This week’s PhDetails is with Jess Trinh who studies at the University of California, Riverside. Jess did a four year undergrad in Molecular Environmental Biology at the University of California, Berkeley which she completed in 2016. During this time she mostly worked with Dr. Mary Firestone on the ecology of soil bacteriophages. Jess told me that after graduating worked she for 2 years at the Joint BioEnergy Institute, where she worked on several different projects ranging from studying response regulator mechanisms to the phytoproduction of microbially-relevant compounds. Whilst there she worked primarily under Dr. Aindrila Mukhopadhyay, who is affiliated with both the Biological Systems and Engineering division as well as the Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology division, both at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She told me this is probably where she gets her interest in interdisciplinary research projects from! You can find Jess on Twitter: @jess_trinh or IG: @jessdoesascience
Well let’s start off talking about completely unscientific stuff: What is your favourite band/musical artist pre 1980?
Gee, does it have to be pre-1980? I don’t think I have one, honestly. Does listening to a smattering of classical music count? Haha.
Favourite band/musical artist post 1980?
Nowadays, I don’t have one favorite artist since I listen to a lot of different types of music and it changes with the seasons. I like stuff from bands like Muse and Arctic Monkeys, but I also am into K-Pop groups like Monsta X.
Favourite movie?
I liked Interstellar a lot.
Do you listen to podcasts?
Unfortunately no, it’s hard for me to work or do most things while listening to a podcast…
Where do you study and who is your supervisor?
I’m in a Microbiology program at the University of California, Riverside, in the Dr. Wenbo Ma lab.
What year of your PhD are you in?
Second!
Do you have any publications?
I have a couple co-authored publications from before I started grad school, and one that came out (from a previous institution) while I am in grad school.
Did you do a masters – where was it and was it about?
Nope – I went straight for PhD programs after working for 2 years out of undergrad.
Do you do fieldwork? What is the best fieldwork you have ever done and what made it great?
The fieldwork that I’ve done is limited. Sometimes we collect samples from the Citrus Variety Collection to test in the laboratory, which is always a fun time because all the citrus trees smelled amazing.
How many PhDs did you apply for – what were you looking for?
I applied to about 5 schools, looking for things like how big the program was, what types of work each professor did, and whether the school allowed rotations.
What is the most bodged piece of equipment you have had to use during field/labwork – did it work?
I think the weirdest thing about doing labwork is that a lot of the time I’d have to duct-tape tubes or parts together in order to make them work. For example, I’d have to duct-tape some tubes to a shaker so that I can leave them there to incubate sometimes. It’d work after adding several strips of duct-tape, but I really want to avoid having to do too much of that.
What one piece of advice would you give to a masters student applying to PhDs now?
Try not to let rejections discourage you – PhD programs are competitive as hell and some folks have had to re-apply for years before they get into one. Rejections are not reflective on how you are as a person.
How often do you meet with your supervisor?
Depends on how busy we both are. We try to meet once every couple of weeks.
What supervisor traits are important to you?
Traits like being generally supportive of their trainees and giving honest feedback about any solutions that I try to come up with.
What do you think are the worst supervisor traits?
I think the worst traits are being super condescending or having extremely unrealistic expectations.
In one sentence what is your PhD about?
I’m trying to understand plant immune mechanisms against the potential causative agents of citrus Huanglongbing (HLB), a disease that is costing the citrus industry billions of dollars in crop damages.
What has been your academic highlight of the last year?
I’ve gone from knowing little about bioinformatics to being able to slowly build and run a bioinformatic pipeline from start to finish.
Have you had an academic lowpoint of the last year – if so what happened?
There was a period of at least a month where none of the experiments I had ongoing were working. It was getting to this really annoying point where I felt that I had already changed all the variables on the planet – with no success.
Which academic idol/scientist have you met?
I didn’t realize it at the time, but Dr. Jay Keasling is very well known in the world of biofuels and bioproducts. He’s a fun person to be around.
Which academic idol/scientist would you most like to meet?
I had Dr. Jennifer Doudna as a professor for one of my biology courses in undergrad, but I really wish I could have talked to her one-on-one.
Who has been your academic role model/inspiration and why?
Dr. Peggy Lemaux is a wonderful person working at UC Berkeley who has a very interesting role. Not only does she manage her own lab, she works part time designing outreach and education programs for the public as one of the university’s extension specialists. I admire her dedication to both her work in science as well as bringing the science that we work hard on every day to the public.
