Ka's Research
You decend the winding stairs well into the lab. The "real" portion of the lab, that is. The smell of chemicals becomes stronger, and you hear Ka calling you to keep comming. You finally reach the end of the stairs, and notice that the ceiling slopes up slightly, so that the room you enter at its end is tall and airy. The lighting seemed to come from everywhere, almost making you forget that you are well below the surface. Ka is standing in the middle of the room, motioning you towards her lab bench.
You both are standing in the lab proper. It is a fairly large room, and there is a lot of equipment that you have never seen before. She looks very proud of everything as she guestures you to look.
"I have worked in many labs at MSU. The first was with Dr. Jack Preiss. There, I worked with the branching enzyme. Take a look at my last poster for it." She smiles, pointing.
"Then, I worked in Dr. Doug Gage's Lab with the DMSP cycle. I even payed for the last year of school with a grant from the National Space Consortium." She hands you a menilla folder full of paper. "Oh, and here are a few pictures from that lab!"
What else have you done?
"Well, I have worked in many areas. I can show you a slightly out of date resume now, though I am reworking it and trying to put together a portfolio. It is not as easy as I had hoped it would be. Still, it does give a slight idea of what I have done as of June 2002."
Projects right now?
"Well, I am a working at Michigan State University in the Pharmacology and Toxicology as a Lab Manager and Research Assistant for Dr. Robert Roth and Dr. Pattie Ganey, and for Dr. Jack Harkema in Pathobiology departments, again as a Research Assistant. In short, I work on inflammation research in both the liver and the lung."
Any more Schooling in the future?
"Well, I did do a year of graduate work at MSU, I left that position. I did enjoy it enough, but I had a hard time with my migranes. It's rather hard to read and retain information when it hurts to have your eyes open in the light... But to recap that experience, my first rotation was in Dr. Pam Green's laboratory, working on a microarray project. Then there was a short stint in Dr. Gregg Howe's lab, doing another protein purification, though this was with a recombinate protein. My last rotation was in Dr. Natasha Riekhel's Lab, working on transforming the gene for fucosyl transferase -- a structural polysaccaride found in cell walls -- in Arabidopsis. (NO link, since she moved to California.) I plan to go back to school once my fiancee graduates, though I am seriously thinking of going into Toxicology instead of Biochemistry."
If you feel like streaching your legs, you end up Walking over to one of the stacks of papers that seem to everywhere. There is an old set of transparencies there. Comming to stand by you, she starts riffeling through the older pages, and nods to herself. "This one is an old paper from when I was an undergraduate. I took a General Business Law class and wrote my final paper on Patent Law and Intellectual Property using the Terminator Gene as a case study."
And these stacks of papers? "Well, one of these is a paper on Evolutionary Theories for and Anthropology class." She hands over one set to look at. "Oh, this is just my senior seminar final project. I took a course on HG Wells. It was a science and technology writting course. I did my research paper on the transition of science fiction books and stories into movies. You can read that too if you like."
And this?
"Oh, that.... That's the Web Page I had to make for a class when I was a junior in College on Quantum Theory."
"Take your time to reading. When you are done, why not look more around the Laboratory." (You can reopen the navigation bar here.)
Or, of course, you can also just go back and talk to Alfred if you wish, and not bother with the Lab anymore...