October 2015 – Page 3 – Penn & Beyond

A Summer of Cells and Sunshine

This is the next in a series of posts by recipients of the Career Services Summer Funding grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they’ve been spending the summer. You can read the entire series here.

This entry is by Rolando D.Z. Lyles

I spent my Summer in beautiful Miami, FL home of the cool ocean breeze, beautiful palm trees, and where the temperature is rarely below 70 degrees. However, my stay in the city wasn’t to just sulk in the sun. I was given the amazing opportunity to participate and contribute to the ongoing prostate cancer research lab of Dr. Kerry Burnstein at the University Of Miami Miller School Of Medicine. This opportunity was perfectly aligned with my future desires to become a researching professor. What made it better was that I have been interested in the research being conducted in Dr. Burnstein’s lab for the past 2 years and to secure a position in her University of Miami lab for a Summer was surreal for me. Furthermore, for this Summer in particular, it was important for me to be stationed in Miami because my father who is fervently battling with prostate cancer lives there and I don’t want to miss any opportunities to secure lasting memories with him.

In the lab, I worked under the direct tutelage of Dr. Burnstein and Dr. Meghan Rice. Dr. Burnstein’s Lab and team not only welcomed me with open arms, but gave me my own project that intersected with the other projects that were being conducted by the other members of the lab. I wasn’t just sitting around doing menial lab tasks; I was actually contributing to the progression of science. My specific project involved 3D culturing prostate cancer cell lines on a special scaffold type that was acquired through a collaboration with another university. Unlike traditional 3D cancer cell culturing scaffolds, this scaffold didn’t only allow the cells to grow in a more natural spherical form, but it prompted the cells to cluster into micro-tumoriods as would be seen only in in vivo conditions. My task was to first run experiments to determine how to optimize the growing conditions for different cell lines with varying gene knockouts. This then transitioned to conducting separate five to six day experiments which involved culturing, fixing, probing then staining these cell lines in order to use confocal imaging techniques to visualize tumoroid growth and make comparisons across cell populations. These scaffolds have the potential to revolutionize the personalized care sector of cancer medicine by creating an inexpensive system for culturing patient biopsies and then tailoring specific treatments for improving that patient’s cancer by monitoring tumoriod progression.

Not only was this experience extremely enlightening but it has also helped propel my desires to continue my education after I graduate and pursue a doctorate degree. My time in Miami was spent just as would be expected. I spent my weekdays (an occasional Saturdays) conducting experiments in the lab. My evenings and weekends were spent with family enjoying quality time and embracing all that Miami has to offer. It was so fulfilling every day to wake up, get dressed and spend my day contributing to something that can potentially help better piece together our understanding of cancer, and save countless lives. One of the most gratifying parts of this Summer experience is that maybe one day in the future when the scaffolds are widely used throughout clinical research I can proudly say that I was one of the first researchers to ever work with them. As an undergraduate! Opportunities such as mine this past summer are what create tomorrow’s leaders.

A Day in the Life: Monika Haebich from rented

We’re very happy to be re-launching our popular “Day in the Life” twitter feed this Wednesday, October 14th!

Follow @PennCareerDay to get a behind-the-scenes look at a Penn alum or alumna’s work day. Learn about their industry, the specifics of their job, the hiring process and more as they live tweet a typical work day.

Kicking off our re-launch will be Monkia A. Haebich, COL ’15, who works for the vacation home rental start-up, rented.
Monika A. Haebich is a Marketing and Sales Associate at rented., the first online marketplace that uses outright sharing to bring together buyers and sellers of rental rights for underutilized assets including secondary homes, yachts, cars, and more. In her role, Monika works with the VP of Marketing and Product on client acquisition, content creation, social media strategy, and CRM and marketing automation management.

Monika graduated from Penn in 2015 with a B.A. in English concentrating on Literary Theory and Cultural Studies and minors in Consumer Psychology and Fine Arts. Originally from New York, Monika now lives in Atlanta and enjoys photography, polo, and traveling in her free time.

rented. helps owners of all kinds generate guaranteed, yearly incomes from their unused assets without the hassle and risk typically associated with rentals. Rather than self-managing or paying commissions or fees, owners are paid a guaranteed amount, regardless of occupancy rates, while managers provide turnkey service without charging commission or fees. rented. currently works with thousands of owners with assets across five continents.

