So How Did You Get Here...
Why were you originally drawn to research?
Science was always something I was interested in. My dad was an engineer and scientific conversation was a big part of my home. There was no one moment where I decided to follow it as a carreer track. I just loved the way it blended logic and creativity...that really drew me in but not to molecular biology originally. I looked into chemistry and physics but I took and loved a biochemistry class and started working in a molecular biology lab. That eventually drew me into this field.
What kind of research did you take part in as an undergraduate?
Sophmore year I started to work in a lab as a glass washer becuase I needed some money. It worked out well and I hung around the lab after I was done and talked and listened a lot. Eventually, some the graduate students started to set me up little projects and I got more involved in the research. That job continued through my undergraduate years.
What track did you follow onward to graduate school?
After graduating I worked in MD Anderson's lab for a year. I did that to help myself decide if this was really what I wanted to do with my life and to make a little bit of money. It was a cancer research lab and I became really interested in that while I was looking for graduate schools to apply to. I applied to Duke, Cornell, Baylor and others such as Wash U. Duke felt good. I didn't want to be in the middle of a big city or out in the middle of nowhere and Duke felt about right.
How did you settle on Keene Lab as the place to do your graduate reasearch?
I intended to come and kind of wander through my rotations to see what I was interested in but most of the students set up all of their rotations really early and I was having trouble getting into some of the labs because of the tight limits on rotations student numbers that they had. I saw Jack give a talk and thought that it seemed like really cool stuff. I went to him and he had a rotation spot. The lab was very open and seemed conducive to big ideas so I dove into the work and have been here since then.
What elements of the modern research proccess bother you?
You can complain about a lot different things and I do but overall I'm pretty happy with it. Theres always impatience with publishers and politics but that stuff is just human nature and can't really be changed. The one thing that does frighten me a bit is the sway that national politics has over our work. The government provides the funding so their political bent at a given time really effects our jobs and what we can do. It's a kind of irrational element of stability or instability but does really insulate against ups and downs in the economy.
