S01-E07 Amalia works at the Oak Crest Institute of Science

Amalia went to Los Angeles to work in the arts. But she found a passion for chemistry in Community College and landed an internship to use her new skills. Now Amalia works at the Oak Crest Institute of Science, a biotech lab in Monrovia, CA.

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/

If any listeners are in the Los Angeles area, they are welcome to contact Oak Crest

Institute of Science about internship and other learning opportunities.

You never know, it could turn into a career!

https://www.oak-crest.org/students/

Oak Crest Socials:

https://twitter.com/oakcrestis

https://www.instagram.com/oakcrestis/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/oakcrestis/

https://www.facebook.com/OakCrestIS/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCieZjM2wyo6AmCldC8p3rlA

And for more information, email:

info@oak-crest.org

Or get in touch with Amalia 

a.castonguay@oak-crest.org

Episode Web Page: https://micronanoeducation.org/students-parents/talking-technicians-podcast/ 

Transcript

Peter Kazarinoff  0:02  
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, he'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 need Amalia. Amalia works at the Oak Crest Institute of Science in Monrovia, California. Amalia, welcome to Talking Technicians.

Amalia  0:50  
Hi, thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here.

Peter Kazarinoff  0:52  
Tell me a little bit about yourself. where have you lived, where do you live? And how long have you been there?

Amalia  0:58  
I live in Los Angeles, California. And I moved here in 2007. For actually to come to LA and become a star. So I've been here for let's see how many years is that now since 2007.

Peter Kazarinoff  1:18  
And it's there anyone else in your household?

Amalia  1:20  
Yes, I live with my husband and a cat.

Peter Kazarinoff  1:25  
And besides originally coming to LA where elase have you lived across the country?

Amalia  1:32  
I grew up in Manassas, Virginia, right outside DC. So that was my stomping ground, I spent a lot of time on the mall and at the museums there. And that's kind of where I think my interest in science got started was my absolute favorite museum on the mall was the - the Air and Space Museum, I knew that place like the back of my hand. But I was gonna be an artist. So that didn't matter then.

Peter Kazarinoff  2:01  
So tell me about where you work. What is the Oak Crest Institute of Science? And what's your job title?

Amalia  2:08  
The Oak Crest Institute of Science is we're kind of a non - unconventional academic institute, we're not we're not really in academia, we don't give degrees of any kind. But we kind of operate like a graduate lab that you might find in a university, but we're completely independent. And we are grant funded. And we we query for all of our own grants. So we've got some NIH grants, we've got a inter inter collegiate grant. So there's a couple of universities that we do work with that are on grants with us. And that's where basically all of our funding comes from to do what we do that and dinos - don't - donations. We also take - we Yeah - we take financial donations from the public, we are a 501 c nonprofit. And so we do grant funded research. But one of the our major contributions is that we do educational outreach. So we bring in students all the way from elementary school up through university-level to come in and actually get experience in a real lab doing real research. The kids usually don't get so much hands on in the actual labs. But we do have a training lab where we can see that there is a real functional lab. And they get to try out some of the easier experiments. And they've done protein extractions and some microbiology and a little bit of chemistry. And so we've got a few programs that we work with the city of Monrovia and some of the other local school systems to give kids more exposure to - to real science in a research environment.

Peter Kazarinoff  3:49  
And how would you describe your job? What do you do day to day?

Amalia  3:53  
My job is many fold. I primarily run the instrumentation lab, where we do measurements on a lot of samples, we measure pharmaceuticals, and some biomolecules. And I run that lab and make sure all of the samples get run properly and maintain the instrumentation in there. I also do a lot of IT around the lab and do wet chemistry, preparing samples, such as well as doing a lot of that outreach. I've had mentors come through the labs. And so I end up teaching a lot of the instrumentation and how that works.

Peter Kazarinoff  4:33  
Do you work by yourself? Or do you work in a team?

