Samantha Shafer Adam Glover Glover was abroad when the pandemic hit the United States. “I was in Europe for spring break when countries began to go on lockdown. It was not a moment I would want to live through again because of how scary it was to see the world descend into chaos and not be anywhere near home,” he said. Countless students got involved in helping their friends, families and communities. Templon focused on helping her friends and family stay positive with encouragement and virtual meetups. Schmidt donated to local organizations to help those struggling to make ends meet. Glover packed meals for factory workers in New York. Even among so much uncertainty, CAS Cowboys focused on helping others. Samantha Shafer, a 2019 microbiology graduate, began working for the National Institutes of Health after graduation. Research played a huge role in her undergraduate career, ultimately becoming a passion of hers. “I did research in Dr. Matthew Cabeen’s lab, which was one of the best decisions I ever made. Working in his lab is what helped me realize that I wanted to do research as my career,” she said. Shafer was interested in health care, especially how the body deals with bacteria and virus invaders. “I initially decided to join the NIH because I wanted to focus on more translational style research that involved patient care,” Shafer said. “At the NIH, I normally work on autoimmune disorders that are thought to be genetically linked. This ranges quite a bit from investigating a specific patient mutation and how it causes a disease to conducting genetic screens that identify possible genes that might cause disease, which is something very similar to what I was doing in Cabeen’s lab.” When COVID-19 hit the United States, Shafer’s job changed. She self-quarantined at home, planned future experiments online and analyzed data from past experiments. She also volunteered at the NIH COVID-19 testing sites and has been helping on a project to understand a viral protein produced by COVID-19. “It has been very humbling working at the testing site and on the COVID project. I have seen the huge number of people coming through and needing testing, which can feel overwhelming knowing how far we are from a vaccine,” Shafer said. “At the same time, I have been able to see how collaborative and efficient scientists at the NIH and all over the world are being to get good research done at really impressive rates.” While it wasn’t how she had imagined her first year of work, Shafer has taken in every moment since the pandemic started with a researcher’s eye. “As a young scientist, it has been an amazing learning opportunity to see what research looks like under these circumstances,” she said. “Without a ceremony to really celebrate my last four years at OSU, it feels like I haven’t actually graduated yet.” — ADAM GLOVER OSU COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 5
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