Why Wisconsin and the Coon lab?

I chose Wisconsin primarily for the culture of the department. I also greatly valued the opportunity to be part of the NIH-funded Biotechnology Training Program (BTP).  BTP funded an industry internship, and that later translated into a job opportunity. I really loved the interdisciplinary nature of the Coon Lab – it’s not just an instrumentation lab, but also applied science which has put me ahead in my current industry environment where most others are more specialized. Altogether, I cannot speak highly enough about what I got out of the Coon lab, its high profile research that allows you to work on the cutting-edge.

What was the most rewarding part of graduate school?

Seeing the big impact of some of the research I did in the Coon Lab.  For example, I led the project to put ETD on the first new orbitrap.  This work was immediately developed into a commercial product by Thermo Fisher Scientific and seeing my research in the hands of hundreds of scientists across the globe was extremely satisfying.  This feeling helped me decide I wanted to continue this type of research and to go to industry.

What are you currently doing and how has your training prepared you for that?

I am currently a senior scientist at Thermo Fisher Scientific working on new instrumentation with a team of a half dozen other scientists.  We conceive, design, and build new mass spectrometry instrumentation.  This job is a direct extension of what I did while in graduate school.  Every day I use the fundamental skill sets I learned while in the Coon lab – computer programming, ion physics, mass spectrometry, etc.