Talking Technicians

S01-E06 Jeanie works at Herman Darrow Lab

April 19, 2021 MNT-EC Season 1 Episode 6
Talking Technicians
S01-E06 Jeanie works at Herman Darrow Lab
Show Notes Transcript

Jeanie works at Herman Darrow Lab in Minneapolis. She went to a community college nanotechnology program, and landed a job as a technician at a hi-tech national lab. Now she’s working on a masters degree to further her opportunities and grow her career.


The Talking Technicians podcast is produced by MNT-EC, the Micro Nano Technology Education Center, through financial support from the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education grant program. 

Opinions expressed on this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the National Science Foundation. 


Join the conversation. If you are a working technician or know someone who is, reach out to us at info@talkingtechnicians.org.


Links from the show:

The Micro Nano Technology Education Center (MNT-EC):
https://micronanoeducation.org/
Herman Darrow Lab:
hermandarrowlab.com
Episode Web Page:
https://micronanoeducation.org/students-parents/talking-technicians-podcast/

Peter Kazarinoff  0:03  
From MNT-EC, the Micro Nano Technology Education Center. This is Talking Technicians, the podcast about technicians, who they are, what they do and where they come from. I'm your host, Peter Kazarinoff. I teach technicians and engineers at Portland Community College. In each episode you'll meet a working technician and hear their story. That means real interviews with real technicians about real jobs. At the end of each episode, you'll hear actions you can take if you want to be a technician, too. In this episode, you'll meet Jeannie. Jeannie works at Herman Darrow Lab in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Jeannie, welcome to talking technicians.

Jeanie  0:51  
Hi, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Peter Kazarinoff  0:53  
Absolutely. So tell me a little bit about yourself. Where do you live? And how long have you been there for?

Jeanie  0:59  
 Sure. I live in the metro area of Minnesota, Minneapolis area, and I've been here for about two years.

Peter Kazarinoff  1:06  
And is there anyone else in your household? 

Jeanie  1:09  
Yes, I have a cute little seven year old Lino Nina.

Peter Kazarinoff  1:15  
Do you want to say hi to her out there?

Jeanie  1:18  
I can go yell for her, but she's probably terrorizing the cat.

Peter Kazarinoff  1:22  
 So I want to say hi, Maelle, hi, Gabby. I hope you listen to the podcast too. Those are my two daughters. 

Jeanie  1:32  
Oh, sweet.

Peter Kazarinoff  1:33  
Yeah. So what's something about Minnesota that people might not know about? If they don't live there? If they're listening from somewhere else across the country or the world?

Jeanie  1:43  
Well, the weather's great  here for three months out of the year. And the mosquitoes are just as terrible and huge as you might have heard.

Peter Kazarinoff  1:57  
Where do you work? What's your job title? And what do you do there? 

Jeanie  2:01  
Sure. I'm currently a lab manager and coordinator for the human brain neuromodulation lab. We call it the Herman Darrow Lab.

Here, they all are now on Slack, you might hear some of those things. Still checking in. Yeah, and they work in neurosurgery and psychiatry, they're a dual PI lab, which is something I'd never heard of until working with them. So keeps me pretty busy.

Peter Kazarinoff  2:27  
What's the dual PI lab and what's a PI?

Jeanie  2:30  
Sure PI is a primary investigator. And dual means there are two of them. And often, you can imagine, it's hard enough for doctors to run a clinic as neurosurgeons or psychiatrists, and then to pile research on top of that. So they need a team of people to help them make that work. And so this is two people that usually only have one, but they vibe well off of each other. And it's a it's a team effort all around.

Peter Kazarinoff  2:56  
And are they funded through grant funds? Or does your company bring in revenue in some way?

Jeanie  3:03  
The University of Minnesota is nonprofit, they do get sort of startup funds, I think, from their departments. But also, we've got a grant going out once a month, sometimes often is once a month, to all over the place, foundations, NIH, etc.

Peter Kazarinoff  3:22  
And what's the inside of the lab like? What kind of stuff is on the inside your lab?

Jeanie  3:27  
Sure, um, it's computer science based. So we're, we got shiny machines and lots of humming servers. Yeah, quite different from the lab I came from but this one, this one is more computer science based.

Peter Kazarinoff  3:43  
And what's your work like day to day there?

