COLEEN MURPHY: You need to figure out
what makes you excited and what's
going to make you come into lab every day.
I always want to come into lab, because I
want to bother them and ask them what they found out
while I was gone.
That excites me.
My name is Coleen Murphy.
I'm a professor of genomics and molecular biology
at Princeton University.
You doing [? germine ?] stuff today?
[? SUBJECT 1: I'm ?] actually doing that for [INAUDIBLE].
COLEEN MURPHY: The goal of our research lab
is to try to understand what are the molecular mechanisms that
underlie aging.
We use a small laboratory animal called C. elegans.
So C. elegans is this little worm.
It's not scary.
It's very tiny.
And the reason we use it is because 80% of its genes
are shared with humans.
By working on a problem like aging,
there's also the hope that we can help other people
down the road.
SUBJECT 2: So I set up the one, the first cross.
And I'll be doing the second cross tomorrow.
COLEEN MURPHY: OK.
SUBJECT 2: And then I am setting up the first cross--
COLEEN MURPHY: I like to work on a bunch of different things
at once.
As anyone in the lab will tell you, I like having-- we have,
you know-- we counted the other day.
We have 20 ongoing projects.
And while that can be a lot to juggle,
it really makes it interesting to come into lab every day,
and talk to my students, and find out some new, cool thing
that they've found.
So how's the analysis going with the [INAUDIBLE]?
SUBJECT 3: I finished, like, all of last week.
And then because I'm putting together the slides,
Rachel said she would pick up.
RACHEL AREY: She is a great role model for female scientists.
She kind of, in a way, has it all, I guess.
She has a family, she's successful, she's great,
and I just love working for her.
I can't say enough positive things about her.
But she also really fosters independence,
which is important for what we do,
because my goal is to eventually run my own laboratory.
And she really lets me think outside the box,
pursue whatever project I'm interested in,
and tells you to just kind of run with it.
And she's not afraid of new things either.
COLEEN MURPHY: It's not a medical school.
And so what this means for me is that I can work on something
that seems somewhat esoteric that eventually
leads back to public health.
But you're not being forced to do
something that has immediate, really immediate practicality.
And that is great, because we never
would've ended up studying the things that we do study
if that had been the demand from the beginning.
And so having that sort of academic freedom
that you get at a place like Princeton,
where it's not a medical school, I actually
think is really helpful for ending up doing
medical research, in fact.
And the students all come in with various backgrounds, too.
And so at this point, because they develop the assays
they use-- it's a little embarrassing,
but they're the experts in what we do.
I have the big picture idea, but they're
the ones who know how to do every single thing.
So when someone asks me how-- like, nit-picky questions,
I always say, well, you need to ask Rachel that question,
because she knows exactly how you do this.
So they're the experts, really, at this point.
RACHEL AREY: --HG.
INDIA ROGERS-SHEPP: Because I just chunked the [? AWC. ?] And
the plate I wrote on it was for--
RACHEL AREY: That one's it.
[?
INDIA ROGERS SHEPP: My crown? ?]
RACHEL AREY: No, it's right here.
INDIA ROGERS-SHEPP: I remember reading that, you know,
there was someone in Coleen's life
who really encouraged her to take that next step further
to realize and fulfill her self potential.
And I think that she's done the same with me by inviting
me to work in her lab.
And I don't really come from-- no one
in my family does anything related to research.
And I feel like she's kind of helped
me realize, like, this is something
that I could really see myself doing in future years.
It's something that I've come to love.
RACHEL AREY: She really, I think,
emphasizes work-life balance a whole lot.
And she does not, like, keep us on a timetable, time clock.
And she understands that you need your time to do things.
We have plenty of lab members with families.
And she totally supports that and has
been nothing but supportive.
COLEEN MURPHY: One of the surprising things, I guess,
about doing this job has been how wonderful it
has been to be able to have kids during this time.
So a lot of women, I think, talk themselves
out of doing science or becoming professors
when they are in graduate school or doing their postdoc.
And in fact, actually, it's a really flexible job.
And so it's been pretty reasonable to try
to do all of that at once.
And so I just wanted to convey-- because I
think women get a lot of discouraging information.
And I would like to convey to the graduate students
and postdocs it actually really is a reasonable path to take.
And they should stay in science.
INDIA ROGERS-SHEPP: [LAUGHS]
RACHEL AREY: I just set it up.
INDIA ROGERS-SHEPP: That's perfect.
All right.
COLEEN MURPHY: You know, being excited about your question
is really the most important thing.
And it's hard.
At the end of graduate school, right, I always
tell the students, you start in all excited,
and then things start working about your fourth year,
and then you get tired around your fifth year.
And that's normal, right?
I always tell them that.
But they shouldn't get discouraged.
And almost always, they have a ton of data at that point.
And you're almost, like, pushing them out of the nest, right.
They should be sick of you, because it's
time for them to go elsewhere.
It's part of the process.
I hope that they always retain this idea that there's
something fun to study and there's just
something exciting.
And that's what I mostly want them to learn.