Part of The Academic Family: Graduate Students Learn From Vision Scientist

The University of Wisconsin Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences is well known for training top-notch physicians through its residency and fellowships in various subspecialty areas in eye care. In addition to this important part of its educational mission, the Department also trains the next generation of vision science researchers in a variety of scientific disciplines. Nine graduate students are working with researchers in five different laboratories involved in basic science research within the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences on the UW campus. Although each is working in a laboratory dedicated to projects connected to vision research, not one graduate student is earning a PhD in "vision research."

"The graduate students in our labs are working in genetics, biochemistry, microbiology, stem cell research, cell biology, and many other areas," said Robert W. Nickells, PhD., one of the principal investigators who teaches graduate students in his lab. "They benefit because they are exposed to a variety of research techniques and tools during their graduate career. The things they learn can be applied to many areas of research, no matter what the student chooses to do after completing the program."

Teaching graduate students takes time and effort. "For a mentor, it's a labor of love," Dr. Nickells continued. Graduate students start out knowing very little about conducting experiments. "Our job is to teach them to think like a scientist, to help them understand and implement the basic fundamentals of the modern scientific method."

Although graduate students work in the labs, training them to think is harder than teaching a technician to complete a task. "Graduate students have to embrace a project and think on their own," Dr. Nickells said. "Teaching them is hard work, but it's exciting and refreshing. And the moment when you see a student get it, to formulate questions and decide how to complete a project, to not give up when it gets challenging - that's very gratifying."

By the time they complete the program, the graduate students are asking basic questions, formulating hypotheses, designing the experiments, analyzing their results and writing the papers to submit to scientific journals. These are all the fundamentals of the scientific process.

Nansi Jo Colley, PhD., hosts Erica Rosenbaum in her lab. Dr. Colley enjoys the richness of working with graduate students. "I carry my mentors with me," she says. "This is an apprenticeship, really. There are ways of doing things that are passed down from mentor to student and each student in turn becomes part of an academic tradition, much like an academic family."

Most graduate students rotate through three laboratories for a month each before settling on the one to call home during the next five years of the graduate program. Kim Toops, who works in Dr. Nickells' lab, said the small size of the laboratory and the personal attention were a draw for her. "There are some labs that have a dozen graduate students," she said. "I wanted to be part of a smaller laboratory."

Toops meets with Dr. Nickells regularly. "He provides a lot of help and direction," she said. "We talk about plans for my work and he makes sure I'm on track. How I get the work done is up to me."

Rosenbaum, who works in Dr. Colley's lab, said the experience has been rich.

"I had a solid sense for what I wanted to focus my thesis on, because I've always been interested in genetics," she said. As a graduate student in the neurosciences training program, research into fruit fly genetics offers a powerful tool for understanding how neurons function and then applying that knowledge to neurodegenerative diseases such as age-related macular degeneration.

"The Colley lab focuses on a combination of scientific approaches including genetics, biochemistry and electrophysiology as well as cell and molecular biology," she said. "Studies that we are doing on the fly are not only important for understanding and treating eye diseases, but our studies also provide important insights into neurodegenerative diseases in the brain, such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's disease."

"The program is great because you have a group of peers and mentors that add to your education and laboratory experience," Rosenbaum said. "In the lab, you learn how to develop hypotheses, and design and carry out experiments, as well as write grant proposals and papers for publication. You get to do it all."

After completing their degrees, students may conduct research in academic or commercial laboratories.

Like the other graduate students learning and working in Department laboratories, Rosenbaum and Toops plan to take the lessons they are learning and apply those lessons to whatever they focus on in their research.

Although teaching graduate students can feel sometimes like it detracts from research time, many researchers are pleased to share their knowledge with the next generation of scientists. If some of those promising students choose to focus on vision research, all the better.

Either way, they carry with them the knowledge gained at the University of Wisconsin.