Jeanie  3:46  
Sure. So I like to think of this lab is a bit of a startup coming from the Bay Area. What I understand that to be is its beginning and needs a lot of foundational builds. So we're making contacts and networking and we're writing grants, writing papers, collecting data, we have some pretty amazing participants who we have the privilege to collect data from. And some animal work collaborations and keeping all those things up to date, onboarding new people. I'm missing a bunch. Ordering. Lab meetings, organization, regulatory is a huge aspect. You have to keep everything running as -  as the protocol lays out, and you have to follow guidelines for working with humans and research. There's always something to do and always something that can keep me busy.

Peter Kazarinoff  4:48  
About how many people work there?

Jeanie  4:51  
Yes, we just hired somebody two months ago. So now we're at 5, 6.

Peter Kazarinoff  4:56  
And do you mostly work alone or do you work in teams?

Jeanie  5:01  
We, we help each other out through different projects, but a lot of it is done solo. So it just depends. Yeah.

Peter Kazarinoff  5:09  
And how do you communicate professionally with those five people?

Jeanie  5:13  
Sure.

Before things like Slack would have been email, and it still is email. I like to think if it doesn't get written down, it never happened. So we use email and Slack a lot to communicate. But just now I was trying to communicate something with one of the PI's and completely got my my wording mixed around. And so I called it opposite day. Clearly, communication is tough, you know, and things like Slack make it really easy to type really quickly, emails a little bit better for for longer communications, you want to keep on hand, but and when we're in front of each other, we're talking and communicating that way.

Peter Kazarinoff  5:53  
So we're recording this in 2021. How's the pandemic affected your work life?

Jeanie  5:59  
Work life? Sure.

We require elective surgeries for our research. So these patients are getting implants to localize seizures, and we get to work with them while they're in the hospital. And elective surgeries are on hold for a good six months. So we got to do a lot of catch up data analysis, but we definitely had a complete pause in enrollment.

Peter Kazarinoff  6:14  
And how does your work help people or affect people's lives?

Jeanie  6:32  
Sure. The doctors both want to increase quality of life in their patients. And they noticed cracks where they wanted to fill in. And in order to fill in and change standard of care, you need to do research to prove that it helps people. And so they're really looking at fundamental basics, brain mapping, diagnostic biomarker tools for depression, for example, where does mood and memory come from. And then also just trying to prove that the clinical work that they do to helps, benefits people. So mixing their two neurosurgery psychiatry backgrounds to make both their patients sets just live better lives, because things like Parkinson's and movement disorders often come along with mood disorders, which is tough.

Peter Kazarinoff  7:26  
What was something at work that you didn't expect? But now you do?

Jeanie  7:32  
This one, this one I learned from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, actually, science works on a nine to five Monday through Friday. It doesn't always, but for the government it did. And science just felt so slow. I just remember, idolizing movies like Jurassic Park and Honey I Shrunk the Kids for these scientists would be doing their work in their garage, and they'd be making these amazing adventures and inventions. And, and that doesn't, I've never met anybody who did garage science, as you need infrastructure. And it just doesn't work that quickly. There's so many caveats to everything. And just ordering the right thing can take so long. So it was frustrating to see that science doesn't doesn't like, doesn't happen as quickly as it needs to.

Peter Kazarinoff  8:23  
How much do entry level people at your research facility make?

Jeanie  8:29  
Sure.  Entry level and academia is quite low, it's really a good learning jumping off point. So entry level would be something like 35 to 40k.

You get a lot of opportunities, you gain I mean, we get to work with interns and students rotating. So you get a new group of people coming in, who you get to know and train every, every other semester. And there's a lot of opportunities and support that you would have and benefits that you'd have in an academic institution that I don't think that you would get out of like industry where bottom line is usually one of the more important deliverables. And here it's little less that.

Peter Kazarinoff  9:11  
And do you personally have the opportunity to grow or move up in the lab?

Jeanie  9:16  
I do. Yes, I'm in grad school right now. So hopefully, that would I mean, I'm learning new things every day about you know, how to better manage and work through clinical research. And yeah, there are opportunities for moving up. Certainly, always with school, there's an opportunity.

Peter Kazarinoff  9:36  
So, tell me, how did you come working to the lab? What was your work experience, your educational experience, to get you up to this point? What was your journey?

Jeanie  9:46  
Sure, um.

