My Lab

I have my own laboratory. This is a huge milestone for me, and something I never expected actually to be doing. But- things don’t always work out like you expect they will, sometimes they work out to be better. I found that I love having the freedom to think about and work on the scientific questions that interest me and essentially being my own boss.

In my laboratory we study pathogens of the gastrointestinal tract. We are interested in mechanisms of persistence, diarrhea, and we like genetics and genomics. Although I enjoy writing… I love working at the bench. There is nothing quite as gratifying as the experiment that REALLY worked. I have precious little time to do this now though- cause usually I’m grant-writing, paper-writing, mentoring….. or blog writing…

Of course- there is so much more to being in an academic position than the interesting scientific questions… and most of it no one teaches you about during your Ph.D. or Postdoctoral training. So, the junior faculty learning curve can be pretty steep! I am very fortunate to have excellent colleagues, collaborators and mentors (and in case you think they were all wonderful, there were a few lesser moments as well, worth reviewing at some point). I have benefited a tremendous amount from the collective knowledge of my colleagues, and hope that I can pass along some of this to you.

Will this work out for me? Will I be successful, get grants, publish enough etc. Well, so far so good. I have federal funding, and my group is thriving at the moment. No one is more delighted than me about this current state of affairs.

As for the rest, what the future holds for me.. I’m just going to continue to take this one day at a time and enjoy the ride!