Dr. Ryan Baugh can’t remember a time when he wasn’t interested in science. When he was young, he was “always doing stuff that seemed like a young scientist, like burning stuff and trying to make bombs, fireworks, and a hot air balloon.” When he got to college at the University of Georgia, he was interested in chemistry and physics. Still, he tried to take classes in other areas, as he thought that majoring in science was “too obvious” of a choice. Upon taking a course in genetics and learning about the central dogma, he became excited by networks of transcription factors. He decided to major in genetics partially because his university had a strong genetics department, but also because he found the subject to be a good balance of interesting, important, and pragmatic, with many future opportunities. He enjoyed hands-on work more than studying and appreciated the opportunities for creativity within research.
Upon finishing his undergraduate education, Dr. Baugh stayed at the University of Georgia for a year, working in a genetics lab. He recommends that students considering graduate school take some time before applying, and thought that it was a great decision for him. He took the opportunity to really think about what he wanted to do and learned a lot about molecular biology, which allowed him to hit the ground running once he got to graduate school.
After leaving the University of Georgia, Dr. Baugh completed his PhD at Harvard, studying developmental genomics in the embryos of C. elegans. During this time, he generated the “first genome-wide time series of gene expression during embryogenesis in any animal,” finding that there were thousands of differentially expressed genes. He completed his postdoc at Caltech and then came to Duke, where he continues to study C. elegans.
Dr. Baugh is most proud of having defined and stuck with an area of research: L1 arrest and nutritional control of development. He believes that the most difficult part of doing research is dealing with the inevitable frustration and setbacks that come from getting excited and disappointed by experiments.
Dr. Baugh’s passion for his subject became abundantly clear during our conversation, which often veered toward topics and news in genetics that I found incredibly interesting, but unfortunately could not fit into this blog post. I am very grateful for the opportunity to work with him this summer, and I can’t wait to see what the next few weeks will bring!