What has been your favourite conference so far – why?
I’ve only been to one conference so far, which is the International Research Conference on HLB in 2019. I enjoyed taking in all of the interesting work that all the researchers are up to in this field, and it was honestly a great way for me to catch up to where we left off in this subject.
What hours do you typically work?
Since I carpool with housemates, we always try to arrive on campus around 8:30 am and leave roughly around 5:30 pm. I’m TA-ing this quarter and have a few evening discussion sections to lead as well. I’ll sometimes come in on weekends, but mostly only when I have a deadline that I need to meet.
How do you avoid procrastinating?
Since I try to stick to a rigid schedule, I try to plan out all the experiments I need to do in advance. I’ll usually have a good idea of which days have tons of meetings and which days are better for me to maintain an experiment as opposed to starting a new one. I’ll sometimes do data analysis or any computer work at home.
What motivates you in your day to day PhD life?
The friends that I have made here – collectively, we are all doing amazing things with our PhDs and although we may be buried in the nitty gritty details of our day-to-day work, I try to step back and look at the bigger picture.
What do you do when you’re not working – how do you balance it with your PhD?
I have many different hobbies to try to work out the creative side of my brain a little more! One of my main hobbies is cosplay; I make my own costumes and wear them to conventions. I usually do this on weekends and evenings when I don’t come into lab, as a way to take my mind off of all the thinking I have to do for my work.
If a genie could grant you one wish to help with your PhD what would you wish for?
Better public transit! Seriously, I’d love to be able to not have to worry about finishing on time to leave with my housemates, or to be able to come in as early as I want. I have a car already, but parking on campus is expensive and it’s super wasteful for 3 people to take 3 separate cars to school…
What would be your dream job?
I’ve hinted at this a little bit when talking about Dr. Lemaux, but honestly, a job that involves planning outreach and education modules to go along with research. This could involve me working for a museum in which I could design exhibits or design experiments to answer everyday questions people may have.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
I would hope to move back to the Bay Area where I’m from, at a job that hopefully fulfils my desires to communicate science to the public.
One word to sum up your future in academia:
Exciting?
What do you want to achieve outside of academia in the coming year?
I want to finish 2 different cosplays! Still haven’t hammered out the details for those. I also want to plan a pop-up museum for our SciComm group.
What essential tool hardware/software could you not do your PhD without?
Any of our micropipettes – the bread and butter of molecular biology.
Where is somewhere you would like to work in the future?
Back where I’m from, the San Francisco Bay Area.
Do you have a favourite organism – what is it and why – is it different from your study organism(s)?
When I took a Microbiology course back in undergrad, I thought the bacterium called Deinococcus radiodurans was really cool. It was discovered after scientists failed to sterilize meat with high levels of radiation, because this organism has several copies of its genome. The radiation can’t break all of the copies, so the broken copies can get fixed by copies that aren’t. It’s totally different from my study organism, but knowing that there are microbes out there with extreme characteristics like that makes me excited about my own work.
Are there any social interactions/meetings which have enhanced your PhD experience e.g. social seminars/group meetings?
I owe a lot of my positive experiences in my PhD to the friends that I have made along the way. Being able to relax with them, eat food, make food, and just hang out in general makes my life that much better.
I also want to give a shout-out to the amazing people who are in SciComm @ UCR (Twitter: @SciCommUCR), for giving me an outlet for my science communication dreams!
If you could change one thing about your group/department structure what would it be?
I wish that our department was a little more cohesive. We’re an interdisciplinary department and that’s why a lot of us Microbiology folks end up spread all over campus. I’m glad that it gives us the opportunity to research aspects of Microbiology in a wide range of fields, but I hardly ever see some of the people in my department. Most of the friends I have are in other departments (ex: Entomology, Chemical Engineering, etc).
What major question in your subject area is yet to be addressed – why is it important and why isn’t anyone addressing it?
We have so much to learn about this disease. We can’t culture any of the potential causative agents outside of the host, which is a major challenge to our research. It’s hard to pick a single question that has not been addressed because quite honestly, there are so many things that haven’t been addressed because we are still learning about the basic biology of the possible pathogens that cause this disease. Many scientists are working on this disease and are trying their best, but science takes a very long time.
Comments
Post a Comment