Celebrating first-generation students, Natali and Catrina

November 10, 2020

Catrina (BS '20) graduated this spring with a major in Computer Engineering and is continuing on in the same department for her Masters. She joined the lab as a freshman when it was brand new, and she was pivotal in getting the computational side of the lab off the ground. She's worked on several molecular dynamics projects exploring the basis for thermostability in an engineered three-helix bundle as well as a homologous, naturally-occuring thermophilic protein. Catrina is a co-first author on one publication and one manuscript currently in preparation. She also has presented two posters at Biophysical Society Annual Meetings and was a finalist for the undergraduate poster award in 2020. She was awarded Clare Boothe Luce, LEAD, and REAL Scholarships to support her hard work in the lab. The McCully Lab has been lucky to have Catrina and her talents for the past four years!

Natali (BS '20) graduated this spring with majors in Biology and French. She joined the lab as a Clare Boothe Luce fellow in 2018, and she is continuing post-graduation as a Research Assistant. Natali is the lab expert on protein expression/purification and circular dichroism, amassing hundreds of milligrams of pure protein and dozens of CD T-melt spectra over the years. She is working to quantify the thermodynamic parameters of folding for our three-helix bundle family of proteins. She navigated the COVID-19 restrictions to figure out how to conduct research amid COVID-19 distancing restrictions and has been the lone lab member allowed in the research lab for most of the summer and fall. Natali has presented a poster at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting in 2020 and is currently collecting data for several papers in progress. The McCully Lab is fortunate to have Natali and her valuable years of experience working diligently and safely to keep the experimental side of the lab running, even during a pandemic!

Congratulations to both Catrina and Natali for navigating the challenges associated with being a first-generation college-going student. Both are brilliant scientists who will surely continue breaking barriers and adding many more "firsts" to their impressive resumes.