{"id":1044,"date":"2018-08-20T21:05:22","date_gmt":"2018-08-20T21:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/?page_id=1044"},"modified":"2019-06-04T20:55:41","modified_gmt":"2019-06-04T20:55:41","slug":"kathie-a-walters-phd","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/kathie-a-walters-phd\/","title":{"rendered":"Kathie A. Walters, PHD"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>How did you get into science?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In high school, science was her best subject. She took this as a cue to pursue it in college.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In her 3rd year of college, she discovered she loved her virology class (in comparison to other biology subjects like zoology, microbiology, etc.)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In her third year, she did HIV lab work and recommends us to get research experience (valuable).<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>What are the current projects your working on?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">She mostly is working on influenza.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Study how the body responds to the virus by looking at gene expression changes before and after the virus.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The study consists of volunteers who go to the hospital, get influenza, correlate immune response and antibodies (?)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Goal: understand what is required for someone to be immune- we don&#8217;t understand what it requires for vaccines\u2026<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Pathogenesis, co-infections, virus and bacteria synergy- understand mechanisms of that<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Use data to find biomarkers that would predict how long people who have the virus and who will develop serious vs not serious illness (something clinicians want to know)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>Francisella:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Has grant on Francisella- bio thread, very infectious, high mortality<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Working w Harborview Medical Center<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The airborne version is most severe, find which cells it interacts with first<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>Sepsis:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sepsis: computational biomarker project, funded by the military, <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Goal: predict who will get sepsis<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Very heterogeneous= hard to study, no good animal model<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>Ebola:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Small ebola project<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A medical worker in Sierra Leone contracted Ebola<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Flown to the US, NIH for study<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Were able to get samples from him every day<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>What are some of the most exciting moments you have seen while working on a project?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Really exciting moments are few and far between<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">eureka moments don&#8217;t happen that often, it\u2019s more of a gradual building on of knowledge<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">It is exciting when you get the results you were expecting or not expecting (interesting)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">One example was when she was in grad school, grad work with a &nbsp;clinician (infectious disease doctor for hepatitis B)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">He was working on developing the first oral drug for hepatitis B, allowing for the treatment of transplant patients<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Was able to see the impact on the first patient treated (a moment of&nbsp;&#8216;Ok, this is why we&#8217;re doing it&#8217;- impact)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">baby steps<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>How do you multitask all your projects?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cSometimes I don&#8217;t\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Driven by deadlines, especially the milestones set for military funded projects<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Schedule sometimes depends on the availability of reagents<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just have to set some things aside and work on what&#8217;s at hand<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>Where did you go to school?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">She is originally from Edmonton, Canada<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Undergraduate and Graduate School: University of Alberta (Canada)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Postdoc at UW &#8211; micro department<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then went to ISB and has been here ever since.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>What advice do you have for high schoolers like us who want to pursue science in the future?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Try and get as many hands-on experiences as early as you can.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Test out research because even some people that like science don&#8217;t like research.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Research (academic) is a difficult track, funding, competitive.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sometimes you don&#8217;t have the flexibility to work on what you want.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are many different avenues of a scientist: consulting, teaching, industry<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Feel them out, try them out.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of writing and reading as a researcher<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Recc: Kathie in school: as an undergrad, microbiology= major, english=minor because writing is used as a scientist<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">You have to like writing to be in science.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>Other career avenues in science:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Consulting: biotech company<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Regulatory affairs- liaison between research and FDA<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mixes science and translational &#8211; works towards getting a drug on the market for patients<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>What do you like about ISB?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">ISB gives a lot of independence.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Good at giving you the freedom to do what you want so long as you get the funding to do it.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">1 advantage of academics, if you have funding, you have freedom.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How did you get into science? In high school, science was her best subject. She took this as a cue to pursue it in college. In her 3rd year of college, she discovered she loved her virology class (in comparison to other biology subjects like&nbsp;<a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/kathie-a-walters-phd\/\">&hellip;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1044","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1044"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1694,"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1044\/revisions\/1694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}