I talked to Andrea Killian Wegrzynowicz, a fifth year graduate student at UW–Madison, about her experience with the Biological Interactions Summer Research Program organized by WISCIENCE. During this ten-week program, visiting undergraduate students are placed in labs for intensive, hands-on research experience. Andrea mentored Danielle Amaegbo from Austin College, helping her complete a research project in the Henzler-Wildman Lab.
To start off, could you tell me a little about yourself?
My name is Andrea. I’m a fifth year graduate student here in the Henzler-Wildman Lab. I’m in IPiB, the Integrated Program in Biochemistry. I came to grad school straight from undergrad. I went to Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, which is a small liberal arts college. I did a lot of undergrad research there. I was in a lab of all undergrads since there were no grad students there, so that was a very different experience than here. I grew up in upstate New York, so I’m originally an East Coaster.
I ran my first half marathon in May. That was fun. I’m pretty busy, and running is one of the things that keeps me so busy!
Is this your first time working with the BI program or have you done it for a while?
This is our lab’s first time.
Do you know what led to the decision to start working with the program?
Honestly, I don’t. I know at some point [Dr. Katie Henzler-Wildman] was saying, oh, I’ve been interviewing students for this REU program. I was like, all right, cool. And then once she identified Danielle as somebody who would be a good fit for our lab, she said, who wants to be the mentor on this? I know that I have an interest in undergraduate education. I often have summer undergrads. I’m working with another undergrad from UW this summer. So I was like, well, I’m gonna have Max, so if you want to put them on the same project, they can work together, do some stuff in parallel. So that was sort of how that worked out. It’s been really cool to work with the BI program. It seems like a really solid program, which is awesome.
What has it been like for you and what kind of interactions have you had? Is it mostly just Danielle comes to the lab and you work together, or do you go do anything with the cohort as a whole?
I haven’t done anything with the cohort as a whole. I’ve been pretty hands-on as far as time with Danielle in the lab. I think we have a pretty collaborative lab. I think we’re a pretty friendly lab. So she seems to have done pretty well with knowing who else she can go to for help. She’s fit in really well socially and scientifically in terms of just talking to whoever if I’m not there. Which is great.
So yeah, I mostly interacted with her. I did go to the poster session towards the beginning of the summer, and that was really cool to hear about some of the other kinds of research that people are doing. And of course I’ll go to the final symposium. We did start up this summer a joint undergraduate lab meeting with a couple other labs. It’s once every two weeks and the idea is that undergraduates present their research, or we do some sort of panel discussion about what grad school is like, what other options there are, things like that. We have had a couple other labs that have students in the BI program who have brought them, so I have met a couple other students in that way, which has been cool. And they all seem to be really good friends. That’s so nice.
Is there anything that’s been surprising or unexpected for you working with the program?
I think just based on my personal experience of undergraduate research, I’ve been pleasantly surprised how rigorous it is and how much support they’re giving the students in terms of like, here’s how you make a poster, here’s how you write a paper. I think it’s good that [PI and Co-PI] Amber [Smith] and Dave [Wassarman] are basically training the students really well. So it’s just really nice that she’s coming with a good understanding of, you know, here’s what I need to write, and be able to ask me targeted questions about our particular research rather than me having to teach like, here’s how you write a method section, here’s how you write a result section.
So you can really focus on, like, here’s the specifics of what our lab does. You could probably go deeper with the research, I would imagine.
I feel like we can, yeah, I think so. It’s also just nice because I feel like the data analysis and thinking critically about the conclusions of your data is probably one of the hardest pieces for undergrads, probably one of the hardest pieces for grad students. So it’s really nice that they’re getting that built in.
Danielle was telling me a little bit about her research and how the stuff that she’s doing is a little newer and more novel. And it’s related to what your lab typically does, but it’s a bit different. What’s your impression been like of the research that she’s been doing and how it fits into the research that you do?
Yeah, it is totally new. It’s a project that we basically devised specifically for undergraduates to work on this summer, knowing that she was coming. Our lab usually works with one class of proteins, the small multidrug resistant transporters, but her project has been focused on PACE transporters, which are similar. But yeah, she’s right, there’s almost nothing known about them. Which has been, I think, a fun introduction for her on how science and research really work, because so many times this summer, she’s asked me a question and my answer is, “no one knows.” That’s why we’re doing this. And so that’s been kind of fun.
A lot of the methods that we’re using are the same as things that we already know. So that’s been really handy because I’ve been able to use my own project as a demonstration. So training is like, okay, we’re gonna do this method, we’re gonna purify my protein so that you learn how to purify any protein, and then we’ll try to purify this new protein. I think we’ve been very fortunate in that a high degree of things have worked for a new project, which is awesome! We’ve had almost overwhelming success. Unfortunately, our final big experiment today didn’t go so well, but it is what it is. It happens. We were like half successful in purifying a brand new protein, and being half successful the first time is pretty darn good. Considering I spent a year optimizing expression of my own protein…it’s hard!
I think it’s just been a cool experience. Like, this is how research happens: you start with something you don’t know anything about, and you just find out what’s there. So she’s like, oh, what substrate should we test next? I’m like, whatever you want, doesn’t matter, we don’t know. We have very little to go off of, so the stakes for just playing around and experimenting are very low. Just try it, see what happens.
You said you’re interested in undergraduate education in general. Can you talk a little more about that, and are you interested in pursuing that as a career?
The short answer is I don’t know, but hopefully. Because I went to a small liberal arts college, I do think I had a really strong undergraduate focused experience that was really formative for me. So I do really care a lot about that. I think coming here, I’ve had good experiences TAing. I’ve taught an undergraduate senior seminar. And I think UW of course gives so, so many opportunities to a lot of these students, but I think there are also a lot of things that get missed. I care a lot about getting undergraduates those specific experiences because again, we have so many resources.
But yeah, in general, I just really enjoy teaching and mentoring. I think it’s really fun. It’s really rewarding. So in terms of, will I do that in the future? I hope to. In terms of research direction, our lab right now studies antibiotic resistance. Once I graduate, which will hopefully be soon, I’m trying to pivot into reproductive health and fertility, so I kind of need to do that first and figure out what is in that research field, and then I’m hopeful that I can translate that to teaching in an undergraduate setting at some point and develop a research program. So this [program] was a good experience for me, I think, professional development wise.
Is there anything that you would want to share with either students who are applying for this program or other potential mentors who are considering working with the program as you have?
Well, I guess I can say to potential mentors, you should totally do it! It’s a lot of fun. And like I said, I think it’s a great, really well-structured program for somebody who doesn’t have a lot of experience mentoring undergrads and wants to learn how. It could be a really great opportunity especially because you can have co-mentors, it’s not only you. So I think that that’s really great. That’s a good incentive to just give it a try. I do feel like if someone’s trying to figure out if this is something I might be interested in, that could be a really awesome experience for them and for their lab.
Let’s see, things for students applying. That I feel like I know less about. You know, I guess similarly, labs are excited to have you. This is a program that I think a lot of people really believe in. So, I don’t know if that encourages potential applicants or not. For those of us who are mentoring undergraduates, this is extra for us. No one is requiring us to do this, right? So like, we want you to come, we want you to apply. We’re not just checking a box. We get no credit for this.
Is there anything else you wanted to share? Any last thoughts?
Danielle’s doing great. We like her a lot. We’re excited to stay in touch with her. You know, hear how she’s doing in the future.