My mentor is Rachel Keener. She is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Ko lab in the MGM department. She went to the University of Georgia and majored in genetics. Her first interest in biology, particularly genetics, stemmed from her ninth-grade biology class, in which she learned about genetic diseases. She found it fascinating how one amino acid change/deletion can make someone so sick, yet people can have a whole extra chromosome and still be relatively healthy. Her interest in this field grew further when she took ap bio a few years later and learned about the impact of epigenetics and microorganisms on human health. By then, she had decided to pursue scientific research as a career. What she likes most about science is that she gets to be involved in the process of answering questions she’s curious about. Rachel especially likes studying the intersection between infectious disease and genetics. She has always loved genetics because it’s like problem-solving for her. She likes infectious diseases because it’s easy to see a direct impact by treating them.
At the same time, Rachel also developed an interest in science policy and global health. She grew up in Atlanta, GA, where the CDC is headquartered. Her future goal is to work in an organization like the CDC, where she would mostly work on cases. She is enthusiastic about communicating science and contributing to policy-making, so she envisions her future career to be 60% research and 40% policy and communication. Her favorite part of the day-to-day as a scientist is the flexible nature of the work — she gets to manage her own time and project.
