Over the course of the program, my fellow BSURFers and I had the opportunity to listen to various scientists talk about their research and their journey.
All scientists had something amazing, thoughtful, and encouraging to say about their science, and to someone who may consider pursuing science. One talk by Dr. Lawrence David really stood out to me.
First, he has interesting research by looking at the human microbiome, asking for, and handling human fecal samples. He also shared ongoing work with prebiotics and the microbiome and even informed us that he is still taking participants.
What stood out was not only his research but how he explained his journey through a series of questions that he asked himself. I enjoyed the stories of not knowing what he wanted to do but he had an it wouldn’t hurt to try attitude. I liked his anecdote of saying graduate school was an amazing experience, and he was even able to get his PI to fund his trip to Asia to eat nothing but street food (and collect and look at his fecal samples) for two months. Additionally, I found it interesting that he joined new labs (where the PI was within his first year) all throughout his career. I thought it was great how he says even as a professor he doesn’t know what he wants to do, mentioning start-ups, mentioning if it was right not to do med. school, but always follow up with how he enjoys and loves what he does.
Finally, the thing that I thought was interesting was how he became interested in science: Jurassic Park. He mentions how a great advocate for science could also be Hollywood, which I found interesting.
That’s it… on next weeks blog I will wrap up my BSURF experience.
