Beyond the Lab

Beyond the Lab is a podcast from SIUE’s Graduate School and Office of Research that takes listeners inside the scholarly work happening across campus — not just what researchers study, but the human story behind why they study it. Each episode, Dean Chris Slaten and Dr. Liz Cali sit down with one faculty member or research team for a 30 to 45 minute conversation that covers three things: the work itself, explained accessibly for any curious listener; the personal journey that led the researcher there; and the broader question of what the research means for the world beyond the university. Guests span every corner of SIUE — from a pianist documenting composers who have been left out of the classical canon, to a neuroscientist studying fruit flies to understand autism, to an engineer teaching machines to read medical scans. The unifying thread is a belief that research is not something that happens in isolation. It is driven by people, shaped by curiosity, and connected to questions that belong to all of us.