Natalie Funk, G3
Natalie Funk was born and raised in Ankeny, a suburb of Iowa’s capital Des Moines. In high school she enjoyed swimming, photography and speech/drama club. After graduating valedictorian, she attended Grinnell College on the Bowen Scholarship, a merit tuition scholarship. She chose Grinnell because she wasn't sure yet what she wanted to study, and Grinnell gave her the opportunity to pursue her diverse academic interests, study abroad in France, and end up with a double major in French and biochemistry.
It took several years before Natalie realized that graduate school in molecular biology was the right path for her. After several great classes with professors who encouraged her interest in science, she decided to conduct a summer research project on bacterial DNA repair. Natalie was accepted into an HHMI summer fellowship program at Princeton where she studied cell fusion in Saccharomyces cerevisiae using fluorescence microscopy. One afternoon near the end of the summer, as she was hunched over the microscope, Natalie made her first scientific discovery! She saw previously uncharacterized proteins localizing in a pattern she had predicted. It was then that she realized her love for the challenges, obstacles and rewards of science research.
Natalie decided to attend the Molecular and Cellular Biology Department at Harvard for several reasons, but the most influential was the feeling and atmosphere of the department. She enjoyed MCB’s strong sense of community and collaboration amongst students, professors and staff. With a small graduate class size, she found that she was not lost in a crowd; most of the professors memorized names and faces of students before they arrived on campus.
Natalie is currently a member of Andrew Murray’s lab, where she’s studying the regulation of mitosis. She’s particularly interested in how cells ensure proper segregation of their chromosomes, with daughter cells receiving one copy of each chromosome. She’s excited about her research because chromosome segregation is basic process with far reaching medical implications, but yet we still do not know how the process is regulated. Her project seeks to determine how chromosomes on the metaphase spindle know they are correctly attached to microtubules from opposite poles.
Natalie received a National Science Foundation fellowship this year and just recently passed her Qualifying Exam, so she’s ready to jump into her proposed experiments. She aspires to become a professor at a liberal arts college. Professor Murray fully supports her goal, encourages teaching, and even finds opportunities to prepare her for this career. She says, “Professors here expect the highest level of research and scholarship, but they will help, support, encourage, and mentor you to achieve the goals you set out for yourself. Graduate school can be a difficult journey, I am glad I chose a department that will do anything and everything to help me succeed.”
