Background: No prior bioscience background before coming to the CCSF Biotech program. Previously working in customer service and management.
Programs: Stem Cell Technology Certification and CIRM Bridges Stem Cell Trainee program
Stem Cell Internship: Panning Lab, UCSF
Current Career: Graduate Student, Woo Lab, UC Merced
Before entering the CCSF Biotech program I was the manager of a piercing and tattoo studio on Haight Ashbury. My biggest concern entering the program was that most of my academic background was in mathematics and I'd only taken the bare minimum life science courses, I wasn't sure I'd be able to keep up. I also had zero hands on experience in a lab.
I enrolled in the biotech program because it offered a clear path to a career change. The classes were practical and the opportunity of a paid internship at the end of the program was very appealing.
What I enjoyed most about the internship was how much it challenged me, I really had to move out of my comfort zone. There were times when I felt that I was in over my head at UCSF, but all the graduate students and post-docs in Dr. Panning's lab always helped me and treated me as if I were a fellow researcher.
What most surprised me about the internship was the speed of science, which is extremely slow. I came into the Panning lab with a very naive idea of what completing a research project would look like. I thought there would be a question we would run an experiment and have an answer to said question. Once I started encountering setbacks I realized that I had the whole process wrong. I had to learn to take pride in the little successes of day to day lab life, the gel ran clean, the transfection worked, my cells aren't all dead. I realized I was gaining knowledge and that is a success in itself. I learned that 9 months in the life of a scientist is the blink of an eye.
After completing the CCSF Biotech program and internship at UCSF I volunteered in Dr. Laura Cocas lab at California State University Los Angeles. Dr. Cocas was looking at abnormalities in the brains of mouse models for autism spectrum disorder. I then moved to Merced and have secured a job as a full time lab technician in the lab of Dr. Stephanie Woo at UC Merced. In the Woo lab we are concerned with early development of the endoderm and use Zebrafish as our model.