Amalia  4:37  
Primarily I worked by myself I spent a lot of time in the instrument room alone. Which I kind of like it that way. It's quiet, and I can focus on what I'm doing. But for doing a lot of the pharmaceutical analysis, we do have a small team where we work together on the different steps of sample preparation all the way through data analysis. So we do work together. They're in that regard. And when we're doing the outreach stuff we are, we are all in this together. So we'll have kids coming through the different labs. And we'll - we all know kind of what's going on in the different labs. So sometimes we'll go with them or we'll learn new stuff. I've learned microbiology, even though biology - I had maybe one biology class in my entire schooling. But I've gotten to even do, do some microbiology and, and DNA extraction and molecular biology. So we learned with the students as well. So we're, we've got a lot of different departments that do different things. And all of us are all over the place all the time.

Peter Kazarinoff  5:37  
What's it like to have younger students in a hi-tech biotech lab? What does it feel like when they're there? 

Amalia  5:43  
Oh,that can get very interesting. Um, a lot of the time, we kind of keep them at age appropriate stuff. So if there's dangerous things that kids shouldn't be touching, we're not going to have them very involved in that. So we did have one outreach day where we had a bunch of kids come in and do some experiments in the kitchen. And this is before we had a lot of experience with the younger kids. And we discovered very quickly that if we had them wear gloves, they were afraid of everything. Is this is this thing gonna hurt me? If I touch it? If it gets it on my hands? Am I gonna die? No, no, it's okay. The gloves are just to keep you clean. So So following experiments, we, we actually had them not use gloves anymore, and they got messy, but you know, is the worst thing that happened. And they were a lot less scared of what they were doing then. So most of the time, the things that kids are working on, there's not a lot of safety hazards, but we still teach them proper PPE and safety that you would need in a laboratory. They're always super excited.

Peter Kazarinoff  6:48  
That sounds fun. How would you describe a great day at work? For you?

Amalia  6:54  
Oh. A great day at work. Let's see. My day usually starts with settling in and planning my day and figuring out what it is I need to get through. There's not a lot of day to day repetition in my work. There are functions that are the same day to day, but there's always stuff that comes up to troubleshoot and fix and nothing ever goes the way it's exactly supposed to. So you're always trying to play and catch up a little bit. So while there are routine things, they don't usually go in a routine way. So a good day for me is when everything actually usually works the way it's supposed to. And I don't have to jump in and do damage control. But on the other side of that I do really enjoy the troubleshooting and problem solving. So if something does go wrong, being able to figure it out in the moment, get everything back up and running, and get us to where we're supposed to be by the end of the day. That feels really good. So I guess, you know, whether things go wrong or not, I tend to end up having a pretty good day.

Peter Kazarinoff  7:58  
What did it feel like the first time that you went to Oak Crest? Do you remember what it was like the first day you were there?

Amalia  8:05  
I do. I kind of liken it to the first time I went to Disneyland, where my first job in Los Angeles was Disneyland and I had never been to a Disney park before. And when we first did a walkthrough of the park it was just magical and I mean most if you've ever been to a theme park you know how there's music everywhere it's exciting there's there's the smells and everything and it's it's it's you're walking into a fantasy basically, For the first time I walked into the the actual lab it was it was kind of like that it was like walking onto a movie set walking into a dream. Like this is a thing that that I only ever read about in stories and I hadn't even really been into a functional lab in school yet at the point that I walked into Oak Crest. So I've never seen anything like that anywhere except like on an NCIS TV show or something. And it felt surreal but also wonderful and a little bit magical and, and it was this thing that was so much bigger than I was and and they were in a new location now but where we were to start with it was much more of like a graduate lab. So there was piles of things everywhere and instrumentation on on the benches all over the place and a warned in, lived in lab and it felt comfortable, really. And that I did not expect so that was really cool.

Peter Kazarinoff  9:35  
What was your work and education experience before you came to Oak Crest?

