Week 4: Allison [On Shadowing and Mentorship]

Fig 1) Reading Scientific Papers on HIV at the MOMA

              It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a Principal Investigator in possession of funding, must be in want of a graduate student.   

And so, during the in-between hours of clinical rotations and hospital zoom meetings, I endeavor to make this selection process easier for them, especially for the PIs with whom I share intellectual interests. 

In my recent application to graduate school, I wrote extensively and, hopefully, eloquently about my passion for novel drug delivery platforms and biomaterials for therapeutic application. Since then, I have continued to repeat my mission statement to a wide range of individuals who, for some reason or another, seem to be curious about my future. This comprehensive statement, within my interdisciplinary field of biomedical engineering, has garnered a wide range of responses. One potential Cornell Ithaca PI informed me, with slight bemusement on his face, “Wow, that’s incredibly broad.” After shadowing Dr. Glesby and Dr. Johnston throughout HIV doctors appointments and infectious disease clinical rotations, all I can say is that my interests have not narrowed. Instead, they have grown. 

Inspiration comes by situational happenstance in a single sentence. Walking up the stairs, Dr. Johnston mentions the lack of diagnostic tests for neurosyphilis that don’t require lumbar punctures. Taking the elevator from Baker 24 together, Dr. Glesby gives me a short summary on the challenging obstacles to a cure for HIV as a result of DNA integration to the host. Nurse Rebecca, while going over the patient data before arrival, explains to me how methadone is used to treat opioid addiction that brings you down, but there aren’t any medications to treat the addictive highs of cocaine or methamphetamine. Despite the brevity of these comments, they remind me of the demands of biomedical engineering, a field that is broad by necessity. I look forward to further developing my ability to contribute to new medical advances in graduate school and beyond. But, even the most dedicated and ambitious student will falter before a PI who isn’t invested in mentoring. Or so Scott, the postdoc I shadow during my summer experimental shadowing, warns me. He’s training me in a pretty cool project: using SELEXS (Systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment) to screen a library of random RNA aptamers with the goal of improving RNA purification in industrial production. Scott explained this to me more on Wednesday, after the PI of the lab had me give a short informal talk about what project I’d be working on during the rotation. I didn’t know, since Scott had explained the methodology to me more than the overarching purpose, and I talked instead about my clinical experience shadowing Dr. Glesby and seeing HIV patients. My clinical experience this summer is going to culminate in a two minute presentation about Long Acting (LA) injectable HIV antiretroviral therapies as a potential solution for non-adherence and the push to continue improving these formulations. Practicing my presentation two weeks in advance of the deadline, two days into a new rotation, was very helpful. An entire pandemic had mostly passed since I last did public speaking in person and I knew I was rusty. I was feeling mentored already.