Catherine Barnier is a PhD student at the University of Michigan. She has a B.A. in Chemistry-Biochemistry from Western Connecticut State University. She graduated in 2015 as summa cum laude. Catherine has done multiple different research projects during her undergraduate years, but her most recent Graduate research is currently in the works at Freddolino lab at the University of Michigan.

Could you give us a brief introduction of yourself?

I’m Catherine Barnier, and I'm going into my sixth year as a PhD student at the University of Michigan. I am in the department of computational medicine and bioinformatics which is a kind of computer science, statistics, and biology. My bachelor's degree was in chemistry and biochemistry which I got that at a very small school so it’s a huge change attending a big university now, but it's definitely been fun.

Do you work or are you a full-time student?

When it's not the academic year, I spend most of my time doing lots of research. At this point, I'm not taking any more classes, but I am an instructor. This last semester, for example, I was the instructor for a lab section in a course that does signal processing and machine learning. During the summer, it's very research-heavy here at the university and you see a lot more people around the lab.

What are you currently researching?

I’m studying bacteria, specifically biofilms. They are a huge issue in the health industry. For example, dental plaques and catheters have them, and people get infections from those really easily.

Specifically, I study the proteins in biofilms. In a single biofilm, there's a bunch of different types of cells which are broken up into compartments within the biofilm, but we don't understand how they're organized. I'm trying to study the different proteins in different subpopulations of biofilms, figure out what they're doing, and how they're being regulated differently so that hopefully we can treat those bacterial infections better.

How is computer science part of your research?

Of course, studying the different proteins in biofilm is my main research, but I also build and code all the computational aspects in the labs. I code the programs that we use to analyze data from experiments on these biofilm subpopulations. I spend most of my time either writing new codes that I need to combine into the pipeline that I already have, or applying existing code that I have to new data sets to do statistical analyses.

How did you get involved in research? What were your first research projects?

I was one of those people that had no idea what I really wanted to do. In high school, all I knew was that I liked math. As I mentioned before, I went to a school that was near where I lived at home for financial reasons. The school didn't have an engineering program, but that's what I was most interested in, and I originally thought I would be an engineer. Instead, I wound up doing chemistry, which was my second choice. When I got to UMich, I got involved in this particular field because I was a bench chemist, and I liked playing with proteins and test tubes, but also I had a little bit of training in Java programming.

My very first research project at UMich was the lab I rotated in. They let me do a molecular dynamics simulation, and I loved seeing proteins on a huge screen in front of me instead of tiny little pellets in the bottom of a test tube. On the screen, I could see all the different chains, and it was the coolest thing in the world. It was a visual representation of the kind of research that I've been doing, and I loved that it brought together my computational interests and my stronger biochemical background.

What advice would you give to college students in terms of networking?

I'm still learning to be honest, but it is something that you need to practice. Going to conferences is huge. Just walk up to someone and exchange business cards, or these days, a lot of people will have QR codes that you can scan and get your information from. Many organizations and universities have networking parties where you can talk to different people and connect. Another modern way of networking is creating a LinkedIn account and messaging the people you know. Truly, I think the best way to network is to be bold and have genuine conversations with people.

What are some aspects of your career that you enjoy?

Overall, STEM always intrigued me! I've always wanted to know how things worked, and I always had that question. Yes, I was that annoying student in class that would like to remind teachers to come back to the point that they wanted to talk about. I liked to drill down into the details and the nitty-gritty of things, which is something that really drew me to science and math overall. I like bioinformatics in particular because it brought computational work in biology, and this fusion of what looked like two very different fields really intrigued me.

What advice would you give to high school students who are still deciding what to do?

Just check in with yourself. Think about what subjects you enjoy, and the things that are easy for you. Look for things that you are interested in and are good at. Identify the things that overlap, and explore everything and anything within that realm. If you have time for a few extra electives, try something you've never done before. Take an online course. Something that sounds interesting, and you have no background in.

I definitely think that, for me, exploring and doing research in all those different fields of chemistry wound up being hugely valuable in terms of figuring out not only some of the things that I liked, but also lots of things that I didn't like. For example, polymer science was really not for me. You'll learn a lot no matter what, so if you're unsure, just try new things.

What is your experience being an instructor as well?

I have liked teaching for a while. I tutored fellow students back in high school. In undergraduate, I was a TA for a general chemistry class. So, I was mostly in the lab with students trying to help them with experiments and calculations. At UMich, instead of a TA, we call them GSI, or graduate student instructors. I was a GSI for a semester and found that one of my absolute favorite things is office hours. I started teaching more since then because I really wanted to be instructing an actual class with lessons and lecture slides. In total, I taught 10 labs over the course of a semester. Currently, I am working on getting my full teaching certification at the University of Michigan.

As a nonprofit organization, INTEGIRLS aims to empower women or nonbinary students to venture out into the STEM fields. So how has being a woman impacted your career? And what are some of the challenges you faced?

I still think about these questions on a weekly basis, if not daily. As a woman, you have to find a way to get comfortable advocating for yourself in strategic ways, but you don't want to come off as a jerk. It's tough as a woman to find that line between being strong and being perceived as someone that is self-absorbed. You want people to feel like you are an irreplaceable asset to the team.

One of the most beneficial things about STEM is that it doesn't matter who you are. That's why I love about math: it doesn't matter that I was the only girl in this class if I was faster at solving math problems than the other kids. That is the best part about STEM, in most cases, there is a clear answer. Regardless of who you are, you are either right or wrong. And as a woman, I was really able to take advantage of that.

Also, developing your soft skills is huge. It's something that we don't always talk about because we usually hear that if you're just great at math, then you're fine. That's not always the case. Learning how to carry yourself is very important whether it is your manners, vocabulary, dressing style, etc. There's a saying that stuck with me, “When you're 90% of the way done with a project, you're halfway there.” Meaning that the last half of your time is going to be spent on details that are only going to make a really small amount of difference but have a huge impact.