Amalia  9:40  
Before Oak Crest, I had never worked in a lab of any kind before. Um, I was only on my second chemistry class. So I had taken basically introductory chemistry and this is it. This is the first like real chemistry class. And I needed - I had run out of financial aid Because I'd been at community college for too long. And I ran out of financial aid and needed something. And my chemistry teacher passed me a flyer for internships at Oak Crest. And I had barely even done any chemistry labs at that point yet, this is like just just starting. But I'd already found that I love doing it and, and I looked at this internship and it was a paid internship. And that is all I needed to know. And I went and interviewed and I got it. And I had absolutely no idea what I was in for, I was actually a physics major at the time. And the rest is really history. But at that point, I had had almost no chemistry, I'd mostly taken physics and math and a little bit of computer science. Most of my background was actually computer science, that was what I originally decided to get a degree in and grew up with a mother who is in IT. And I had my own computer that I operated on, and was learning programming and HTML. And I was working at building websites up until that point to make ends meet. And I had actually completely avoided any chemistry that I possibly could all the way through high school all the way - all the way up until I was actually in college. I thought it was going to be the hard class. And I was terrified of it. Chemistry, oh my gosh. And until I finally actually took it, and this is after taking, you know, two different years - two years of physics and getting all the way up to, to Calculus. And finally, like all this terrifying chemistry class, I have to take it, I can't get out of it now. And then I fell in love with it, and ended up changing my major to chemistry. And but I had, I never would have believed that I would be where I am now. Not in a million years.

Peter Kazarinoff  12:00  
Did you end up finishing a two-year program at the community college?

Amalia  12:04  
I did not do the transfer, I didn't get an Associates. I took through all of the units that I got there because it took me too long to figure out that I wanted to be a chemist and ran out of it. Like I said, like ran out of financial aid and was over my time, basically. So I just transferred straight to Cal State LA, California State University Los Angeles, and finished my degree there. So I have a Bachelor's in chemistry, Bachelor of Science in chemistry. And when I graduated there, they offered me a full-time position here at Oak Crest.

Peter Kazarinoff  12:43  
If there are other people out there who are thinking of transitioning careers or getting into work like yours, what advice would you give them?

Amalia  12:50  
Internships, internships are everything. And I know it's really hard to find paid internships if that's what you need. But there are a lot of programs that are flexible as well. So you could do less than part time if necessary. Find a mentor, talk to teachers. And it's never too late to start. I did not get started in my on my education path until three, four years, four years out of high school. I didn't even get started at community college until four years out of high school. And then it took me long enough to figure everything out and to get where I wanted to be. And to get caught up on all of the classes that I had missed. I graduated at 30. So I was, I was in I was at community college for five years. And then I was at university for three years. So it takes time, but it is never too late to start. And if you just chip away at it, you can do it. And it doesn't matter what career path you want to go into. If there's something you find interesting. Even if it seems like you're shooting for the moon, just take it one class at a time. And try to get as much experience in the real world as you can. And it there's - there's no such thing as useless information either. Like every, every work experience you have every educational experience you have will inform what you want to do and then eventually.

Peter Kazarinoff  14:21  
Do you have any final call to action for people out there if they want to have a career like yours?

Amalia  14:27  
Like mine? If you want to go into science of any kind, I would say learn computers, learn computers, learn programming. No matter what science field you want to go into, it will help you and it will give you a giant leg up over all of the people that didn't learn it. Because there is not a single science field that doesn't use a lot of computer technology and programming environments at this point. So learn programming. If you can even get into learning machine programming or machine learning technology. That is where All of the sciences are going. And aside from that, try a lot of stuff. I think the only reason I ended up where I am is because I got the opportunity to, to try a whole bunch of different things. And it was my advisor who actually said, You know what, you should probably be doing this. So listen, listen to your advisors, they are watching you, they're fighting for you. They are they're taking care of you. And they can tell where your strengths and weaknesses are. So talk to them, listen to them. And if they say that, that an opportunity is going to be an opportunity, good opportunity for you, at least give it a try.

Peter Kazarinoff  15:36  
Do you want to share with people how they could get in touch or follow the work that you do at Oak Crest?

Amalia  15:42  
Yes, all of the Oak Crest social media is under oakcrestis for Oak Crest Institute of Science, and we're on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. I don't think we're on Tik Tok yet, but we've talked about it. Um, and my Twitter is Amalia Elliott, A-M-A-L-I-A-E-L-L-I-O-T-T and I do post stuff that I'm doing in work. I'll post instrument videos and, and forward some of the stuff Oak Crest is doing and my colleagues are doing as well.

Peter Kazarinoff  16:21  
Amalia, thank you so much for being on Talking Technicians.

Amalia  16:25  
I'm very happy I did. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

Peter Kazarinoff  16:29  
Bye now.

Amalia  16:30  
Bye.

Peter Kazarinoff  16:35  
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.