University of Michigan

I think this entry should begin with the general feeling of riding on a prop plane…wow. I sat next to the wing on my flight from Bloomington to Detroit, and as soon as they started the propeller, my entire seat (with me in it), and pretty much the entire plane began to vibrate. Even better, the two propellers were rotating at slightly different frequencies, leaving my poor musician heart to shudder in the wake of the interfering pitches for over an hour. Yikes. We also got to take the scenic route from the runway to the gate after a very slippery landing. As we landed in the concourse across from the airport, we had to walk through this long tunnel underneath the runway: the ceilings glow and morph colors, making you wonder if you ended up in Space Mountain in Disneyworld.

A friend picked me up from the airport, and we drove to Ann Arbor in a bit of snow. We ate lunch at a cute Southwestern restaurant on Main Street, enjoying the warmth of really good salsa through such a chilly afternoon. At about six, I met up with Mary Allen and Anna Carlson, two alums of IWU now studying for their masters degrees in performance from the University of Michigan. It sounds like they’re having a great time here, but the relationships that are fostered at Wesleyan just aren’t there in such a big school. They do love the area, though.

I checked into the hotel, trying to find the elevators in a swarm of college-aged students; about 200 people visited this weekend for the PIBS program. PIBS is the Program in Biomedical Science, an umbrella program which encompasses 13 different departments. As a student in PIBS, you are afforded a certain amount of flexibility with laboratory rotations and classes, which is a great thing for someone so interested in collaboration and learning, oh, just about everything.

Our host students met us at the hotel at about 8:30, and we walked to a restaurant called Cottage Inn, the first of many such pizza/pasta places around the country. There were four students and four hosts, each from a combination of programs. My host was Jocelyn, a third year MD/PhD student. She is the epitome of lovely, and extremely descriptive in giving me the real flavor of the UM campus. I feel very lucky to have met someone so supportive of the somewhat unconventional plans I have following my doctorate (or, more adequately put, my lack of plans, but plethora of ideas).

After dinner, I got to meet my roommate, Nikki, a tech that works at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She’s interested in host-pathogen interaction in bacteriology and virology, which is way cool. We had to wake up really early the next morning to be ready for interviews, meeting our hosts downstairs at 8 am.

We walked over to Rackham Graduate School, a newly-renovated building near the main campus. We had a quick breakfast and then a talk from the head of the program about life at the University of Michigan. The stipend for next year will be $26,500 (something that made all of our hosts very excited since that is a $1,500 increase over last year). We had a short introduction to the main framework of PIBS, which includes taking two of three classes: biochemistry, cell biology, or genetics, as well as specific seminar courses and electives across departments.

A cool thing about doing all these interview weekends is that you are better able to define why exactly you think that X subject is what you are interested in pursing as a career. My interest in immunology has been refined to the idea that one of the fundamental functions of an organism is how it interacts with its environment and distinguishes self from non-self and responds accordingly. The immune system is also the quintessential basis of all disease, and while medicine has become very good at treating disease, it is still not very good at teasing out exactly why certain things happen, and how to prevent and treat the cause instead of just a symptom.

Also, I find myself becoming very critical of windows in labs. After being spoiled at both the U of M and MIT with huge windows, I think I’d go nuts in the labs with no windows at all. If I’m going to spend five years of my life and 10 hours a day plus in a lab, there has got to be windows.

My first interview was with Dr. Matt Chapman, a professor that actually has a lab in the life sciences building on the main campus. The building reminds me of a Catholic high school built in the 1950’s, but the lab rooms are still outfitted with everything you’d need. However, it still feels like the lab is a repurposed classroom, which isn’t a bad thing…just different. He was extremely charismatic and quite young, which made him really easy to relate to. He does work with curli (curl-eye), fibers secreted intentionally by bacteria in order to form biofilm, a network of bacteria better able to infect other organisms. He found that these natural fibers are extremely similar to those fibers and plaques produced in diseases like Alzheimer's and mad cow disease.

Also, before I continue, a clarification of nasty things: the difference between pathogens and antigens is kind of confusing, and often the terminology is used interchangeably: pathogens are biological agents which disrupt the normal functions of an organism, causing what is commonly considered to be disease or illness; antigens are parts of bacteria, fungi, or other cells (usually a sugar or a protein) that cause an immune response.

Dr. Wes Dunnick is basically my dad. He is slightly crotchety, has a love affair with coffee, and expects a lot from his students. A bit of background on immunology: within the immune system, there are two main types of cells: B cells and T cells. T cells are known as “killer” cells, and actually phagocytosize (=eat/internalize) bacteria and other nasty things. On the other hand, B cells are considered “memory” cells, and there are always a few B cells running around that remember each infection you’ve had, from the chicken pox you had that Christmas when you were three to the cold you had that summer in Mexico. So, if you come back in contact with those same pathogens, B cells are activated and begin to divide, producing T cells that will take care of the infections quickly. That’s why there is the advice to expose your children to lots of runny noses when they are young: they are in effect building up their arsenal of B cells. It’s kind of like going through a video game and getting more and more specialized weapons. Each B cells has one type of infection that it can defend against, so you need a lot of different B cells to be ready for any range of infections. However, if you are exposed to an unknown pathogen or antigen, you don’t have a B cell to remember it. So, a process occurs called antigen-driven recombination. Genetic material is reshuffled and cleaved by enzymes in order for there to be the correct antigen-recognizing sequence on the surface of the cell. Picture a brightly colored plastic chain (the kind you played with when you were in kindergarten) and taking those bits of the chain and reordering them into a different sequence. This means that a different protein will be produced, and this different protein will “match” with a different antigen. As soon as the B cells are finished undergoing this response, they begin to divide and differentiate into killer T cells and take on the infection. After they have done their work, the T cells die, leaving only a faint memory of the infection within the residual B cells. Dr. Dunnick’s lab does work with this sort of genetic modification, and he is looking for the way in which genes recombine.

