Interview with Dr. Parker
What follows is a transcript (almost verbatim, except for the occasional "um" or whatever) of my interview with Dr. Parker, my mentor in the Howard Hughes Program.
Christian: How did you end up with a career in science?
Dr. Parker: Any career in science is pretty easy to get: you get a degree in science...you apply for a job, you get your doc[torate degree]. Now how I got my specific career is a bit different-it's much more challenging to get a job at a university doing research as a professor. I think it requires being in the right place at the right time, quite a bit, it requires certain skill sets that you develop over time. I started out at a very early age studying science, younger than you, even, I started...really concentrating on science. All of those things add together to really help you, but not guarantee you get a career in science.
Christian: Where did you go to college?
Dr. Parker: I went to college at the University of Arkansas, then went to graduate school at the University of Nebraska...then I came here for a post-doc. I was working for a well-known and very famous professor here. After a while I was running one of the sections of this lab. When he left, he went to the Mayo Clinic, Duke offered me a job here...again, I was in the right place at the right time... I still run a section of a lab, it's not a huge lab, it's a small lab, it's the right size for me- the size that I like.
Christian: What have been your favorite research projects?
Dr. Parker: Hmm! Well, we discovered the function of the human appendix, 'course, that was nice. That was a lot of fun. We're working on some things dealing with protein folding, and we've recently done some work in evolutionary biology. That was fun. The things that we did related to gut immunity and the function of the appendix, that may have been the most fun. That's such an old problem, Leonardo Da Vinci was working on that problem.
Chrisitan: What projects do you plan on working on in the future?
Dr. Parker: You never know. You ask me what I plan to do, which may be totally different from what I end up doing. That being said, what we really are interested in is looking at allergens and autoimmune diseases. I work...examining what's going on in the lungs of people with asthma, which is a type of allergic disease. The plan right now is to look at the immune system of laboratory rodents that are essentially raised under wild life or natural conditions, that have a lot of parasites. That, we believe is the way the immune system is designed to be in harmony with a lot of parasites and other kinds of things you would normally find objectionable. If I had to pick one project that we will be working on in five years, I would say that's it.
Christian: Do any of your previous projects carry over any, or are you starting from scratch?
Dr. Parker: If you Google me, you'll see I'm known for two things, primarily. One is the appendix, the second one is looking at wild rats. I'm one of the few people doing serious research in immunology on wild rats, publishing studies on wild rats. So we're on our way, we didn't start from ground zero. We've got a huge pile of work that's coming out soon, you can't Google that. That'll make a big splash, it's really telling us a lot about our immune system and how it's naturally meant to work.
Christian: Have you ever had any laboratory accidents?
Dr. Parker: Ha ha ha. Oh what a fun question. I remember-I don't know how much I should say on this. Ha ha ha. Yes- that's the answer, yes I've had some laboratory accidents. Nobody was ever seriously injured. Twice in my career as a chemist we had to evacuate part of a building which, you know, that wasn't too good. But nobody's life was in danger. I have seen some very serious accidents dealing with organic solvents...I've never been involved in one where anyone was seriously hurt. It's mostly failure to follow safety guidelines. One time in particular, the most dramatic accident I ever saw, somebody was not wearing their safety goggles. That was a pretty gruesome thing, so yeah, always wear your safety goggles.
Christian: Do you have any advice for the aspiring scientists on the internet who will read this interview?
Dr. Parker: I think if you just like solving problems, if you think that looking at problems is a fun thing to do, and you're willing to spend a tremendous amount of time and effort and energy, just looking at and playing around with whatever problem it may be. It might be how haemoglobin from turtles works, I did that project as an undergraduate. Or how exactly it is that plants sense light, I did that project as a graduate student. It doesn't matter, if you just enjoy looking at problems, you'll do well in science. If you're trying to save the planet, science is not the right way to go, most people get burned out. That's not saying you can't save the planet, but you have to be able to work for years and years just on little problems that most people would think are trivial. And if you stumble on to something, you might save the planet, or find out what the appendix is for, or something like that, but that almost never happens.
Christian: Thanks
