Who Knew Someone Who Started an Ethanol Fire and a Radioactive Spill Could Amount to So Much?!
This week in my lab in the Center for Human Genetics, I had the opportunity to interview my totally awesome PI (principle investigator for those of you who do not know the lab lingo), Dr. Allison Ashley-Koch (pronounced Cook). Currently she is the head of numerous different studies, some funded and some not. Because the unfunded ones definitely move slower, more attention is paid to the funded ones, which include research on neural tube defects, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (known more commonly as ADHD), sickle cell disease, and healthy pregnancy (which is the study I am in). It was really interesting to get to talk to Dr. Ashley-Koch in a more relaxed setting, to try and get to know the person behind the scientist.
When asked how she was able to arrive at the place she is now, Dr. Ashley-Koch delved into a long story about her entire science career. She went to the North Carolina School of Science and Math for her junior and senior years of high school. While there, she took a course completely on genetics and knew from then on that that was what she wanted to study and go into as a career. During eleventh grade, Dr. Ashley-Koch participated in a special projects week where she shadowed a number of people in the genetics field at Duke University. She kept up these newfound contacts and during her senior year, she worked with a geneticist one afternoon per week for course credit. As an undergraduate, Dr. Ashley-Koch attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but she kept in contact with the geneticists from Duke. College forced her to start narrowing down what kind of genetics she wanted to focus on. One thing she did know was that she did not want to work in the drosophila labs. She said that whenever she had to work in them for class, she would find dead flies all over her clothes and would come out smelling like molasses. Towards the end of her four years at UNC-CH, as she looked toward graduate school, she faced the difficult decision of whether to go into clinical genetics or epidemiological genetics. In graduate school at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, she decided to focus on epidemiological genetics within the angle of math and statistics. She did her dissertation on Fragile X Syndrome, while at Emory, and came out with a Ph.D. After Emory, where she met her future husband, she did a post-doc for one year at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, and then moved to Duke University to finish her post-doc (for another two-and-a-half years) working under her old high school mentor. At Duke, she worked in the Center for Human Genetics (CHG) with a focus on autism and did a little with neuromuscular conditions and sickle cell disease. After her post-doc, she continued to work at the CHG under Marcy Speer. When Dr. Speer died of cancer two years ago, Dr. Ashley-Koch took on her studies in addition to her own. She still works at the CHG.
After this long question, I asked Dr. Ashley-Koch what her favorite project is. She responded by saying that all of the projects she has worked on have been like her children. It is difficult for her to choose just one because they are each different in their own ways and each has its own pros and cons. However, she did say that the Healthy Pregnancy Study is one of the most interesting to her because it is very interdisciplinary, combining social, environmental, and genetic variables and correlating them with diseases using statistics.
When asked, Dr. Ashley-Koch said the most difficult part of her job is dealing with the things that are not taught or discussed in graduate school, things like managing budgets, writing grants, supervising people, and working with people who do not take constructive criticism well.
If she wasn’t working as a Principle Investigator at the Center for Human Genetics, Dr. Ashley-Koch said she would probably be a pediatrician or an elementary or middle school science teacher.
During her free time, Dr. Ashley-Koch likes to play with her two sons, Nathan who is seven and Justin who is four. They are involved in many activities like sports and music. In addition, she does normal household jobs like the laundry and cleaning, she goes out with her friends, and she likes to listen to music with her husband who plays drums in a hard rock band.
When asked what advice she would give to students who are trying to figure out what career is for them, Dr. Ashley-Koch said that she was the outlier. She knew that genetics was her thing since the middle of high school, but most people have no idea what they want to do until the middle of college or even later. She recommended getting exposure to a bunch of different areas and careers, whether it be through shadowing professionals, volunteering, or participating in summer programs.
Some of the craziest lab mistakes that she has made are that she messed up which electrode went on which end of a gel electrophoresis, caused a radioactive spill, and started an ethanol fire.
Dr. Ashley-Koch also said that she never really gets bored with her career. There are times when she gets mentally stuck, but she never really wishes she was doing something else. She likes her job and the science she is studying way too much!
Well, that is my PI, Dr, Allison Ashley-Koch in a nutshell. I feel like I know her much better as an ordinary person. Also, I feel much less intimidated by the lab, now, because I know that any mistakes I make won’t be nearly as bad as starting an ethanol fire or causing a radioactive spill!
~Helen
