Carli Roush, Timothy Dwight '22
Finding Community in the Lab
By Rashel Chipi
Oftentimes, connections with individuals and communities lead the way to a new career path. For Carli, it took these connections to find her preferred major, lab projects, and lab family, allowing her to find support and give back to her communities. Carli participated in the First-year Scholars at Yale (FSY) Program the summer before her first year. The program selects a cohort of first-generation and/or low-income college students and introduces them to resources provided by the university as well as academic courses. One of the events led by FSY is called Faculty Perspectives, which introduces students to several professors, from different departments. This is where Carli met Professor Turner, who is head of the lab where she now works. Carli recalls finding Professor Turner’s presentation fascinating and she was left wanting to find out more about his department.
In the spring of her first year, Carli decided to take a course within Professor Turner’s department called “Virus Discovery and Evolution'' which is, “to this day [her] favorite class that [she] has ever taken,” at Yale, and even became the reason Carli decided to major in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. The course was formatted as a space for building undergraduate research experiences, where students design a research project and carry out experiments to answer questions they have about viruses. Carli found the style of this class particularly interesting since it was different from her other lab experiences in Introductory Biology or General Chemistry, where students are given protocols guided towards an expected result. For her research project, , Carli explored the trade-offs between antibiotic resistance in bacteria and resistance to bacteriophage, which are viruses that only infect bacteria. Specifically, she focused on the evolutionary trade off between phage resistance and sensitivity to an antibiotic called Colistin.
In the summer after her first year, Carli did the STARS Summer Research Fellowship, a program that encourages first-generation and minoritized students interested in science to engage in on-campus research. In order to be accepted, Carli needed to find a lab that she would like to work in so she arranged a meeting with Professor Turner and joined the Turner Lab in May. The lab focuses on researching phage therapy as an alternative for bacterial infections that are antibiotic resistant from prolonged exposure to antibiotics. That summer, Carli spent about 40 hours a week in the lab for being trained in laboratory techniques and learning how a lab works outside of a classroom.
During the “Virus Discovery in Evolution'' class, Carli was disappointed to find that there wasn’t a fixed trade-off between phage resistance and sensitivity to Colistin, but this initial experiment led to an entirely new project that she worked on in the lab the following school year and even recently got published in the Proceedings in the National Academy of the Sciences Journal- an incredibly impressive feat for a sophomore.
Carli has also been able to engage with lab members in non-academic spaces and create meaningful and amicable connections with her mentors.The postdoc professor who taught “Virus Discovery and Evolution” ended up being Carli’s research mentor in the Turner Lab. They still work closely together and even have occasional calls to catch up. Carli had the opportunity to be the TA for the class this last spring. Carli’s story is a testament to the interactions that are possible within research spaces.
“Last summer, somebody said it's been a while since we did lab happy hour so we all went to East Rock Brewery after lab, ordered pizza, and played cards against humanity. Later that year, Professor Turner invited all of us to his house for a Christmas party.”
Within Carli’s lab there is a very collaborative culture: “It’s understood that if at any point you have a question or you wanna show somebody a weird result, even if they have headphones on you can just tap their shoulder and they will be responsive. I love my lab because there’s a pretty wide array of specific projects and areas that people work on and if there’s something you’re not sure about, chances are that somebody else has already done that work before and can give you tips.”
When asked how Carli navigated asking her lab mentor for pay, Carli explained that her first summer, this wasn’t an issue since the STARS scholarship funded her summer. The following fall, her research mentor suggested that she apply to do research for course credit, which she did for two semesters. The following year, she explained to her research mentor that she was applying for an additional research grant, but she wouldn’t find out if she was accepted until the end of the semester and needed to ensure a paid job since she is a low-income student. Carli’s mentor agreed to begin paying Carli for her time.
Carli’s most important tip for first-years is to not be afraid to reach out to principal investigators (PIs) even if you have no previous experience working in a lab. Carli urges you to remember that PIs love their work and love to talk about it and will gladly talk about it with you. Aside from Carli’s impressive work within her major, Carli also loved working in the buttery and was looking forward to becoming the buttery manager had the butteries not closed due to Covid-19 restrictions. Carli is also involved with an organization called New Haven Resource for Essay and Application College Help (REACH), where volunteer Yale students are paired with seniors from New Haven Public Schools for personalized mentoring and guidance for all applications.