We thought we would add something new, personal and interesting to the IVR. We sent out emails to people asking them:
“I am writing a small quarterly column including a short statement, one or two sentences, describing how “we” all ended up in this business. What was the one deciding factor that made you turn to “the in vitro side”?
Would you be willing to share something like that? It can be anonymous or not but would really help make the IVR a lot more interesting.”
Here are some responses:
Elizabeth Roemer:
I was an artist and after my divorce needed to support myself with a more reliable source of income. My college major had been Biology with an unofficial minor in Art History. I thought I would look for a job as a lab tech (I was working at a local nursery/garden center chain at the time). I had always loved histology and especially electron micrographs, and when I discovered that Hofstra University had a Masters Degree in Electron Microscopy it seemed perfect. My original plan was to support myself as a tech, and keep working as an artist. Needless to say, research soon seduced me, leaving little time for painting or sculpture. And research also satisfied that creative drive. I thought that as a tech I would do my job and go home….but as things turned being a Research Scientist is far more consuming.
I am just now, nearly 25 years later, trying to get back to my artistic “roots”. I’ve been a collector of the work of local artists for the past decade or so, but I am now in the process of setting my studio back up and trying to learn how to fit both doing science and creating art into my life at the same time. It should be an interesting ride, as they are both all-consuming passions for me.
Lia Campbell:
Two things really pushed me to do in vitro work. First, I don’t like working with animals although I have in the past. Second, depending on what I’m working on, DNA, proteins etc, I think it is more interesting and challenging when one cannot actually see what’s going on, but development of an answer requires some mental gymnastics to figure it out based on whatever assays are being done.
Ray Gillis:
In 1992, funding for graduate student assistant positions at the University of Florida was hard to find. A professor suggested that I talk with Dr. Michael Kane in the Environmental Horticulture Department who had grant funds to use tissue culture to develop wetland restoration protocols.
Todd Jones:
My first introduction to plant tissue culture was as an undergraduate student at UW-Madison. I had a work-study job working in the Botany Greenhouses (a plum position at the time) and I was surprised to find out that we had nearly an entire greenhouse devoted to growing tobacco plants. In Wisconsin? I asked, “Why in the world are we growing all of these tobacco plants?” and the Greenhouse manager, a cherub of a guy named Bill, responded, “There for a professor named Folke Skoog. He takes them, cuts them up and grows them on petri dishes.” Ok, I thought, that’s wacky, but he never lacked for tobacco plants while I was in the greenhouse. I was reintroduced to plant tissue culture 7 years later when I returned to school to finish my degree at UC-Davis. This time I wound up working in the lab of the plant anatomist in the Botany Department, Tom Rost. One of the projects in his lab at the time was a tissue culture project to understand the process of somatic embryogenesis. That was when it clicked – “You mean you can get a regular plant cell to turn into an embryo?” How cool is that? I was blown away and decided, right there, that I would study somatic embryogenesis and totipotency in plants. In many ways, plant totipotency remains a fundamental part of the work I do today. And when I take the time to stop to think about it, I’m still blown away.
Steve McCulloch:
Brent McCown was a great inspiration for me. As an undergrad at the University of Wisconsin, he gave me a part time job helping out in the laboratory at the Hort Annex. It started with dishes and by spring he had me running a few experiments for him. I was hooked after that!! What fun! What excitement! What wonder! And you know what? It still is….
Nancy Reichert:
Entry into the in vitro profession was less “Eureka” than “Oh my gosh, I need a job”. I expected to use my B.S. in Bacteriology in a food processing plant conducting quality control assessments. When that perceived dream job failed to appear, I was hired to isolate potato meristem tips in a virus elimination/cryopreservation project. That led to a stint in private industry enabling expansion of my repertoire to include plant transformation and molecular analysis. That instilled the desire to obtain a Ph.D., which then allowed me to climb the ranks in a tenured position. That led to a department head position where I now try to assist faculty to forge their own career paths. Amusingly, job angst proved to be the serendipitous event.
