Return of the [Naked Mole-Rat] Queen

As I sat down to write this, one thought came to mind—how can I write this post and pretend it hasn’t been six and a half years since the last time I wrote a post?

I think the answer is, I can’t. If you were paying a little bit of attention during these past six and a half years, you know that a lot of shi—I mean, stuff went down. COVID, the fall of democracy, human rights violations, AI ending the world, my cat turning [at least] a two-digit number…and in the midst of all of that, science, somehow, still went on. We’ll circle back to all that other stuff.

For now, where have I been? Truthfully, at home. At least, for the past almost two years now. That’s right, I’ve left academia behind and I made it to the big leagues—nonprofit biotech bay-beeeeeeee. After a grueling job search, I landed a job on the scientific curation team at Addgene, a nonprofit biorepository that stores and distributes reagents worldwide. My current job title is Scientific Content Specialist, which also means that I made it to my goal of working in the scientific communications field. I feel truly blessed to have landed an interesting job, in the field I wanted, and with a wonderful company like Addgene. A big bonus is that the job is remote, as Addgene is based in Boston and I [tragically] still live in Florida.

I’m sure I’ll talk more about my job at some point in the future, but for now, a confession: I haven’t truly left academia…I know, I know, I’m sorry. The truth is, I still work for the lab, but in a much smaller capacity, and not at the bench. I’m the unofficial “Lab communications manager”, so in a way I landed TWO jobs in the science communications field. Which leads me to my next big news, I’m a cover girl!

After eight long years, my first-author article based on my PhD was published! And we landed the cover. It took many tries, through Nature (didn’t want it), Science (also didn’t want it), and finally, Cancer Discovery (lowered their standards to take it). I’m kidding, of course. Everyone knows the strange politics of publishing is not fully based in merit and rigor (am I allowed to say that?). Also, heaven forbid we publish interesting things that might not lead to pharmaceutical profit or a ground-breaking treatment, but sure are fun and unique.

I’m sure I’ll also talk about my research in more detail, as I never really did that on my blog (it was top secret stuff). I’ll also discuss my new goals for the blog soon, which have shifted focus a bit from my original intent. For now, I’ll leave it as hello, I’m glad to be back! I’m also married now! (Which is where the image at the top of this blog is from). We have so much to talk about…