General News
Access to Science Information Can Change Lives
- March 10, 2025
I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family. For my family this meant I was raised to believe that my purpose in life was to get married and have babies. I was taught to doubt science and medicine. To believe the Bible and prayer would fix everything.
We didn’t go to the doctor or take medicine unless it was necessary. My mother was staunchly against vaccinations, so I was never vaccinated as a child. To prevent influence from the public school system I was homeschooled for a period and then attended a private Christian school.
In the middle of all this, my dad left us. He packed up and moved in with a girlfriend. We were devastated. My mom had built her whole life around her marriage. She didn’t work outside the home and didn’t have a driver’s license. Before my dad left, I don’t remember worrying about money. But after he left, worry about money consumed me.
Because my parents remained legally married, my dad wasn’t required to pay child support. There were nights I now know that my mom must have gone to bed hungry so my brother and I wouldn’t have to.
We became very poor. That meant that private Christian school was no longer an option, and I had to go back to being homeschooled. By then, I was in 9th or 10th grade and desperate to learn. My grandmother was my biggest supporter so she did what she could by purchasing a homeschool curriculum for me. I taught myself using this curriculum. I assigned myself essays, graded my own work, and pushed myself forward.
I finally convinced my mom to let me return to public school for 11th grade. My first formal science class was chemistry, and I loved it. My chemistry teacher noticed my talent and encouraged me to go to college for science. She, along with other teachers, helped make that happen. They walked me through the application process and helped me apply for STEM scholarships. Because of them I realized science was an option for me.
I started college as a chemistry major before switching to biochemistry. I loved every bit of it. My genetics professor invited me to work in his lab where he was studying a genetic mutation causing skin graft rejection in mice. That’s where I fell in love with research. He encouraged me to apply to graduate school, a career option that never crossed my mind before.
Throughout college I lived at home and worked more than 20 hours a week. I used my earnings for gas and food for my family. I spent all my spare time driving my mom and brother around while trying to do homework in the car.
By my senior year, I was overwhelmed and severely depressed. I was struggling to keep up with school and barely hanging on. Somehow, I still managed to submit my graduate school applications, but I came within moments of dropping out of college completely or worse.
That’s when my professors staged an intervention. I was able to get in to see the campus therapists and one of my professors had me move into her home. They helped me navigate grad school interviews, and when it was time for me to pack up and move to Maine for my Ph.D., they made sure I had a car to get there.
Right before I left, I got vaccinated for the first time ever. By then, I knew I wanted to study immunology, and I understood the science. I was confident in my decision despite how I had been raised. I then packed up the car and drove seven hours north to Maine.
Moving to Maine for graduate school changed my life. I’d even argue it saved my life. I don’t know how much longer I could have kept going as things were. In Maine, I found my voice. I fell in love with running and hiking. I earned my PhD by studying CD4 T cells under the mentorship of incredible scientists. During this time, I met my husband and decided to stay in Maine with him after graduation.
After completing my Ph.D., I was fortunate to connect with Dustin Updike, a principal investigator at the MDI Biological Laboratory. He hired me as a postdoctoral researcher, and I secured a National Institutes of Health fellowship to help fund my work. During this period, I also got married, became a mother, completed my postdoctoral studies, and then eventually moved to a different institution to become an assistant professor.
It was my journey becoming a mother that truly made me realize how much scientific information is a privilege. When I was pregnant with our first child our doctors told us he likely had a rare genetic disease. When he was four weeks old, they reaffirmed their certainty. I cope with action. So, I immediately dove into the research, got him into one of the best clinics in the country, and we began the process of enrolling him in a study. This was the hardest period of my life. I scrolled message boards and saw how much worse it was for other families who couldn’t navigate the medical system or research.
Eventually, after a lot of time, medical testing and waiting, we learned the initial doctor was wrong. Our son does not have the genetic disease and is healthy. But that experience changed me. It was terrifying and hard to navigate, and I was a scientist! I could read the research papers and speak jargon with the doctors. I can only imagine how much harder it would have been without that background.
Only a few months after this experience the COVID-19 pandemic started. Between that and my son’s medical scare, I started re-evaluating my career. I realized that access to understandable science information can change lives—but only if people have that access. So, I have now made it my mission to help others have that access.
This led me to return to MDI Biological Laboratory to spearhead the development of new science education and outreach programs and spend my free time communicating science to the public. MDI Bio Lab is funded, in part, by the NIH. If the proposed NIH funding cuts are implemented, institutions like ours will suffer. We do not have endowments or undergraduate tuition to offset cuts like these. These cuts would slow biomedical research progress, decrease training and cause job losses across the country, including here.
My job helps us provide for our kids. It allows us to live in a place we love. It lets our kids grow up near their grandparents, with nature as their backyard. Without it, we’d have to move – if there are even jobs for scientists elsewhere in the USA.
These cuts won’t just affect us here. They will ripple through the entire scientific community. At the end of the day, behind the statistics you hear on the news, there are real people. Most of us just want to help people and improve lives.