Featured Career: Scientist

I’m still looking to build up my bank of featured careers! So if you’d like to be featured in the new year shoot me an email! amber (at) girlwiththeredhair (dot) com.

I’m also looking for more Stay at Home mom’s to feature! I feature any and all careers, so if you think your career is “boring”, it probably isn’t and I would LOVE to feature you

And if we were emailing before the holiday’s about being featured and you haven’t heard from me it’s probably because I lost the email when my email was hacked! So please send me another one.

Thanks!

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Here are the last five careers I’ve featured and you can find ALL my career features HERE!

• Speech Language Pathologist
• Music Therapist
• History Professor
• Stay at Home Mom Feature II
• Director of Support Services

Today I am featuring Rose-Anne from Life, Love and Food!

Rose-Anne at her thesis defence with her niece.

1. What is your official job title and what exactly does your job entail?

I am a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Medicine at Texas A & M Health Science Center.   I am a full-time researcher, which means I spend my days trying to discover something new.  More specifically, I work in a lab that studies taste in the fruit fly, which is a model system for genetic discovery.  We’re interested in the genes and anatomy that allow a fly to sense its chemical environment, which is important for feeding behavior: Eat this sweet thing!  Don’t eat that poisonous thing!

2.How did you get into your field of work?

This story meanders a little, so let me connect the dots for you.  I love food and cooking; in fact, I write a food blog called Life, Love, and Food, in which I share recipes and food stories from my life.  As a college student studying neuroscience, I was intrigued by the ways in which brain damage could have profound effects on behavior, such as the famous case of Phineas Gage, whose behavior changed radically after an accident in which an iron rod was driven through his forehead and a large portion of his brain.  After college, I headed off to graduate school to earn a PhD in neuroscience.  I followed my interest in behavior into a lab that studies circadian rhythms and sleep in fruit flies.  As I was finishing my PhD, I knew I wanted to continue working with fruit flies because they’re a great model organism, and I knew I wanted to continue studying behavior.  When I realized that I could study taste in fruit flies and use many of the skills I’d learned in graduate school, I applied for a job in the lab where I work now.

3.What exactly does studying ‘female sexual behavior’ mean? That sounds fascinating!

It is!  I love my project.  In humans and in other animals, males and females engage in courtship behavior.  For humans, this might involve a man buying a woman a drink in a bar, then striking up a conversation, and perhaps asking for her phone number at the end of the night.  At any of those steps, she can say no, which might end the encounter.  Female flies do the same thing, in their own fly way.

Flies have a very stereotypical pattern of behavior during courtship.  It’s always initiated by the male, who will follow the female, “sing” to her by extending and vibrating a wing, and finally, he’ll try to mount her in order to begin copulation.  A female fly will almost always reject a male’s first advances; she’ll run away from him or kick him as he is approaching her.  But eventually, she accepts his advances and the two flies will mate.  Interestingly, there isn’t much known about how the brain controls female sexual behavior.  Presumably there are circuits that are involved in the female’s decision about whether or not to allow a male to court her.  Likewise, we know that there are circuits in the male fly’s brain that are necessary for him to engage in courting behavior.

A greenhouse near where Rose-Anne works.

4.Have you learned anything interesting or of note that you can share?

I’ve found a taste receptor mutant in which the mutant females show more rejection behavior than a female without the mutation.  Now I’m trying to figure out which cells require the taste receptor in order for a female to have normal sexual behavior.  I am most interested in why this particular taste receptor affects sexual behavior in females.  We have an idea or two…

5.Describe a typical day in your work life?

Great question!  I do a lot of behavior experiments these days, so my day is structured around the behavior.  In the morning, I test flies in my courtship assay.

In the afternoons, I analyze the courtship data.  And at the beginning and end of every day, I’m collecting new flies that I’ll use for future behavior experiments.  I also spend some time in meetings every week, but most of my day is centered around experiments.

6.What’s your least favourite thing about your job?

Right now I have no job security, and it’s really stressful not knowing when I’ll be going back on the job market.

7.What is something about your job that surprises people?

That nobody calls me doctor!  I have a PhD, but my colleagues and I use first names with each other.  Academic science is a fairly casual environment, so very few people use titles with one another.

8.If you could describe your career in one word, what would that word be?

Discovery.

9.Anything else you’d like to add?

My favorite thing about my job is my colleagues.  I get to work with really smart, curious people, and they are the highlight of my day.  Science is a tough field, and failure is very common for all researchers, but I work in a really supportive environment, and that makes it easier to persevere through the hard times.

Oh, and if anyone would like to send some grant money my way to fund my research, I am now accepting donations!

Thanks for having me as part of your Career Features series, Amber!  I am honored to be included.

Thanks, Rose-Anne!

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So interesting! I have to admit that while reading most of this post I was thinking of Ross Gellar as I associate that name with “PhD” and “scientist”

I am so not a science-y person. I used to want to be a marine biologist but when I learned how much biology (duh Amber) and science related courses that would involve me taking I quickly switched career path idea’s.

Were you good at science in school?