Why University of Wisconsin and the Coon lab?

UW has a variety of great labs to choose from, which was appealing because I wasn’t fully decided on a research area. I really liked the diversity of projects I saw happening in the Coon lab and its collaborations with different groups in the university and across the country. Rather than imagine myself doing the same every day, I was drawn to the opportunity to use cutting-edge technology in a variety of biological applications.

How did the Coon lab prepare you for your current position?

The most important thing that I gained from the Coon lab wasn’t so much the specific projects in my dissertation as learning mass spectrometry as a whole and gaining an understanding of instrumentation and method development. At Just, while I work primarily on antibody characterization using MS, I also get to bring in my metabolomics experience to support the company’s expanding work on multi-omics, which is exciting.

Prof Coon is well known in mass spec, so coming from his lab is definitely a benefit for anyone. From a broader professionalization perspective, there are a lot of opportunities in the Coon lab to really drive your own collaborations—you work with a lot of different scientists and different projects—and are often leading those meetings and meeting with PIs one-on-one or with their grad students. Getting to organize and lead collaborative projects is great experience for probably any job you’re going to get outside of grad school because you learn how to be a good colleague—someone who can translate the science so that others can understand it, who can take initiative in organizing these collaborations, and who people simply want to work with.