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In print | April 24, 2008

Mary Prager: When applying for an NSF grant, you wrote up a research proposal, correct? What was your proposal, and what do you plan to do with it?

Lydia Thé: How you could find more players required for totipotency and totipotency is an important thing to understand because understanding how totipotency works, which is the ability that stem cells and germ-line cells (germ line cells being sperm and egg cells) have to become any type of cell the body has, has magnificent potential for generating organs for particular diseases and extending fertility of older eggs, because right now, the older the eggs get, their ability to generate normal whole organisms deteriorates, to figure that out. I’m not necessarily required to take my research proposal, and I don’t really plan to, but I do plan to study the cytoskeleton, which is the skeleton that cells have to keep their shape and to move, and this is particularly important — I mean, it’s just cool, I want to study it because it’s cool science –—but it also has real health implications which makes it interesting to people, and the example that a lot of people use is the metastasis of cancer. In order for cells to metastasize, they need to use the cytoskeleton to move, and so to understand how the cytoskeleton works would be really great, because if you knew how it worked you could hinder it and potentially hinder cancer cells from metastasizing and lmit their potency.

MP: How do you feel about receiving the NSF grant?

LT: Well, it’s a really big deal. It’s 121, 500 over three years for your stipend for three years and for your tuition. It doesn’t cover everything but it covers a lot. It’s also it’s more than the money, the money is nice but it doesn’t make that much of a difference in my life, but the prestige really will make a difference, and it’s really encouraging, just on a personal level, to know that a panel of scientist looked at my application and said, “Yeah, she’s a promising scientist. We’re going to give her money.” And it’s also just, in terms of my career, it’s the first huge achievement that I’ve made and it will help me forward when I’m searching for further grants, and push my career forward.

MP: Where does your interest in the sciences come from?

LT: I participated in … a program the New York Academy of Sciences had which was called the Summer Research Training Program, just for high schoolers. The first time I did that, I was sixteen, and it was really, I think my interest in science was inherent, and I think interest in science is just inherent in most people. When you look at kids they’re just really interested in figuring out things, and so really it’s not so much that some people get interested in science and they go ahead and pursue it.

I think it’s that some people get mentored and their interest in science gets nurtured into something that they then want to pursue and feel that they can pursue, and having that kind of mentorship and support at such a young age of sixteen and throughout college has made it possible for me to realize that, yeah, I like science, but I can actually do science.

And I think there aren’t that many great role models for women of color in science, so having people actually mentor me and support me and show me that they really thought that I had potential and was worth investing time and energy allowed me to nurture that inherent interest in science.

MP: What do you plan do after grad school?

LT: Well, I plan to, or I hope to, run a lab and do lots of cool science, and become famous! But I also think that if I really want to have this impact on science, yeah, I can do some great science myself and that’s going to have its own value, but I think the greatest value I can have is to mentor people. Your ability to do research and discover cool things is limited, but if you mentor the next generation, then they can go and pursue that, and that would be even greater.

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