I grew up in a tiny village in the Netherlands, surrounded by cows, sheep, cabbage, potatoes, and canals. My father had attended college but did not like it and left as soon as he qualified to become a preacher. My mother wished she had attended but never did. I learned little about the sciences until high school. There, I gathered that (somehow!) I might gain some insight about the nature of the world reaching beyond my rural, religious upbringing---a pie-in-the-sky dream! That curiosity drove me to study chemistry. I found college to be an intellectual thrill---the stunning scope of the theory of evolution, the bewildering universe of quantum mechanics, and the amazement that a few simple postulates enabled a link between the jostling of atoms and our understanding of limits on what cells and machines alike can and cannot do (we'll take a look at this last bit!). Since then, I've followed my curiosity --- I came to the New York to learn more about biology during my PhD--learning how to make small microbial microcosms in the process, and trying to relate their population dynamics to evolution. I then went to Texas to understand how the physics of proteins relates to their evolution---a question that still fascinates me. In the process, I came to enjoy the practice of science: a mix of lofty dreams, stubborn realities, lots of failure, occasional success, and fascinating people.
Kara McKinley
I was born in the US, but my family moved to London, UK when I was four. Although my high school’s great claim-to-fame was that Rosalind Franklin had been a student there in the 1930s, I didn’t really fall in love with science until my junior year of college. After a summer internship in Washington DC convinced me that I did not have a bright future in politics, I decided to try joining a lab and got hooked on research. After graduation, I went straight to graduate school and became captivated by microscopy and the amazing ability to actually see what is happening inside a cell. After my PhD, I followed my love of microscopes and started using them to watch cells repair our organs after damage. Now, my lab studies how the uterus repairs after two major damage events: menstruation and childbirth. I also care a lot about the intersections of science with social and ethical issues, particularly around reproductive health. I feel incredibly privileged that my job is to study how big experiences in our lives arise from tiny cells making decisions and am excited to share the joy of scientific discovery with you!
Emma Nagy
I don’t have that classic story where I can say I fell in love with science at a young age, discovered the beauty of research early and marched towards the goal of being a scientist – my path here is much more circuitous. I always loved school and the natural world, but most of my free time was spent at the barn with horses. I was lucky enough to have many fantastic teachers in school that were willing to feed and indulge my curiosity in many different areas. Heading off to college was overwhelming because I felt that I had to choose one topic for a major when I enjoyed so many. I had always loved math, but despite doing well in courses, in my mind I wasn’t very good at it. So, I told myself that in college I would take math classes until I couldn’t do the work anymore, at which point I would stop. Funnily enough, one math course turned into two and then three and eventually enough for a math major. Despite also majoring in biology, I did not begin to explore research until the end of my undergraduate time and though I enjoyed it, I felt like I never had any idea what I was doing and was always confused about my project. Unsure about graduate school, I spent three years working in a synthetic chemistry lab. There I realized that being confused is pretty much standard for research, but that the unknown is a lot more fun when it is your own project and you can work on it all day, every day. I moved on to graduate school, shifting gears back into biology, where I fell in love with bacteria and thinking about how they work. This course integrates research with many of the topics that I love, and I look forward to sharing them with you.