ll not be commercializing that anytime soon.”

Summing up her career to date, she says: “I’m a human geneticist masquerading as a yeast geneticist, masquerading as a microbiologist. There are certain areas of science that are less competitive and more collaborative. Those are the spaces I like to occupy.”

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-01390-2

Never miss an episode. Subscribe to the Nature Careers Working Scientist podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or your favourite podcast app.

Subscribe to Nature Briefing: Careers, an unmissable free weekly round-up of help and advice for working scientists.

Transcript

Chantle Edillor 00:08

I believe that the creativity, you know, the uniqueness of the perspectives that I had, you know, it allowed me to identify unique opportunities in subjects that no one was thinking about in that way.

David Payne 00:24

This is Creativity in Science, a series brought to you by Nature Careers...

Chantle Edillor 00:30

There’s a lot of permeability in what I do, you know, for my day job, but also how I like to spend my time on the back end as like a creative pursuit.

David Payne 00:42

...a podcast about how science and creativity go hand in hand, and about how one can nurture the other.

Chantle Edillor 00:52

So I feel like because of my understanding of the science and the microbiology, I was really drawn to the creative side of how to apply these approaches, microbes, techniques.

David Payne 01:08

This time, a biologist who has taken sourdough starters and fermented foods to a whole new level of inventiveness.

Chantle Edillor 01:24

Hi. My name is Chantle Edillor. I am based in San Francisco, California, and I am an assay development scientist at Astera Institute, and a fermented food scientist at Microcosm Foods.

My background is in yeast genetics as well as in human and mouse cardiometabolic diseases,

I first became interested in food in general from a very young age. I grew up watching the Food Network on television, where they teach you how to cook and prepare and understand the basic mechanisms of food preparation.

And I have early memories of sitting and watching Food Network with a metal bowl in my lap full of egg whites and a whisk in my hand and attempting to make, you know, stiff peak meringue for the fun of it, but to also understand how proteins capture air in order to create volume and texture.

How to brine a Thanksgiving turkey, and how that influences the osmolarity, the amount of water in, you know, across a membrane.

So there’s always been this scientific tilt to food for me.

Chantle Edillor 02:51

During Covid, during lockdown, I was in the process of writing my PhD dissertation, and I needed to do some mouse experiments, but I couldn’t go into the lab.

I needed to do some cell culture experiments, but I couldn’t go into the lab.

And I’m sure a lot of you know scientists can relate, or people who work with their hands, that, you know, to sit home idly was very difficult.

And so, yeah, I like to say I took my experimental angst, and need to, you know, tinker and play and took it, took it back into the kitchen, right?

Like I feel like that version of me went back to the kid that was sitting on the couch whipping egg whites.

But in this case, it was me in the kitchen

How a passion for baking fermented a fresh career move