Be sure to follow @PennCareerDay to learn about Monkia’s day and tweet questions to her!

CS Radio Episode 4: Volunteering

In this week’s episode, you can learn all about our upcoming Clinical Volunteering Mixer from Carol Hagan, Associate Director of the Pre-Graduate & Professional School advising team. Meanwhile, Michael and Mylène talk about how to best feature volunteer experience on your resume and why volunteering is just as valuable as work experience. As usual, you also get a look at the week ahead and highlights of upcoming Career Services programs.

Enjoy!

Sounding smart = being smart

Dr. Joseph Barber

The stepping stone approach to networking means that while the first people you meet who are relevant to your career interests might not be the best people for you to communicate with, they will probably have a much better idea of who you should be talking to (at least compared to you!). Take career fairs, for example. You might find yourself talking to a recruiter representing an organization that you are really interested in who turns out to have no information about the types of positions you want that match your experience. They might be there talking about sales positions, while you might be there looking for R&D positions. Rather than seeing this as connection fail, see it as a great opportunity to take a business card and follow up after the fair to see if that recruiter can point you in the right direction to someone more relevant to the career path you want to follow.

“Would it be OK if I reach out to you after the fair to see if you can point me towards someone at your organization who could answer some of the questions I have. It would be fantastic if you could share some of your institutional knowledge, and would definitely be of great help to me.”

There is another benefit to the stepping stone approach, and that is that if you follow the trail you will sound smarter and smarter as you progress. So, let’s say you are interested in careers in science communication. Through a close friend of yours, you set up an information interview with someone (contact#1) who works at a medical communications company. Before you meet you read up all you can about the field of medical communications, you jot down some of the questions you have, and you practice talking about yourself, and why you are potentially interested in this field. Here are some good informational interviewing questions you might use:

“I know that your position title is XXX, and I have been reading up about your role, but I would love to hear more about what you do on a day-to-day basis”

“Can you tell me a little about your career path and how it led you here?”

“What skills would you say are most valuable in your role, and which one do you rely on the most?”

“This position sounds really interesting, and from what I have heard, people really enjoy the process of translating complex science to the different audiences you mentioned. What are some of the most challenging aspects of your role?”

These questions give you insights into the position that are hard to find on a website. What’s more, you get to hear the language contact#1 uses to describe their role – language that you might one day need to use to describe your experiences if you apply for these types of positions. You also get to hear what skills are most valuable. These should be the skills you focus on in your application materials and in the answers to interview questions you might be asked. The “challenges” question can be a useful one, as you’ll see below. You don’t want to spend too much time focusing on negative experiences, because the more your contact talks about negative experiences, the greater the chance that they begin to associate the negative feelings they are having talking about these negative experiences with you in their mind. Challenges don’t have to be negative, though, and so this is certainly a much better way to phrase the question than asking: “what don’t you like about your job”!

The very final question you should ask can be a variation of this one:

“This has been a very helpful meeting, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me. I was particularly interested in hearing about the XXX position you mentioned. Do you know anyone in this role that I might reach out to for more information on this?”

The answer is usually “yes”. You can ask contact#1 if they could introduce you, or if you could use their name when you reach out to their suggested contact. Using this approach you should be able to reach out and set up a time to meet with the new contact (contact#2). In this meeting, one of the questions you might ask is something like:

“I know that some of the challenges you face in roles similar to yours are X, Y and Z [information you are parroting back from your previous informational interview], are these the same challenges that you face in your role?”

As contact#2 is listening to you, they are thinking to themselves “Oh my…, this person knows what they are talking about, they have done their homework here”. That’s not a bad thing to have circulating in their brain while you are talking. Of course, when you eventually ask contact#2 for the names of people they think you should talk to in order to gain additional insight into something they mentioned, you can take the information shared by contact#1 and contact#2 and integrate this into your questions for contact#3, who will also think to themselves that you sound awfully smart. And you know what…, you don’t just sound smarter at this point, you are smarter!

