Bioengineering Success
Title: postdoctoral fellow in the Edwin L. Steele Laboratory
Hometown: San Jose, Calif.
Now resides in: Arlington, Mass.
Degree: 1999, B.S., Biomedical Engineering
Further education: 2005, Ph.D., Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, 2008, Postdoctoral Fellow, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University Medical School's Edwin L. Steele Laboratory
How I got to Tech: My husband's family started a sweet potato farm in Delhi, Louisiana. His parents wanted us to move to Louisiana so they could be closer to their one-year-old granddaughter. I was working full -time and taking night classes and not making much progress on my education. They offered to pay for my husband and I to go to school, so we moved to Ruston.
After graduating: I had my second daughter in my fourth year at Tech, so I took one semester off to be a mom and then went on to Johns Hopkins to get my doctorate.
What I do now: I am a postdoctoral fellow in the Edwin L. Steele Laboratory. I am studying the role of bone marrow derived cells in tumor growth and metastasis. I am very interested in one type of bone marrow derived cell, the mesenchymal stem cell. I hope to use these cells in the development of cell-based gene delivery systems.
How Tech prepared me for a competitive doctoral program: The biomedical engineering program at Tech was an excellent preparation for my graduate studies at Johns Hopkins. Since I changed majors, I had to take five additional undergraduate courses, but overall my preparation was very good.
An average day in my lab: The life of a Harvard postdoctoral fellow is very busy. I need to be in the lab almost every day of the week - to take care of my animals and cells. I am doing very important pre-clinical research, which may one day alter the direction of patient care. The Steele lab uses multi-photon laser scanning microscopy to image tumors grown in live mice. Tumors are grown under a cover of glass, which is surgically mounted to the mice using a skin-fold chamber or cranial window preparation. This is a very unique imaging technique, and I am fortunate to work in one of the only labs in the country that uses this technique.
Something that people are often surprised to learn about my work is: The time this work requires. Most people think we would have lots of technicians to help out, but most of the work has to be done by the fellow. We do have surgeons to prepare the window models.
Tips on choosing a major: Try to consider the end goal and do what you can do to expand your knowledge as much as possible.
Memories of Tech: My bioinstrumentation project - investigating the effect of caffeine on fetal and maternal heart rate. I was the perfect subject since I was about six months pregnant at the time.
I knew I was grown up when: Grown up is all relative. I felt grown up after graduating from Tech, then I went to Hopkins and I was a freshman all over again. If you set big goals you will have to struggle to achieve them and this can make you feel like a child all over again.
A triumph in my life: Just going to college would have been a triumph. What I have accomplished is somewhat of a miracle. I am a first generation college student. My father was a mail man and my mother worked in food service. My family was too poor to send me to school, so I didn't go after high school. When I had the opportunity to go to school, I took it very seriously.
If I've learned one thing in life, it is: Follow your dreams.
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