"I'm Chad Glen.
We're at Georgia Tech and I work with gap junctions so it has a relation to a lot of
diseases actually.
So cancer has some relation.
There's also some association with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.
I'm actually from Canada.
Hamilton, Ontario.
So I'm far away from home.
When I was younger I actually, I played or did karate for awhile and I really enjoyed
reading.
When I got into it I really went into it.
I was way too curious when I was younger and when I started drinking coffee, I looked up
the effects of caffeine and then it's like okay, caffeine is a phosphodiesterase inhibitor
and I was like oh, what does that mean and so I looked that up and it just ended up with
me reading a whole bunch of research articles out a great age of like 13.
When I was younger we had a class and a guy came in to give a presentation on like career
day and he's like I'm a scientist and I get to pick my own hours.
And my first response was that's what I want.
I actually was a weird child in that before the boogie man I was actually scared of cancer.
My parents used to scare me to eat my vegetables by saying you'll get cancer and so obviously
I ate my broccoli and then I was like you know, maybe I should actually work something
that could prevent this or at least help this and so it was really a fear of cancer that
drove me here.
My overall goal is actually trying to figure out how cells in like populations or aggregates
are actually communicating so there's like proteins called connexons that form like gap
junctions so basically channels between cells so they can allow things to pass directly
through and I'm trying to figure out how in a large population this communication network
is actually arranged and how spacial patterns could form from that and really just trying
to find out how if there's rules that govern this intercellular communication in multiple
different cell types.
You pretty much have regular stuff in the lab.
Pipettes, flow cytometry which allows you to separate different cells based on like
fluorescent tags and get a size distribution.
My dreams for where this can go is really by creating this model of intercellular communication.
I hope that I can actually determine what is going wrong, especially in diseases like
Parkinson's or Alzheimer's and also epilepsy.
There's like some disruption in gap junction function that I think my research could help
to develop some connection between what is going wrong to cause the symptoms and how
you can potentially correct it.
speaker 2: Chad, you're still doing the [??]
speaker 1: I am, yes.
speaker 2: Oh, wow.
speaker 1: The most special thing about the lab is definitely the ability to actually
come in, talk to people and then go do research, come back, still have a conversation.
Where's your protective gear?
speaker 2: Where's my protective gear?
It's okay.
Its just cancer cells so it's not going to hurt, what hurts you makes you stronger right?
speaker 1: I don't know if that quite works in science but...
speaker 2: Very interesting work.
speaker 1: And everyone sort of understands exactly like they don't think oh, he's sitting
at his computer.
He's not doing any work.
It's oh, he's in between experiments because there's always these long like breaks in between
and it's a great place to be.
The fact that you can actually understand exactly what's going on in your life for the
most part, just everything you could possibly want to know is collected together and you
slowly cascade between different points and it's a great experience."