My next interview was with Jocelyn’s PI (= principle investigator), Dr. David Miller. He did his MD/PhD at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, so we chatted a bit about Minnesota before getting to the work his lab does with host-pathogen interactions. Jocelyn works with the more immunology side of his research, which deals with the role that viral genes (=RNA) activated innate immune responses of the central nervous system. She’s actually doing some work with differentiating stem cells into neurons for her studies, as well as lots of work with interferons (proteins produced to prevent viral replication inside a cell). Other members of the lab work more with the actual viruses themselves. He was really kind, and seemed like he would be a great mentor.

Next, the recruits had lunch and watched a fourth-year graduate student present her work on intracellular pathogens: this is actually part of a required class to prepare yourself in speaking and presenting your work (you have to do a half-hour talk as a second year and an hour-long talk as a fourth year). For your qualifying exams your second year, you do an “antithesis,” which means you present a bit about three recent articles in top journals, your faculty committee picks one, and you have a month to write an NIH grant proposal and submit it to the committee for perusal. Two weeks later, you present your proposal and defend your choices. Scary. But excellent practice for the real world.

The next interview was in the newly-built science building, which has an auditorium shaped like a pringle. No joke.




Unfortunately, my interviewer, Dr. Beth Moore, read the schedule wrong, and came back about five minutes before our interview was scheduled to end (and they put us in a very tight schedule, especially with the walks between buildings, so I couldn't stay any longer than those five minutes). She was really sweet, though, and felt terrible. She didn’t talk much about her lab (which works with pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis and also bacterial complications on bone marrow transplants). However, she did have some helpful advice about the financial side of things. She said that it would be a good idea to email those professors I met at schools regarding their funding situations for the next few years, given the tough times at the NSF/NIH right now (these are the primary governmental organizations that award grant money). She also made sure to note that this low funding period is usually cyclic, and by the time our class would be looking to start their own labs, there would be money again. I’m not so sure the PI route is for me, but it’s still good to know that it may be an option.

My final interview was with Dr. Alex Ninfa, and of everyone I have interviewed with so far, he has been the most disappointing. I was asked two questions: “How do you like Ann Arbor?” and “When were you born?” The second was in reference to the paper he published on nitrogen regulation in bacteria in 1986…the year I was born…and how it has over 400 citations, and he has X amount of money to continue this investigation…and how he is also flush with money to play with “trick bacteria.” Now, people should be proud of their accomplishments and what they have done, but I left feeling patronized and knowing that such a lab is not for me.

After my five interviews, I took part in a new tradition being started in the Microbiology and Immunology Department to try and build community in the department. Every day from 3:00 – 3:30, professors and students gather to have tea and a sort of snack, getting out of lab to chat and just do something else besides stare at a computer screen or pipette. Being a bit of a tea addict myself, this would give me just the boost I would need in the afternoon to get through my remaining 4-5 hours of work.

We had a quick meet and greet with our second choice from the thirteen of the PIBS departments, so I went to the adjacent building and met with the faculty of Molecular and Cellular Pathology. Many of the doctors here do a lot of clinical work, and observing an autopsy is actually a requirement of the first class you take within that track. Hardcore.

Dinner was at the home of Dr. Alice Telesnitsky…I don’t know how she found so many chairs and tables to seat almost 100 people and cook such a wonderful meal. The professors seemed a lot more relaxed and willing to chat about everything from the weather (which people consistently apologized for, but after Minnesota, nothing shocks me). Many of the prospective students went on to Leopold’s, a local microbrewery, for an after-party, but I was exhausted and went back to the hotel instead.

Early the next morning was a tour of campus on a charter bus. Ann Arbor really is the University of Michigan, but it seems a bit more well-rounded than Yale with the combination of arts, sports, music, and science. The “Big House” where the infamous University of Michigan football team plays is gigantic…I cannot believe that 110,000 people fit in that stadium. It is unreal. I can’t even imagine what game day is like.


There is also a Target, Whole Foods, Trader Joes, and Zingerman’s about a mile from campus: perfect. Also, as a University of Michigan ID-holder, you have free unlimited access to the bus system, which must be almost completely subsidized by the university: so exciting!

The final event of the weekend was a lunch reception with representatives from all 13 departments with posters about their specific programs and both faculty and students pitching their programs…one of the odd things about the umbrella program is a tendancy it has to be redundant: there is Cellular & Molecular Biology, as well as Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. Okay…I guess so.

I took a taxi with three other students to the airport, and we parted ways, me arriving back in Bloomington just in time to go to work (I play in the pep band, a paid position here at IWU) to watch the men's basketball team beat Elmhurst. Fantastic!