Today, our story begins with the pioneer of the Dulin Lab, Dr. Jennifer Dulin herself. Dr. Dulin is from Sugar Land, Texas. She is the Primary Investigator (PI) for the Dulin lab, and one of my best mentors. However, her journey at Texas A&M did not begin as a faculty member. Instead it stems back to 2001-2005 when Dr. Dulin majored in Biochemistry here, at our beloved Aggieland. It was her experience at Texas A&M where she realized research was meant for her. Coincidentally, research was mandatory for her degree plan, and this is when the realization struck that she loved research. Dr. Dulin loves asking scientific
questions that currently have no answer to them and conducting the experiments in lab. In research, Dr. Dulin is fulfilled in her career knowing that her research has the potential to contribute to the advancement of human health. When she first entered the University, she had a plan to become a medical doctor because she liked science and wanted to help people. I will be the first to selfishly say I am grateful that Dr. Dulin found a home in research and provided many others like myself a home in research!
As a PI, Dr. Dulin has a plethora of responsibilities ranging from supervision and teaching students to conducting experiments. She describes her graduate and undergraduate students in her lab as the “brains” and “hands” that take on the day to day actions within the laboratory to bring the experiment to life. However, her most important job for the lab includes writing grant proposals. Grant proposals are how a lab receives funding to do these day to day activities to get experiments going. Some of these agencies that Dr. Dulin writes for include the National Institutes of Health and the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation. These agencies can provide 2 to 5 years of funding which can sometimes amount to millions of dollars. This large sum of funding allows the lab to perform targeted experiments, as well as to think out of the box and come up with creative ways to craft new experiments in the area of spinal cord injury. With this being said Dr. Dulin wishes there was even more funding for the biomedical sciences. Unfortunately, there isn’t enough funding available to support all of the experiments that have the potential to find treatments and cures for human diseases, but we are forever grateful for the funding we have collected so we may contribute as much as possible.
With great power comes great responsibility, as Uncle Ben would say from Spiderman, but with great power comes even greater challenges. Dr. Dulin describes her greatest challenge as figuring out how to become an effective PI. “As a postdoc, no one teaches you how to manage a large team of people or how to keep the day-to-day lab operations running effectively,” says Dr. Dulin. Very similar to starting a large business, you start with trial and error with troubleshooting and training new students on basic laboratory techniques. Before “the groove” hits, there are a lot of mistakes, but now that the lab is in its groove there have been many accomplishments. The greatest accomplishment in Dr. Dulin’s eyes is the success of her students. From academic growth within the field to published papers, awards, invitations to talks, and so much more. Being able to train outstanding students
that go one to make great scientific contributions has been her greatest accomplishment.
Since diving into research, Dr. Dulin pursued her Ph.D. at UT Health Science Center Houston after graduating from Texas A&M. She then continued on to conduct postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Diego. This is where she worked with of her greatest mentors, Dr. Paul Lu. Dr. Lu actually suffered a spinal cord injury as a result of a car accident that happened decades ago. This event in his life caused him to switch from plant biology research to spinal cord injury research. Since this switch, Dr. Lu has made significant advancements in the field of neural stem cell transplantation for spinal cord injury. Following this experience, Dr. Dulin began her own lab at Texas A&M University and serves as the PI.
Outside of research, Dr. Dulin is just like many others in the world. She is married with an awesome 13-year-old stepson and loves spending time with family. Together they love playing games and swimming when the weather allows. They also love taking care of their fur babies Shadow and Rogue who happen to be retired research animals. Dr. Dulin also enjoys traveling and reading when possible which most likely feeds her creativity as a writer. You may or may not know this but Dr. Dulin is a pretty good writer, I mean of course with all of the grant writing, and really enjoys fiction. If she wasn’t in research she believes she would be a famous author, or even running a Michelin Star restaurant to feed her other interest of being a chef.
Whether it is her performing favorite skill of fluorescent microscopy to creating the next fantasy world in literature, you can be sure that Dr. Jennifer Dulin will put her all into her work and produce only quality content. For the future of her career, Dr. Dulin is striving to receive tenure this year and in five years have a large lab that is constantly evolving and incorporating new technology to help answer the questions about regenerative neuroscience. To close out this wonderful blog, I would like to take a direct quote from Dr. Dulin for her advice to an undergraduate student interested in research.
“Get involved in research as early as possible! In many labs, you can make substantial contributions to research if you have several years to dedicate to the lab. Some of my undergraduates have published first-author papers this year! They were in the lab for 3+ years. It is never too early to start.”
With that great advice, do not forget to Follow The Science, and have a Happy Holidays!