Braintree’s Liz O’Day uses fashion to show that science is cool

From The Milford Daily News: Braintree’s Liz O’Day uses fashion to show that science is cool
Cancer researcher Liz O’Day is so busy that she hardly has time to do her laundry. Instead, she chooses clean T-shirts from the stock of her online store, Lizzard Fashion, contained in cartons in her Boston apartment.

O’Day, a chemical biology doctoral candidate at Harvard University and winner of a National Science Foundation Fellowship, designed the intriguing science-inspired images on the eco-friendly shirts. The shirts look hip like ones from Urban Outfitters, but their explanatory tags express the scientific mind and humor of O’Day. Her mission is to “make geek chic” by using fashion to show that science is cool and exciting.

“To own a fashion company may seem a bit bizarre for me, but I’ve always loved fashion,” said O’Day, who grew up in Braintree. “There’s a lot of parallels between fashion and science. It’s all about being creative and not being afraid to take risks.”

While she has pursued science her entire academic life, she stepped into fashion inadvertently.

“I’ve always drawn, and science started to seep into my drawings, reflections of things I was working on in the lab,” she explained. “People said, ‘You should put that on a shirt.’ I decided to go for it and start a company.”

That can-do spirit is reflected in her T-shirts. One has a web of regenerating lizard neurons. The words Team Lizzard and Sapere Aude (meaning “dare to know”) are printed around it.

“If a lizard loses its tail, it grows back because nerve cells regenerate,” she said. “Life can throw a lot on you, but if you hold your ground, you’ll recover.”

Apoptosis, a shirt with three skulls and bones and the words Bid, Bad and Bax (which refer to proteins), is about the process of programmed cell death.

“This is an incredibly complex pathway and delicately balanced – too little cell death and diseases like cancer ... can occur,” explains the tag.

The shirts, made mostly at plants in the Southeast, are either made from organic cotton, bamboo, regenerated cotton, or recycled plastic bottles or bottle tops. They are available online for $22 and at gift shops at the Harvard Museum of Natural History and at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. O’Day also makes custom shirts for biotech companies and conferences. A portion of the profits goes to cancer research and computers for orphans in Mexico.

O’Day has run the company with help from her father, a lawyer, and her brothers, Chris, 23, of Boston and Rob, 29, of Nantucket. Now a year old, the company has grown enough to support the hiring of a full-time business manager.

“I never started it to make money,” she said. “It was more driven by a social mission and a fun way to express myself.”

O’Day had a huge learning curve when she started Lizzard Fashion. She had never taken a business course or had any business experience.

When a scientist/entrepreneur friend suggested she needed a venture capitalist, she at first was confused.

“VC to me means voltage channel, and I’m nodding and smiling and thinking, ‘What are we talking about?,” she said. “I had thought, ‘Oh, I’m a clever girl, and I can learn what to do.’ But the business world is a whole different language.”

So she did what she does in science – research the answers to her questions. She got information online and sought advice from Walter Salmon, an emeritus professor at Harvard Business School, who, along with MBA student Jake Kirsch, unexpectedly offered to work with her on the start-up.

“I am so grateful,” she said. “People really want to help others if you give them a chance.”

There seems to be something about O’Day that inspires people to pitch in. She is sociable, enthusiastic and optimistic, articulate in her vision for the difference people can make.

Last year, she marshaled Harvard computer scientists to install educational software on donated computers. Since she started Proyecto Chispa (Project Spark), 90 computers have been shipped to orphanages in Haiti and Mexico, where she has sponsored a 13-year-old girl for three years.

“At Harvard, we go through computers so quickly and sometimes we use them as doorstops,” she said. “I thought what if we could get them where they’re needed?”

As an undergraduate at Boston College, she recruited fellow female scientists to mentor high school girls, because she saw too many young women quell their interest in science because of the geek stereotype. The program, Women in Science and Technology, continues to inspire six years later.

O’Day can thrive on only four hours of sleep a night, which partially explains her prodigious energy. But her passion is what really fuels it.

“When I do something, I tend to do it full force,” said O’Day, who began pursuing a doctorate four years ago. “It’s unusual to do that, but I thought I had a unique opportunity to do something cool, and it’s been so much fun.”

O’Day knows personally how science can save lives. When she was 6, her brother Rob was diagnosed with neuroblastoma and spent two years in and out of Children’s Hospital in Boston receiving the treatment that cured him.

“I remember how terrified and pissed off I was,” she recalled. “I wanted him to be better and didn’t want this suffering going on.”

In recent years, she has faced her own pain, resulting from what she called bullying by a fellow scientist, who she said has repeatedly attacked her personally and academically. That has motivated her to speak in public about bullying.

“It has hurt a lot. I tell students, ‘You’re going to find yourself in some argument that doesn’t make sense to you, and you will be baited to behave badly,” said O’Day, who has spoken to students in Braintree and other communities. “I say, ‘Hold your ground, don’t quit or lose your integrity.’”

When O’Day finishes her doctoral program in the next year or so, she hopes to get a post-doctoral fellowship and eventually become a university professor.

“I’m thankful to be surrounded by scientists in the forefront of cancer research where we’re making discoveries all the time,” she said. “I know it can sound naive, but I believe we will cure cancer one day.”

Proyecto Crispa will accept volunteers and donations of Mac and PC laptops the first Saturday of each month at Harvard Medical School, starting in September. For more information, contact chispa@lizzardfashion.com or go to www.lizzardfashion.com.