The Smith lab hosted Emma Heckenberg as the second rotation student this fall. Emma is a first-year Ph.D. student in the MGM graduate training program.
During her Smith lab rotation, Emma worked on a collaboration with the Coers lab elaborating the role of immunity-related GTPase M (IRGM) genes on tuberculosis pathogenesis. With a passion for wet lab experimentation, Emma dove into biosafety level-3 (BSL3) work, learning mouse husbandry, BSL3 safety and methods, and infected animal experimentation. Throughout her rotation, Emma collaborated with Carissa Harvest in the Miao Lab to kick start a staining protocol in the Smith lab and also garnered a new set of data tidying and exploration skills in R.
The Smith lab will miss Emma’s infectious excitement for science and wishes her well in her future rotations!
