Sometimes unanticipated challenges in academia can lead to new, fruitful opportunities and cutting-edge research, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Karestan Koenen.
Speaking on the Dec. 31 episode of The Bioinventors Podcast, Koenen, professor of psychiatric epidemiology, discussed how a setback she faced as a doctoral student—at first very stressful—eventually led her to a new research focus and an “incredibly rewarding and fun” career path.
Koenen entered her PhD program determined to study PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) and trauma. But two months in, the principal investigator she had planned to work with lost her job, leaving Koenen feeling uncertain and even tempted to leave the program. Instead, however, Koenen wound up in a new lab focused on the genetic basis of schizophrenia. “Instead of assessing trauma exposure, I found myself … conducting neurocognitive testing with relatives of people with schizophrenia and learning the foundations of behavioral genetics,” Koenen wrote in a LinkedIn post discussing her podcast appearance. This work paved the way for her dissertation, based on research on twins—some of whom had served in combat in Vietnam, and some who hadn’t—that looked at whether behavioral differences between them were due to genetics or environmental factors. “My dissertation became one of the few twin studies of PTSD and, with that, my career in the genetics of PTSD was born,” Koenen wrote.
Koenen went on to co-found and co-lead the PTSD working group within the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, which aims to uncover the role of genetics in psychiatric disorders. Working with hundreds of collaborators around the globe, the group has compiled data from more than a million people and has identified the first robust findings for genes related to PTSD. Koenen said on the podcast that this work has been the top achievement of her career.
“Every setback I’ve faced has eventually opened the door to a new, and often better opportunity, not just for me, but for how I could contribute to the world,” Koenen wrote on LinkedIn. “I share this story to remind myself that even though 2025 was a year of crises and losses for many scientists like me, I remain hopeful that 2026 will bring new opportunities for great science.”
Listen to Koenen on The Bioinventors Podcast: Using the most opportunity in Academia – Harvard Professor Karestan Koenen (School of Public Health)