An Taisce

This summer I received a fantastic opportunity to work with An Taisce, the National Trust for Ireland, a charity that preserves and protects Ireland’s natural and built heritage. As a graduate student in the Masters of Environmental Studies program, I have been fortunate to combine my academic interests in land preservation and resource management with my abiding interest in Irish history. Though a small island, Ireland’s tremendous natural beauty has supported a green tourism sector critical to the nation’s overall economy. Despite the heady beauty of the place, aspects of Ireland’s environmental policies and standards poorly address issues of pressing environmental concern. Ireland’s large and poorly regulated transport and agriculture sectors have spurred a long list of issues, including dismal municipal water quality, polluted rivers, high greenhouse gas emissions, and a precipitous decline in biodiversity across all habitats and biomes. For Ireland, whose largest economic sectors are agriculture and tourism, the importance of addressing these issues is apparent. Nevertheless, a general public apathy towards the environment and an overwhelming tendency to produce Irish solutions to Irish problems has created a vicarious situation. In the absence of meaningful government interest in the environment, several key charities and organizations, such as An Taisce, have taken a leading role in protecting Ireland’s natural heritage.

Cutting turf in the traditional way. Glenties, Co. Donegal, August 2015.

The research I undertook with An Taisce largely concerned the protection and stewardship of peatlands, a unique habitat environmentally and historically particular to Irish experience. Irish peatlands have traditionally been used for a variety of purposes, including domestic and commercial sources of indigenous fuel, agriculture, and forestry. However, 99% of actively growing raised bogs in Ireland have been destroyed and the remaining sites face increasing threat. The outright destruction of bogs particularly afflicts Counties Westmeath, Offaly, Leitrim, and Donegal, where the increasing turf extraction remains the largest unregulated land use in Ireland. Commercial turf extraction in Ireland falls under the purview of Bord na Móna, a semi-state organization charged with the extraction and maintenance of peatlands in Ireland. The environmental damage resulting from turf extraction is tremendous, and when completed through commercial techniques, proves irreversible. Water-storage capacity both locally and regionally can be reduced and this draining releases nutrients, heavy metals, sediments, and dissolved organic carbon into surrounding watersheds and soil. Effectively, draining bogs destroys pristine habitat for threatened bird and mammal species as well as increasing global greenhouse gas emissions.

Industrial peat excavation. Bog of Allen, Co. Kildare, July 2015.

In my experience, I see the protection of Irish peatlands facing two challenges. First, public backlash against peatland protection remains vehemently rooted in a tradition of hand-cutting turf from local bogs. Second, the availability of a massively cheap, indigenous fuel in an otherwise fossil fuel-poor nation leads to government sympathy towards turf extraction. In understanding these factors, it becomes clear that the battle to protect peatlands in the long run must address both obstacles to be successful. My work with An Taisce concerned the monitoring of peatlands through satellite imagery to determine bogs under active excavation, the extent of the excavation, and whether these sites currently hold legal planning permission to conduct such activities. The results suggested that the extent of extraction on a majority of sites required special planning permission from local authorities as well as multiple environmental impact assessments (EIAs), surveys commonly required in the case of any large-scale land development. As the majority of peat extraction continues without any regulation or permission, I was able to witness several situations capturing the utter disregard for Irish cultural and natural heritage that pervades this issue. One such case involved peat excavation from a bog in County Westmeath by a private company without planning permission, EIA, or any other license. It emerged that the excavation unearthed a bog road, or togher, dating from 1200-800 BC, a significant archaeological discovery to both Irish and European culture. Despite many attempts over the course of the year by various organizations across Ireland to halt excavation in order to preserve the togher, the company continued to act outside the authority of critical planning regulation and so destroyed the artifact without fear or repercussion. The experience with An Taisce so strengthened my passion for environmental stewardship, not only in seeing firsthand the blatant destruction of cultural heritage, but also by working with those who serve to protect natural habitats. This opportunity was only possible due to a grant provided through Career Services at Penn, and I am deeply thankful for the help they provided throughout the summer.