AUG 07, 2020 9:00 AM PDT

Part II: Adventures in Molecular Recognition

Speaker

Abstract

In the movie "Moana" the lead character sings the refrain, "There's no telling how far I'll go" before she heads off on the adventure of a lifetime. In this short talk, I will give a personal reflection of my own adventures in science, which started with telling my freshman advisor that I aspired to have a work-study position in a research lab. I was subsequently selected as part of the inaugural class of Beckman Scholars, and most recently, things have come full circle as I became co-Director of the Beckman Scholar Program at the University of Utah, where I am an associate professor of chemistry. My research has spanned the fields of chemical biology, synthetic biology, and microbiology, involved collaborations across the globe, and last year I led an experiment conducted on the International Space Station. In other words, I want to convey to current Beckman Scholars that an academic career is a "Choose Your Own Adventure" type of career, and there is no telling how far they will go!