1. Please introduce yourself.
I went to college at the University of South Carolina, graduate school at the University of Georgia, and did my postdoctoral work out in Seattle at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. I started a lab up at Emory in 2012, and our research focuses on transcriptional regulation in plant genomes, with respect to how they’re utilized under different conditions.
2. Why did you decide to pursue a profession in research?
I started off on the pre-med track in undergraduate. My dad was a doctor and I was interested in that field. As part of the typical undergraduate experience, I became involved in research to see what science looks like from the inside and how knowledge is generated. I just got hooked on that whole process, to generate questions that nobody knows the answer to and answering them to come up with information that no one has discovered before. Once I saw that process and where it could go, I got really excited about it and knew that’s where I want to devote my efforts to.
3. Were you always interested in pursuing research in plant molecular biology, or was it a topic of interest that came to mind later in your research career?
Actually, I’ve always been interested in plants. Ever since I was a little kid, my mom was a big gardener. To watch a planted seed spring to life and go through this amazing developmental metamorphosis has always been fascinating to me. I knew that when I got involved in research, I would want it to be about plant molecular biology. I really stuck with that, as my main focus has been related to plants throughout my career. They are critical to the survival to our species, so learning more about how they work is important. This, and my fascination with plants in general, led me to pursue and stick with research in plants and transcriptional regulation.
4. How have things changed, in terms of research, based on COVID-19?
We have 3 federally funded projects, so we’re tied to the goals we said were going to achieve in the grant proposals. However, the timelines were completely thrown off because the labs were shut down temporarily in March. With density restrictions and other limitations, projects have been progressing much more slowly. It’s definitely a frustrating time for everybody.
5. What have been impactful events that have led you to pursue research?
The most impactful event I had was actually coming into the lab as an undergraduate student, where I had the freedom and capability to tackle unanswered questions by reading a lot of scientific papers, learning about the various experimental tools, and performing experiments. Doing those experiments and seeing its results really drew me into the field. Every new discovery is one more thing that keeps me interested in the field. The nature of science can be slow and frustrating, but the excitement of discovery always keeps me interested in research.
6. What was the most difficult part of your career in research?
My years as a postdoctoral researcher were tough. When I went to Seattle, I was thinking about problems in plant development that were really hard to address because of technical issues. If I were to start my own lab in the future to address these questions, a good thing to do would be to solve these technical problems and develop new technologies to address new questions. I knew that there was no guarantee for these new technologies to work, and it took years of constant troubleshooting and patience to tackle these tough projects. For a while, I considered changing careers because I was personally very frustrated. But, in the end, being persistent helped me get past these challenges and I was able to create new technologies that are now being used across the research field.
7. Did you have a specific mentor that inspired you to get to where you are now?
I’ve had great mentors all along the way. My mentor in graduate school, Rich Meagher, helped me greatly in my research career through his mentorship style: he advised me throughout the course of my projects while also giving me the intellectual freedom to make mistakes and learn from them. This gave me the skills to help get me to where I am today. Having good mentorship along the way was serendipitous; the professor I worked for in undergraduate introduced me to my graduate school professor, and the person I ended up doing post-doctoral work with gave a seminar at my graduate school.
8. If you could start over, what would you change?
I don’t think I would change anything! My next steps in my research career became obvious as I progressed through each previous step. Along that path, so many things have happened in my personal life that came in parallel with my scientific career. So, I don’t think I would want to change anything if I could go back.
9. What is the best advice you could give someone pursuing the same track as yourself?
The first thing to do is to figure out what your interests really are. I thought I knew exactly where I was heading coming into college, but it turns out I was wrong. Being open minded to the idea that your vision could change based on what you’re exposed to is very important, and being exposed to a diversity of intellectual pursuits is the best way to truly determine what your interests are. This would allow you to make an affirmative decision on what you’re interested in pursuing as a career, rather than choosing one by default. Good mentorship is important too; good mentors should be supportive but also allow you to explore intellectually.
10 What do you wish you knew 5 years ago?
At that point, I was a pretty new assistant professor. Getting federal funding was a struggle at that point, so I wish I knew the strategies I knew now in pursuing research funding. The research funding process is intricate, and I’m still learning about it but I’ve definitely had more success in it now after learning from the failures. So, I don’t know if I would want to take away those moments to learn from failures, but it certainly would have been a lot easier to get funding 5 years ago if I knew what I know now.