Long before she was the LAS Outstanding Young Alumni Award-winning, Harvard/MIT lab-leading, groundbreaking researcher she is now, Anne Carpenter was a doctoral student struggling to keep it together.
“I will always remember the front steps outside the Krannert Center: where I cried my eyes out about four years into my Ph.D. in cell biology,” the 2003 UI grad says from Boston, where she leads a team of researchers at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.
“The frustration with my work had been mounting for months and a lab neighbor, scolding me mildly about lab equipment, threw me over the edge. I held it together until I exited the lab and crossed the street and had a good cry, I think the only one during that period of my life.
“I suspect a great many Ph.D.’s can relate to the late-midpoint of the process where you wonder where your research is going.
“Thankfully, it all came together in the end.”
