"Alright.
My name's Linda, and we are in my office at Georgia Tech.
I'm a research scientist.
I'm looking at the immune system, and specifically immune cells in normal, healthy people and
how they differ.
It's like you could compare healthy people and someone with a certain disease and see
what has changed.
I'm from Sweden originally.
I was really into reading and animals and watching nature shows on TV.
Do you know who David Attenborough is?
So he does these nature shows, and when I was a kid, they were on once a week on TV,
and I would just watch them, and he would wear khakis, and he would be, like, in Africa,
going ""We're looking for the rarest animal in the world, and here it is,"" and I wanted
to be him.
I wanted to wear khakis, I wanted to go to Africa, I wanted to study lions, so when the
time came to go to college, I went into biology, and then about three years in, I realized
he still had his job, and he wasn't about to give it up, and there weren't really that
many high-paying jobs studying lions in Africa, so I was at a bit of a loss, but then I took
a course in immunology and I just found my thing, and it's just so interesting.
My research focuses on analysis of single cells in populations, so not just one cell,
but say a million cells, ""˜cause we have these cool new techniques now where not only
can you see what a type of cell is doing, but you can go even further down and see what
each individual cell looks like.
You can look at, like, what genes each cell is using, for example; what proteins one cell
is making.
So if you go into our lab, first of all what you would see would be that it doesn't look
like the TV series where it's all stainless steel and shiny surfaces and people in pristine
white lab coats who all look really good and have makeup on.
You would probably see a lot of people pipetting things and looking in telescopes, and you'll
see shelves full of test tubes and bottles of strange liquids.
Sadly you won't see things boiling and bubbling that are green and look like the Halloween
witches things.
That's a bit disappointing.
Most of our things are small and a few drops in tiny test tubes.
I'm the one who orders all the materials and handles all the equipment so that they're
up and running, and makes sure everything is where it's supposed to be.
I'm also the research scientist, which means that I do research on projects that are not
necessarily mine.
We collaborate with other labs because they need my help to do this specific type of analysis.
I might grow cells because another lab needs a certain type of cell that we have and they
don't.
What I'm hoping is that eventually when I put together my results and the new knowledge
that I've acquired, that it will be useful to other people.
Someone else can take that and go ""We have these people with a certain type of cancer.
Maybe we can look at this in them and see what's different, and maybe that can be something
we can use to develop ways of treating them.""
Every now and then you'll find something.
You'll find a clue, or you'll look at your entire data set, you'll analyze it, and you'll
see a pattern, and you'll be like ""I've discovered something that's out there that I didn't know,
that no one knew before,"" and that feeling is why we do science.
Don't think at age 18 that what you decide to do now will define what you're going to
do for the rest of your life.
You can always change your mind, especially if you go to college and you get a degree
in science.
I get to go to work every day and do something that I'm really interested in.
I get to spend my entire life doing something that makes me happy to go to work on Monday
morning, and that's worth all the effort.
If you are interested in it, go for it."