Job summary and/or description of your work/research:
I have multiple aspects to my job, including research, teaching, and service. For research, I run a lab studying and developing therapies for treating bone cancer, accelerating bone repair, preventing bone infection, and restoring coral reefs. In my lab I manage students working on these various projects, write grants to fund our work, publish our work in scientific journals, and travel around the world to share the results we find. Beyond research, I teach students at the university about Bioengineering topics such as how to repair tissues and how to perform research. I also serve on multiple committees that involve hiring new students, reviewing other researcher’s papers and grants, and other administrative positions.
What do you enjoy most about your work/research:
I love that the job feels different every day, and I have multiple aspects to my job, which keeps me busy! I especially love that I get to train and teach students to be the next generation of scientific leaders so that they can make a difference in people’s lives and our ecosystem. I also like that as the leader of my own laboratory; I get to choose the directions we go in and the cool science questions we decide to answer.
Inspiration:
As a teenager I did a bit of snorkeling on vacation and saw beautiful, vibrant coral reefs. Years later as an adult I saw these reefs again and it looked like a bomb went off underwater, these reefs were grey and nearly lifeless. It has always been a personal passion of mine to return these reefs to their former glory, and as a student in bioengineering I never thought my training would ever lead me to work in marine biology. As a leader of my own lab, I was able to connect the dots between bioengineering and marine biology and perform research that benefits humans and coral reefs.