I always loved science. And I always was fascinated by genetics. And so the undergrad was finished at the U of M where I'm at now and that I'd never See the U of M again, I really never wanted to. But I ended up back there. Coming back undergrad was took me five years, I spread it out a bit. And then I went on sabbatical and traveled and got a lot of use out of my system, I realized that you - that I missed the boat on internships, which I think is really important. If you don't make networks in your academic young life, then you're missing out on an opportunity to find out what you want to do. And also just to reach out to somebody for a recommendation letter, anything. And I just did none of that. So here's where you come in Peter, this is when I decided I had to get back into school because it's always worked for me. And there was this amazing program that at the time of choosing, I was either going to be a radiology tech, or get into nanotechnology. And I thought, well, one works with people and I love that and kind of patient work, that's great. But then the other was, like, totally interconnected with genetics and my passion. And so it was kind of a no brainer. And then your materials class.

It - I thought - I thought that it would.

I wasn't an engineer at heart. But I got a job as an engineer. And I realized that it wasn't what I thought it was. I didn't need to have skills, the kinds of skills that I thought an engineer needs to have, you know, like top in the math class and you know, AP everything. It's not quite that. There's creativity and communication skills, how do you work with people? How flexible are you? Can you come to the table with some new iterations and ideas and changing things and optimizing my mean? Are you curious?

That is what helped me as an engineer and I worked in the materials engineering division, so I was putting on your, your curriculum quite often. Don't ask me to repeat anything. Now it's been a few years. But guess wonder after undergrad I went back to North Seattle Community College where I met you and took the Nanotech Program. And you just reminded me it was fairly local. So at the time, they were recruiting people from this nanotech program from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. And it was the last day of school and I was helping with some organization where we were doing a meet and greet or something? And LLNL from the Bay Area had sent out some representatives. And one of them gave a talk. I missed this talk, but ended up helping in the back end coming in a little late, striking up a conversation with this woman and had no idea she was there to hire people. So she told me "Well, you seem like you might be a good fit. Do you want to interview", and I thought, No, I'm not moving out of Seattle. This is silly. But I might as well it'd be good practice. All my mentors told me to do it. And I really never thought that would lead anywhere. But it just took took me coming out of my shell, I guess a little bit and reaching out to somebody new and, and feeling calm at the time. I didn't think I was going to do anything about this - this interview. So I just came at it calmly, like I didn't need anything from this person. And I wasn't begging for a job that really helps. Yeah, and she described the job I had a mock interview, but was really a real interview. And then three months later, I'm moving to the Bay Area. That was a wild ride. For me. I couldn't even - I don't even know how I could repeat something like that if I tried. But it was opportunity meets, you know, set up, which was the nanotech program. So.

Peter Kazarinoff  13:38  
And you worked as a technician at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, LLNL. What did you do there?

Jeanie  13:46  
Sure.

They were making the implantable devices that I now work with in people so they're not the exact ones but very much you know, similar similar idea. So, what I was doing at first was helping to design the wafers, the wafers silicon wafers, where we would lay layers of plastic and metal and different organization to make it such that these are flexible probes that can be implanted into what we were using at the time was rats. Also a monkey design and then we moved on to human e-cog recording devices. So at first it was design, learning about the studies, then it was testing impedance testing these devices before they get further packaged and, and packaging, the packaging world is amazing. And it sounds like a glorified SolidWorks 3D printing process, but it's more involved in that you can go - the packaging can make or break your your device, right? because these things have to plug in offline and outside of the body. And so then I moved into packaging, which was how do we connect our computers to these devices that are going in the brain. So that was pretty fun - learned electricity and more testing and beakers with PBS phosphate buffered saline to mimic the brain environment. And then I sort of moved into more safety, sort of...

Grassroots management kind of stuff. I think Terry dilema, my hero, the woman who hired me from nanotechnology program, she, I think she saw that I liked to work with people, and that I had a tendency to produce things. So yeah, I think she was trying to fast track me towards something, something else. But, I ended up realizing that school is calling again. So I went back, the reason I wanted to move is because I wanted to move up and do more. Yeah, and at the time, I wanted to get an Engineering Master's. Now I'm getting a Clinical Research Master's, because it's more applicable. But yeah, every move that I've made has had to do with school. And, and work experience, too, has helped tremendously.

