Val’s Path To Science
Today we will be diving deeper into the brain of our very own Valerie Dietz. Valerie, better known as Val, will soon begin her fifth year as a PhD candidate in the Dulin Lab. Val hails from Houston, TX and is a first-generation college student. Growing up, she always had a passion for science; she wanted to know how things worked and why. Some of her favorite memories date back to making slime, volcano projects, and Bill Nye the Science Guy. As Val
grew older, her love for science and curiosity about the body and all of its systems grew stronger. At first, Val’s goal was to attend medical school; however, this changed when she took a class here at Texas A&M called Genes, Ecology and Evolution. In this class, she finally felt connected to science in a way she had never felt before. After talking with her professor, Dr. Alan Pepper, Val was offered a summer research opportunity in his research lab, where she worked for the next two years. From one-on-one training to running independent experiments for graduate students, the experience that she gained is irreplaceable and molded the researcher that she has become.
Since diving into research, Val has learned to interweave her studies along with her bench work, thus deepening her understanding of the topic. This reinforced knowledge gained from classes while also applying real world relevance to the topics. Through research, Val has gained an appreciation for fact-checking information. She has cultivated advanced skills in breaking down topics into fundamental pieces and critically analyzing them. Val has also had the opportunity to meet those whom we hope our science can help in the future. Being granted the access to go to conferences and meet those with spinal cord injury made Val more reflective of how her research can help people. Currently, she is writing a paper about spinal cord injury clinical trials, along with six co-authors who are individuals living with spinal cord injury.
Val’s Science & Future
One of Val’s ultimate goals is to figure out why some individuals develop pain after spinal cord injury while others do not. Following an experimental spinal cord injury model, subjects are monitored over time in order to see which subjects become sensitive to mechanical touch. Each subject is observed before and after injury to note any changes in behavior due to the injury. Once completed, the spinal cord is examined for the size of the lesion and how many neurons remain in the area. In other words, Val looks at injured
subjects before and after the injury via behavioral tests, then the spinal cord is closely characterized to assess the extent of damage.
Through her research, Val has become passionate about patient advocacy and interacting with those living with spinal cord injury. After finishing her PhD, she would like to work in a lab running clinical trials and learn more about the clinical world. It is important to her to be able to work with individuals with spinal cord injury and use her previous knowledge and skill set to help improve quality of life for these individuals.
On that note, we at the Dulin Lab want to encourage you to Follow The Science!