Future of Neuroscience: Ivan Lazarte
Ivan Lazarte
“Future of Neuroscience” is a series of interviews with rising members of the field. A forward-looking complement to SfN’s “History of Neuroscience” autobiographies of distinguished researchers, interviewees reflect on their emerging careers and share thoughts on where they believe neuroscience is headed.
After completing his PhD from Oxford in 2024, Ivan Lazarte embarked on a new phase of his career as co-founder of a biotech company that uses AI to treat neurological disorders. Before diving into neuroscience, he explored a range of disciplines from laser optics and quantum physics to biophysics and marine biogeochemistry. Having grown up in a low-income household in the Philippines, he firmly believes that financial circumstances should never be a barrier to accessing science, and he’s committed to making research more inclusive and globally accessible.
Outside the lab, Ivan likes to explore questionable hiking trails, dive coral reefs, and attempt every stringed instrument he can get his hands on (with varying success). He’s on an ongoing side quest to perfect his adobo and lechon, firmly convinced there’s a neural circuit for flavor memory that ties food to home. Whether building experiments or recipes, he’s always chasing the same goal: reproducibility, with a hint of adventure.
Neuroscience Quarterly (NQ): What led you to pursue neuroscience as a career?
In the Philippines, the career advice I heard emphasized job security over passion or interest — if you wanted to get a good job you should become an engineer, a lawyer, or a medical doctor.
Ivan Lazarte (IL): My interest in neuroscience is deeply personal. My brother has a severe form of autism and requires full-time care. I witnessed the challenges he faced every day, and that motivated me to understand the brain on a deeper level. But growing up, I didn’t even know what graduate school was. In the Philippines, the career advice I heard emphasized job security over passion or interest — if you wanted to get a good job you should become an engineer, a lawyer, or a medical doctor. So, I was studying applied physics at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila with plans to become a medical doctor when I came across a conference organized by Samahang Pisika ng Pilipinas, a professional physics organization in the Philippines. A few friends and I decided to go, and I met two professors, Pik-Yin Lai and Chi-Keung Chan, who encouraged me to apply to the physics graduate program at National Central University in Taiwan where they taught.
That networking opportunity changed my path. It inspired me to pursue an overseas research opportunity — an internship at the University of New Castle in Australia, where I met my life-long mentor John Holdsworth. With that experience under my belt, I earned my master’s in biophysics from National Central University, heeding the advice of those contacts from the physics conference.
At that point, I was clear on my desire to pursue research as a career. I got a job as a research assistant in Julie Semmelhack’s lab at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology studying the visual system of zebrafish. During my four years at that lab, I was sending money home to my family in the Philippines, saving whatever else I could, and working up the courage to pursue a PhD.
NQ: What is your area of research and what drew you to it?
IL: I did my PhD at Oxford University in England as a Clarendon Scholar where I studied long range projections in the brain, particularly focusing on the interactions between the claustrum, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex, which are key structures for cognition, emotion, and attention. I also investigated the maturation of interneurons, which are crucial for formation of circuits in the brain and balancing excitation and inhibition. Their dysfunction is a hallmark for various neurological disorders.
That research built the foundation of my current work. I recently co-founded a biotech company called Exin Therapeutics with lab mates from my PhD work. We bonded over mutual research interests, and now we’re developing gene therapies to modulate neural activity to address neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders to help people like my brother.
NQ: What made you leave academia to begin a start-up? What advice do you have for others interested in this path?
IL: The primary reasons for my transition were career growth and financial stability. The prospect of spending the next five years grinding as a postdoc, which would likely be underpaid, and facing constant uncertainty about future funding were significant factors. That said, I was still willing to do it because I loved what academia offers: the freedom to pursue research questions of my choice and the opportunity to create or discover something with potential to benefit humanity. Building a start-up provided these same upsides along with greater financial rewards and more stability. Living away from my family, I wanted to be able to support them financially from afar, and this path helps me do that.
At SfN annual meetings, this simmering idea to launch a company with my friends started to become a reality. It gave us a venue to talk to different people about our research, learn from people who are starting their own companies, and it reaffirmed my motivation for our work.
Be mindful that the academic framework, while valuable, can sometimes limit your perspective on what you're capable of or what you might truly enjoy.
Starting a company can feel uncomfortable, especially when coming from academia, where there's a relatively clear path to follow. Stepping outside that structure, however, can be incredibly freeing. Be mindful that the academic framework, while valuable, can sometimes limit your perspective on what you're capable of or what you might truly enjoy. Think beyond those boundaries. There’s a wealth of knowledge from research waiting to be translated into real-world impact.
My advice for those interested in building a start-up:
- Be strategic with your time. It’s easy to get pulled into other projects or experiments, but maintaining focus is crucial.
- Continuously acquire and refine skills that are essential for executing your vision.
- Take full advantage of university resources — attend workshops, networking events, and pitch competitions relevant to your field.
- Most importantly, tap into your courage. If people call your idea crazy or say it won’t work, you are probably on the right path.
NQ: Reflecting on your own journey, how would you like to see the field of neuroscience support early career researchers?
IL: Growing up in the Philippines from a low-income background with no scientists in my family, I had no roadmap for pursuing a research career. I got lucky that I saw a poster for a physics conference at my university, but there are many talented students who don’t find this path due to relatively few opportunities in countries where funding is scarce.
In countries like mine, expensive lab equipment is a huge barrier to research opportunities and career advancement. I’ve been developing a program designed for labs to share equipment that I hope to release soon. This goes hand-in-hand with open source experiments, which are becoming increasingly popular and are just common sense. The Allen Institute has done great work in this area. Creating a database for research methodologies and related information would benefit many labs, and subsequently early career researchers, in the Philippines and other regions.
I encourage science-interested students to attend conferences and network with researchers to understand what career options are out there. It changed my path, and you never know what you might find.
