The inaugural cohort of the CBP Biomedical Master’s Program began classes and research in August 2025. Almost halfway through the program, three students shared their experiences growing their skills, finding community, and expanding their knowledge in the program. Read their stories below.
Off to the races in Taylor Hall
By Tanisha Choudhury
Get an inside look at the inaugural Cell Biology and Physiology Master’s cohort and discover the growing sense of community along the way.
Tucked away in a corner of Taylor Hall’s first floor is a small classroom. Arrive early, and you’ll find students whiteboarding cell signaling pathways in a nearby nook. Arrive late, and you’ll likely have to weave yourself between gaggles of students outside setting up a makeshift grill, carefully arranging a charcuterie board, or preparing pitchers of steaming hot apple cider. Amid your own worries of fast-approaching deadlines and unread Outlook notifications, you might wonder: Who are these students?
We are the inaugural biomedical master’s cohort in the Department of Cell Biology and Physiology. After three strenuous yet fulfilling months, I feel confident likening the program to a marathon. The curriculum is a nine-month, intensive training program for students heading into various scientific disciplines. In the morning, we move through blocks in biomedical sciences and physiology. As an aspiring research scientist, I value the combination of broad physiological context with granular molecular detail. If you can’t conceptualize how multiple organ systems coordinate to balance energy use during fasting and feeding, the importance of a single regulatory enzyme won’t click. As our histology professor reminds us, sometimes you have to zoom out to see which details matter.
In the afternoons, we trade our laptops for pipettes. In Dr. Saskia Neher’s lab, I investigate lipoprotein lipase, a vital enzyme that breaks down circulating fats. Recently, I purified this protein, setting the stage to ask compelling follow-up questions about how metabolic dysregulation and cellular stress affect the proper folding of lipoprotein lipase. This practicum is a crash course in the critical thinking, time management, and synthesis skills that research demands.
Along the way, there are plenty of opportunities to train for your own self-improvement. I chose to exercise my communication skills through the university-wide Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, sharing my research with a general audience in just three minutes. While the prospect of commanding a room’s full attention was initially nerve-wracking, the nerves quickly gave way to the excitement of sharing my new project with others. The experience ultimately left me more confident in my own understanding of my project’s trajectory.
Speaking of trajectories, although my classmates and I may be running toward different destinations after this marathon – some to medical school, others to dentistry, industry, or academic research like me – our paths intersect at this pivotal junction in our careers. Between class and lab, we make the long run feel communal: studying together before exams, bringing baked goods to celebrate the end of a lecture block, or commiserating over silly mishaps at the bench. Next time you pass Taylor Hall, I hope you think of the marathon runners inside, fueling each other with camaraderie (and the occasional apple cider).
An unexpected finding
By Hedille Al-Dhalimy
When I joined the Cell Biology & Physiology biomedical master’s program, I did not expect to find a sense of community and family.
Coming into this program, I truly did not know what to expect. I thought I would meet classmates, learn a lot, and spend a good portion of my time buried in lab and lecture slides. But now, almost halfway through, I have realized I did not just walk into a master’s program, but instead, I walked into a family. Somewhere between building new traditions and simply showing up to class together every day, this cohort has grown into a real community.
Our class potluck Friendsgiving, newly created intramural basketball team that plays regularly, Friday grilling between classes with a different menu every week, and our little post-exam celebrations, all of which have been initiated and developed by students, have become some of the things I look forward to most. Even simple traditions, such as everyone chatting outside after class, the GroupMe we made during the first week that keeps our community intact, have become the little things that make this experience feel meaningful. What I appreciate most is that nothing is obligatory. People can choose what they want to be part of, join a study session, or skip the night out, but no matter what, everyone still feels included.
And it is not just the fun parts that make us feel like a family. It is the way people show up for each other. Someone always shares a study guide before tests. Professors bring snacks for the class on Fridays during our professional development class. People offer help, check in on each other, or send a reassuring, “We’ve got this” text the night before a test. It is comforting to know that on any given day, someone understands exactly what you’re going through because they are living it alongside you.
I never expected community to shape my experience here as much as it has, and I am not even sure how it developed. But these friendships, these small traditions, and these people have become the foundation of my time in the program. They have turned challenging weeks into manageable ones and ordinary days into something meaningful. Looking around, I am grateful that this cohort is not just a group of students; it is a built-in community I did not know I would find.
Lessons from lab research
By Ava Langaker
In this article, I reflect on what I have learned about failure, resilience, and managing career goals through a semester of graduate research.
In childhood, my idea of doing science involved mixing test tubes of fluorescent green chemicals, followed by an emphatic explosion and a puff of smoke. This is likely the image I had in my mind when I told people in kindergarten that I wanted to be a scientist. Like many people, my interests shifted as I grew up, and by college, I had gravitated towards medicine. Just as my idea about what it meant to be someone who does science evolved from my elementary school imagination, my perspective has changed profoundly during my first semester of graduate school. Beyond gaining an appreciation for those who devote their lives to research, I have learned two vital lessons for anyone in a transitional period of their career:
(1) You can adjust the timeline without sacrificing the end goal.
Like many students pursuing a biomedical master’s degree, I have high career aspirations. I admit there are times I wish I were on a timeline to reach them sooner. It is disappointing to feel like you are falling behind a schedule you set years ago. However, my recent lab experience illustrates why this thinking is flawed. I began this semester with grand plans of performing complex experiments on cancer cell lines with novel drug treatments. In my mind, the data would be immediate and impressive. In reality, I spent the first month repeatedly killing my cells.
This was frustrating and embarrassing. I had successfully cultured cells for the past year in my undergraduate lab. Eventually, after several long, awkward conversations with my mentors, I realized that I had not only been accidentally adding a lysis buffer to my media every time I made it but also leaving my cells in trypsin for twice as long as necessary. Essentially, I was continuously rupturing and digesting my cells during every experiment.
By the time I recognized these fatal errors, my overly idealistic expectations had withered away. I had to slow down, step back, and rethink the timeline for completing my experiments. In doing so, I noticed a parallel to my career path. Just as my experimental goals needed a revised and more realistic timeline, my career path requires this master’s program to ensure I am truly ready to be a healthcare provider. A deviation in a timeline does not mean the goal is lost; instead, it often means the foundation will be stronger when you arrive.
(2) Resilience is a prerequisite for any form of science.
Watching researchers has taught me that failure is not an anomaly in science; it is a guarantee. If something does not work the first time—which is almost always the case—they do not give up. They come in the next day, troubleshoot, consult, and try again. Repeatedly.
When I could not figure out why my cells were dying, it was difficult not to let frustration dissuade me. However, my mentor reminded me that I would later be grateful for the experience, not because the failure was positive, but because I learned how to sit with the frustration inherent to the work and push through it anyway.
Possessing even half the resilience that laboratory scientists display would benefit anyone who wishes to pursue a career in any science-adjacent field. Whether science is front and center on the wet bench or in the background of the clinic, its presence guarantees the unexpected. Therefore, it is vital to learn how to overcome failures and keep striving forward.
Regardless of our future paths, there are important lessons to take from this research experience. We are learning that doing science is not just about the passion for learning that we had as kids; it is about having the patience and the grit to keep going when the plan does not go exactly as expected.