In high school, Katherine attended several science-themed summer camps, which piqued her interest in biology. She majored in molecular biology as an undergraduate at the University of Wyoming, and was attracted to research early on. So she spoke to her advisor during her freshman year and, a few phone calls later, found herself doing research in a C. elegans developmental biology lab under Dr. David Fay.

During her time in the Fay lab, Katherine worked on many projects, presented at several meetings, and developed a desire to continue working in biology. She received three NSF EPSCoR fellowships as well as a fellowship from the Wyoming NASA Space Grant Consortium, which allowed her to continue her research during the summers. Katherine says she was certain that she wanted a career in science after she presented her first poster at a large developmental biology meeting as an undergraduate. “I realized how cool it was to be immersed in this kind of highly energetic environment, where people are working on very interesting questions about how life works,” she said. “After I was done presenting, my adviser shook my hand, and I suddenly realized that I could be a part of that.”

Katherine is interested in developmental biology and has always been intrigued by one huge question: how do you go from one cell to an entire organism? This is the broad problem that she hopes to address in her future research. She recently received an NSF graduate student fellowship, and she found the Schier lab to be a fun and interesting rotation. During her rotation, she tested whether a technique that has been used to visualize mRNAs in living yeast and Drosophila cells could be used in vertebrate model organisms. She found that the model does, in fact, work in zebrafish embryos. She is also excited about the annual Schier lab ski retreat—“I went this January, and had an insanely great time. We skied all day and played Guitar Hero all night,” she said. Katherine says that she is very happy with her decision to pursue her PhD at Harvard and at MCB.

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