Q: What object did you use to represent your work on the shoot and why?

A: I brought a few different things. I brought a pipette because we are constantly transferring liquids as we are making up our buffers. I brought some gold-coated capillary needles that are used to introduce protein samples into our mass spectrometer. I brought the mass spec needles because mass spec is a central technique that we use in my lab; we also pull and coat our own needles, so it’s something that we make ourselves. We coat them with gold so they will conduct electricity and put protein samples in there so they will fly into the mass spec.

Q: What are you looking forward to in the new space?

A: I’m looking forward to being close to my colleagues from all the different departments, especially the other biochemists who are in the biology department.

Q: How will the building impact your work?

A: It will make it easier for my students and me to just go down the hall and talk to people who are doing similar research. We already do that with chemistry, but it will make it easier to do with other departments. We’ll be able to troubleshoot around shared techniques that we use, and it’ll make for lots of chance encounters where you can say, "Hey, how’s it going? What’s new?" and someone will reply, "I just had this result." These spontaneous conversations about the science will hopefully spark learning and collaboration and more community.

Q: How will the new building change how you work with students?

I hope it will send them over to other labs to steal reagents and learn things from them. I think with a lot of the informal spaces, students will be around the business of doing science a lot more than they are now, and it will become a lot less mysterious. I hope we’ll all feel part of the community more strongly across disciplines.