Hi, my name is Rachel. I’m from Lexington, Kentucky, but right now I am an undergrad student at
Cornell University. I’m home for the summer, so I decided to do work at UK and I’m working
in Dr. Lin’s lab and I’m going to be continuing researching with her throughout this year.
Both of my parents work in the medical fields, so I started volunteering at a hospital at
a pretty young age and then volunteered at nursing homes in high school. Two of my grandparents
had Alzheimer’s. I’ve known a lot of people who have had Alzheimer’s. I’ve seen how
Alzheimer’s can affect some people’s lives, and I think that anything that I can do in
the lab that can potentially prevent that from happening to people in the future would
really make me happy. I kind of knew that I wanted to have my occupation deal with aging
and gerontology, and I think that maybe one of the most interesting things to me is finding
maybe pharmaceutical interventions to the aging process. Right now, I’m just about
to start my own study where we give rapamycin, which is a drug that inhibits part of the
Alzheimer’s development process. We’re going to give that to diabetic mice. There
might be some side effects, undesired side effects from giving the rapamycin to them
including causing glucose intolerance. I think it will be very interesting to see the different
effects that rapamycin has on these types of mice, because we don’t really know what
we’re going to find. The end goal of the research is to increase people’s quality
of life, increase health-span, while increasing life-span, and so I think that that’s something
that matters to everybody. So to be able to work on something that matters this much is
very rewarding. As long as I focus on the goal of the experiment or what we’re trying
to do or solve, then I can put the kind of menial tasks into perspective and have a greater
appreciation for the process. When you work in a lab, you’re able to learn a lot about
what the lab does. You get to know people who are at the top of their field and very
willing to share with you a variety of information that they’ve like acquired over the years.
I think it’s a great environment where you can shoot ideas off one another and learn
from one another. Everyone supports one another and is working towards the same goal. We all
have to face aging and potentially Alzheimer’s and a host of other diseases and factors,
so to be able to work on research where you’re able to kind of place yourself in the frame
of like what you’re trying to solve is pretty interesting and engaging. I think science
is a great thing for anyone who’s creative, likes to solve problems. I felt like it was
a place I could make the most difference. So I would strongly advise anyone else to
look at science as an opportunity.