With generous funding from the Robert J. Kolenkow and Robert A. Reitz Fellowship for Student Scientific Research, last summer Emily Muenzer ’26, a double major in biology and chemistry, applied her studies in a particularly meaningful context: leukemia research at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C.
The lab where Emily worked was focused on developing a new chemotherapy drug intended to reduce the common side effects caused by similar drugs. “I was focused on seeing if the chemotherapy drug would have an effect on a specific type of leukemia cell,” Emily said. “I was also looking at some of the side effects that the chemotherapy drug causes, specifically mutations. A lot of what I was doing was prepping samples and then sending them for sequencing, and then looking at the DNA sequences to see if these mutations were present or not.”
Thanks to the collaborative nature of the lab, Emily learned how to discuss her research with other scientists, working directly with one postdoctoral researcher and cooperating more informally with other researchers. Through this hands-on experience, Emily gained a sense for how research works in practice. “I definitely learned a lot more about the research process in general and how it’s conducted at a big institution,” she said.
She also learned how to approach some of the unexpected problems that can arise in the lab. At one point, the mutations that the new chemotherapy drug usually caused were not showing up as predicted, so Emily brainstormed possible explanations for the disparity. “I probably tried out 10 to 15 different ways of approaching this issue,” she said. “I really saw a big part of the process of what to do when we hit a bump with our research in the lab and how not to get super distracted or upset by an unusual result, and then how to turn that into new conclusions.” Emily also benefited from the opportunity to discuss these issues with other members of the lab who had more experience.
The opportunity to contribute to research at NIH was rewarding in itself, and Emily says it will also be useful for her future endeavors. “I’m going to bring what I learned back to the research that I currently do at Carleton, as well as whatever I do in the future,” she said.