Global Medical Training

Where did you go for Undergraduate?

 

Susanna: I went to the University of Wisconsin.

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Did you do research as an Undergrad?

 

Susanna: Yeah, I started research second semester of my freshman year. So, I did research for three and a half years while I was there.

 

Okay, what did you research? Was it the same thing all three years?

 

Susanna: It was kind of similar. So, I was researching… so very broadly, I was studying proteins and protein-folding, and I don’t know how in depth you want me to go about this.

 

A little more in-depth.

 

Susanna: Yeah, so broadly speaking, proteins need to form, need to fold into a specific 3D confirmation in order to be active, but sometimes proteins will misfold and then they can’t function properly. So, what I was doing with studying proteins that are folded in the cell and what kind of properties they have, so like their hydrophobicity and net charge probably and how those can be used to distinguish proteins that are natively folded with proteins that are natively disordered. So, intrusively disordered in the cell and see if there were any differences between the net charge and hydrophobicity of proteins that fold in naturally versus ones that stay disordered and how those could potentially be used to study what happens when proteins misfold.  

 

Do you do research now?

 

Susanna: Now, I am getting into research. So, I’m doing rotations right now, since I’m a first-year Grad student. So, I’m rotating in my first lab right now. I’m just finishing that up. In that lab, I’ve been studying very similar things to protein misfolding, but instead I’ve been working on doing protein cloning expression and purification essentially of several different proteins to be able to study them using single molecule experiments and basically using optical tweezers like pulling apart a protein to see how it unfolds essentially. That rotations is almost done, so I won’t actually do any of the optical tweezers experiments or anything like that, but then I’ll move on to a different rotation at the beginning of November.  

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Okay, how did you get into your research, what made you interested in that?

 

Susanna: Actually, I wasn’t interested in anything biological to begin with. During winter break of my freshman year, I got an email from the professor, that I ultimately ended up working for, saying that she was looking for Undergrads to join her lab and she had gotten my name from my General Chemistry Professor because I did well in that class. So, she asked if I was interested and I originally wasn’t because I didn’t really like Biology when I had taken it in High School and it was all computational work, so I’d have to learn computer programming and I didn’t know anything about that. So, I wasn’t really sure that I wanted to do it, but I decided that it was a good opportunity and I wanted to get involved in research at some point. So, I figured I would join the lab, maybe stay for the semester maybe a summer and then probably move on to a different lab that I was more interested in, but I ended up really liking it and stayed there for all three and a half years of Undergrad.

 

Is there anything that’s really difficult about this research?

 

Susanna: I think the hard thing about research in general is that it’s so much trial and error, and one thing is there’s so many different factors when you’re doing different research that when something goes wrong, you have to go back and figure out what went wrong. There’re so many different things that you can look at and I think one of the things that is also hard is sometimes research doesn’t work, like you don’t get the results that you are looking for. You find that whatever you’re studying, you just don’t get what you were looking for, so you have to figure out where you’re going to go next.

 

Do you have any advice for people trying to get into research?

 

Susanna: I definitely recommend going for. So, in my Undergrad the idea for anyone who wanted to get involved in research should like email a bunch of professors and assume that half of them probably won’t respond, a quarter of them will respond and say that they aren’t taking any Undergrads right now or aren’t interested in any Undergrads, and maybe a quarter of them you’re actually able to get in with and get interesting research. So, it’s hard because you really do have to put yourself out there and it’s kind of scary sending all of these emails to a bunch of professors and not thinking that you are going to get a response. But I think that, in general, any professor who’s doing research, they’re a professor and they like teaching, they like mentoring, they like being involved with students. Sometimes they just won’t have time to respond or they won’t have room on their lab, but you’re probably going to find at least a couple professors who’d be genuinely interested in taking the student.

 

Okay, thank you so much.

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Susanna: Yeah.