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Chemistry professor Mark Turnbull and his students create new compounds in order to study complex magnetic properties. Dr. Turnbull also sponsors students, like chemistry minor Lesley Mathews, who want to pursue internships in the local area. |
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Meet the researchers: The scientist I hope to be
Interview with Lesley Mathews
With its burgeoning health and biotechnology industries, the Worcester region provides a variety of settings for science-oriented students to pursue research outside the university setting. Chemistry professor Mark Turnbull recently sponsored the internship of Lesley Mathews at Cetek, a local biotech firm. Lesley has been sampling research opportunities in the Worcester area since she was a freshman, a strategy that has enabled her to finish her undergraduate studies a semester early with a fulltime job already in place. She discussed her internships in a recent interview.
(Spring 2006 Update: Lesley is now studying in the Ph.D. program in Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.)
How did you start out in the sciences at Clark?
I started by doing pre-med and fulfilled all the requirements for medical school. I had the advantage of interning at a biotech company-Shire Biologics in Northboro-during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years. There I worked on the formulation of protein vaccines, one being for Neisseria meningitis. That's on the market now for FDA approval.
During that time I also volunteered at St. Vincent's Hospital here in Worcester. I was working three hours twice a week in the ER. I was baffled-I would go home and come back the next day and the same doctors would be there. They hadn't left or seen their families. And I'm very family-oriented-I want a family. I talked to a lot of the doctors, getting feedback about medical school, what it was like to be an intern, what it was like to be a resident and be married. It wasn't what I wanted.
My experience at Shire Biologics opened my eyes to the research aspect of medicine. I soon came to the conclusion that I was a research scientist and did not have the personality to be a physician. I just felt so much more at ease doing research, when I had time to think things through and participate in an investigation. I was lucky do have the experience at St. V's as an undergrad, before I got into medical school and realized it wasn't for me.
Shire Biologics kept me on as a part-time lab technician in the fall of my sophomore year. During that semester I worked on developing an assay [test] to target a specific protein for Group B Streptococcus.
You're smiling-you look like you were having a good time!
I was! I was 18 years old and I was working in a biotech company running a $75,000 instrument that did High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC).
How did you find out about the opportunity at Shire Biologics?
A friend of my family was the director of human resources there. She wanted summer interns. But I had to earn the position. I was interviewed by a panel of scientists. I didn't know that much about High-Performance Liquid Chromatography, but from what I had learned in Intro Biology I was able to show that I had the ability to learn and work hard. I stayed at Shire for two years until there were some cutbacks.
Then for a brief time I worked at a forensics lab here in Worcester. I had wanted to try something different and sent my resume out to a company that did narcotics analysis of human specimens. At the lab I used a technology called Gas Chromatography Mass Spectroscopy (GC/MS) that helps identify compounds in the body.
So you were analyzing blood samples?
Blood, urine, semen, whatever biologics they could collect. A lot of the time it was just routine drug tests for companies in the area that were hiring. I never did testify in court-I was only there for six months-but my boss did a lot of court testifying as an expert witness.
From there I moved to another biotech company called Cetek, I was hired there this past summer as an intern in their natural products chemistry lab. As a biology student, I was a little apprehensive about working in a chemistry lab. But I read the job description and talked to the boss, and knew I could definitely do what he was asking for. The nice advantage was that the job used the same HPLC technology I'd used at Shire. So I didn't need training and he saw that from my resume.
What did you do at Cetek?
Cetek is creating a natural products library. They're isolating many strains of microorganisms, such as fungi and bacteria, and they can grow anywhere from 500-1000 individual extracts a week. Cetek has scientists who go out and collect samples from around the world, and they get sent samples from other companies.
I worked on a fungal strain from Indonesia. We're trying to find substances that can prevent the human immune system from rejecting organ transplants. We can examine extracts from the library to determine their structures and to find out if they've ever been identified before. I found a few that hadn't been, although I didn't do the structure analysis on my own; I had a lot of help from Cetek's organic chemists. We study the extracts to see if they suppress the immune system.
It sounds like you've really taken advantage of what's here in the area.
Yes, and I'm graduating early, too, thanks to the research and the internships that I did. And I have a working knowledge of my field, not just my book smarts. Just from everything that I've done at Clark, it's really modeled me into the scientist that I have become, the scientist I hope to be. Without these experiences, it would have been just another undergraduate education.
And you have a job waiting for you.
Yes. When I graduate in December I have a job in the biology department at Cetek, looking at how these natural compounds act in cells. I'll be doing in vitro studies that precede the studies that are done in mice or other small organisms. I'm excited about that.
It sounds to me that, for you, involvement in research projects has given you something that you don't think you would have gotten in a classroom scenario.
Definitely. You can see something in lecture and memorize it for a test. It gets stored in the back of your head but you really don't use it unless you bring it out into the real working field. I think that's true for any discipline. It was a wonderful experience.
So doing research forces you to recall information you learned in class in a meaningful context.
Definitely. You can always have the reference book if you're trying to remember things. But it makes it that much easier when you've been doing something and can understand it. And by going to different companies I've gained a working knowledge of a lab. How things operate, how to communicate with my supervisors and the people I work with. They like it that I know how to handle the chemicals and the gases. And with the help of research and the people who work in the labs here at Clark, you gain that working knowledge about what to do and what not to do in a lab.
How did you end up working with Dr. Turnbull?
He's my chemistry minor advisor and I took organic chemistry with him. He was so willing to help me with my Cetek internship and excited about the fact that I was doing chemistry. He was actually in Spain this summer on sabbatical, so the initial contact I had with him about my internship proposal was via email. But then he took time out of his sabbatical so he would be back here to help me. I just thought that was wonderful. He could have sent me to somebody else, but he didn't.
I'm applying to graduate school, so we'll see what they think of my research experience. That was the heart of my personal statement, the fact that I'm a working, researching, college student. Hopefully when someone is reading my application they'll see that I have these experiences and that I can help them in labs as a teaching assistant. And Cetek is very aware that I want to continue my education and they're willing to support me through my master's degree. And I like that. A lot.
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Additional Resources
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Lesley Matthews
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Faculty as a resource