My name is Alexandra Besser.
I am a graduate student in the lab of Doctor Joyce Lingerland.
We are affiliated with the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center here at the University of Miami.
Our lab primarily focuses on the studying of breast cancer progression.
We do some work on ovarian cancer as well.
In the lab I study cancer basically and how a cell will progress from a cell that behaves
and does what it's supposed too, to a cell that doesn't behave and wracks havoc in your
body and can cause some serious problems by generating a cancer.
I love being in the lab.
I am an independent, autonomous person.
Being a scientist and being a graduate student, you're really free to move into areas and
think about things that nobody has thought of before and you're kind of on your own when
you're doing this.
It's a very intellectual, but liberating experience when you finally figure something out that
no else has thought of before.
I was born in Los Angeles, California.
My family still lives in Los Angeles and that's where I went to high school and college in
Santa Barbara.
I didn't have a particular area of interest in high school, I gravitated more towards
the biological sciences.
I'm terrible at math, physics did not come easily for me and neither did any of the higher
level math courses.
I guess I was always going to be some biologist.
Science had always been my favorite subject so I knew I was going to do something in science
and when I was in college, I thought I was going to be a marine biologist.
I still love the area but I ended up taking a cancer genetics class kind of serendipitously
and was fascinated by the fact that we have this microcosm of evolution happening within
our own bodies.
Very frequently, things don't work, experiments don't work, you have to reevaluate the way
you ask a question, the answers that you get, how does this fit into what you've already
learned so it's a very independent process but it's one that I really enjoy going through.
These cells are a bladder cancer's cell line, they were derived from a primary tumor of
the bladder.
As I learn more, it actually becomes more and more fascinating because a single cell
in your body is capable of incredible things, on it's own and in a group with other cells.
The more and more you learn, the more and more you become fascinated with your own body
and what it can actually do without your knowledge of it.
Eventually, I want to be able to direct a lab that will make a difference in the field
of cancer research and somewhere or another, I can't exactly predict how that will be,
but that's my future goal.
I'm having a great time, I really enjoy what I'm doing, so if you are at all interested
in science or any of the scientific fields, consider going into research because you can
really make a difference in somebody's life if you do.