• job: Assistant Professor of Genetics

• lab: Third floor, Genetics -Biotechnology Center

• what I do: Study how yeast cells respond to stresses in their environments

What’s a typical day like in your lab? Sadly for me, it’s mostly meetings. The fun is in the lab where all the research happens.

Is your work 9-to-5 or 24/7? It used to be more like 24/7, but my toddler enforces the 9-to-6 rule for me now, plus some after-hours work.

What piece of equipment do you rely on most? Besides my computer, it’s the coffee pot.

If you had to evacuate your lab/office, what would you grab first? My collection of animal skulls.

Clean desk or messy desk? Messy to an outsider, completely organized to me.

What’s playing on the lab radio? A mix of electronica from the Pandora web site.

Where do you get your best work done? I get the best thinking done in the loudest coffee shop I can find.

What’s your favorite way to recharge the batteries? Camping and fishing.

Why did you go into research as a career? Doing biological research is like solving a fascinating but never-ending puzzle. Every time we answer one question, it generates five new questions we didn’t anticipate.

What’s the research question on your mind right now? We’ve recently been looking at how gene expression and stress tolerance evolve in natural yeast strains (as opposed to lab strains), which has been a lot of fun.

This article was posted in Around the college, My Space, Summer 2009 and tagged Genetics.