ISBI Daily - Friday

Jessica Sieren ISBI DAILY Friday 5 I’m still of the generation where there was smoking allowed in restaurants and everywhere. Yes, I had my own history with smoking, social smoking, before I joined the lab that I did in internal medicine and started working on a project with lung cancer and thought, “ I should probably stop this .” [ Laughs ] Tell me about your lab. We’re at the University of Iowa. Primarily, I’ve had graduate students from biomedical engineering. We have a wonderful biomedical engineering program there, so we partner with them to get students. I’ve had wonderful graduate students. I’ve had two PhDs that have graduated, and I currently have a third PhD who’s nearing the end of her PhD, and she’s the one that’s presenting the breast cancer CAD. Now, a question to the teacher. Were you happier when you got your PhD or when one of your students got his or her PhD? [ Laughs ] It’s an interesting thing. I think when I got my PhD, you feel a lot of personal ownership of that project. I think when a student gets a PhD, you are so proud of what they have achieved, you know? And in my case, I’ve been so pleasantly surprised how well they’ve handled it, how much they’ve grown, what they’ve achieved, that yes, I think it’s a different sort of pride, you know? You can only claim a small portion of what they’ve done, whereas when you do it, you claim all of it. [ Laughs ] Were there crises during your PhD, and did you see similar crises in your students’ PhD path? What was the best way to handle them? Yes, that’s a really interesting question. So, for sure. I think if you don’t have a crisis during your PhD, you’re not doing it right! [ Laughs ] But I think it’s very hard, especially for engineers. We tend to want to know that there’s a right answer and that we have achieved it. In research, that’s not always the case. And so, it can be a rough transition from going from artificial situations where there is a right and a wrong answer and a right answer is achievable that you have through your education, to joining a research program and being assigned a project that does not have a right answer and having that responsibility of “ If you don’t have a crisis during your PhD, you’re not doing it right! With PhD student Samantha Dilger