Peter Kazarinoff  16:04  
Yeah, how was your work as a technician at Lawrence Livermore, how did that sort of move you into your current role?

Jeanie  16:13  
Sure. So I reached out to the U of M, knowing that I wanted to go to school knowing there was a steep discount for people who are going to school and working at the same place. I reached out and sort of sent a blanket- what do you call them? resume to two researchers. And I didn't get any hits for about four months, took me four months to hear back. And somebody said, Hey, we work in a monkey lab. And we know you've got background in Materials Engineering and making these implants. I think that you'd be a great person to help us manage this next step in our lab and introduce these new super cool implants from Harvard. And I said, Oh my god, that sounds amazing. Um, so this genius John Zimmerman was his name, he's got a lab right now doing some really great things and happens to be a collaborator, too, with the current job that I met. So it's all very much intertwined. He hired me took me on and started teaching me the ways and I unfortunately realized that I was both sad and terrified of non-human primates. You're very much hands on with these little guys. Not so little. And so I guess that was a hard lesson to learn. You know, but you don't know until you know until you try it. So hopefully, he's forgiven me. And then I just try it again, to see you know, is there anybody doing this but with patience, and my goodness, it just worked out perfectly. They were one year into a growing lab and, and I was really looking to move and work with people.

Peter Kazarinoff  18:00  
So you worked with live research animals?

Jeanie  18:04  
Yes. at Lawrence Livermore, it was rats, which was terrifying in itself. And then at the first year at University of Minnesota lab, it was non-human primates. Yes.

Peter Kazarinoff  18:16  
Wow.

Jeanie  18:18  
Yes, you probably know if you're the kind of person who really would work well, with with monkeys. You probably know it, you know, you probably wanted to be a vet or something. But I'm afraid of teeth. I've just got a cat. I don't even know why you've got teeth and claws. Yeah. 

Peter Kazarinoff  18:36  
So if somebody wanted to follow in your path, maybe they wanted to become a technician, or they wanted ultimately to work at a research lab, what advice would you give them?

Jeanie  18:49  
Well, if it's not too late, find an internship. You're going to need a recommendation letter. If at the very least you spend three months you learn whether you like to do something or not, which is really useful. You might have to be flexible with where you live. And you might have to pick up some classes here and there. It's really helpful to know what you're good at, not necessarily just what you like, what what are you good at, that will help steer you in the direction of job title. And once you know that, you know, kind of what to work for. Luck out and find good teachers like you and Marta. Shore she's my biostats teacher right now. 

Um, that is just a luck thing, isn't it?

I don't know. Peter, what do you think? 

Peter Kazarinoff  19:40  
Well, I think that having a large amount of energy seems to make a difference. Yeah, you have a lot of energy - like you do stuff. Doing that, I think, makes a really big difference. And I think probably being like authentic and true to yourself, I also think makes a difference. But I always have a shout out for 2-year technician ed programs. They're fairly inexpensive. You can do them pretty quick. And you can have internships as part of them or after them. And that can lead to good well paying jobs afterwards, like at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. That's pretty amazing. After two years, that you can go and like work with rats and make these crazy devices. That's just really cool. 

Jeanie  20:30  
Yeah, I think so too. When I was there, no idea. Yeah, 2-year degrees. I'm in a two year again, they're working.

Peter Kazarinoff  20:39  
So if anybody out there wants to follow the work that you do, where can they find out about it?

Jeanie  20:45  
Sure. The website is hermandarrowlab.com. We are releasing our own podcast at the end of this this month. So they have some fun things to hear about with all their collaborators. That's probably the best place. I can share my email address too. It's just my U of M.

Peter Kazarinoff  21:03  
Great. We'll put those links in the show notes. So Jeannie, thank you so much for being on Talking Technicians. I really enjoyed hearing about your work.

Jeanie  21:13  
Thank you, Peter. I appreciate you and your time.

Peter Kazarinoff  21:15  
Thanks. Bye now.

Jeanie  21:17  
Bye. 

Peter Kazarinoff  21:20  
Talking technicians is produced by MNT-EC the Micro Nano Technology Education Center through financial support from the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education grant program. Opinions expressed on this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the National Science Foundation. Join the conversation. If you are working technician or know someone who is - reach out to us at info@talkingtechnicians.org. We're always looking out for great guests to share more stories with you.