Research Associate: Alyssa Kaganer
My role within the Cornell Wildlife Health Lab (CWHL) is a grab bag of all things related to molecular biology - meaning that no two days are ever alike, and I never do all the different parts of my job in a single day. I get to have my hands in all stages of our conservation genetics work, from idea generation to writing grants for funding, collecting samples in the field, processing them in the laboratory, writing code for bioinformatics, completing statistical analysis, and communicating our findings in scientific articles and oral presentations to stakeholders, wildlife health professionals, and the public. In this role, I also manage our three laboratory spaces, ensuring that we have the correct equipment, that it’s functioning correctly, and that we have enough supplies to complete all the projects we have running at a time. One of the best parts of this is the frequent opportunity to work with students! I love having the chance to work closely with our undergraduate, graduate, and veterinary students to introduce them to conservation genetics tools and help them gain independence and confidence in their new skills. Juggling these different tasks can be chaotic, but I wouldn’t have it any other way!
7:00 am: Alarm goes off. Hit snooze.
7:10 am: Alarm goes off. Sigh. Get up for real. Wash up, get dressed, and head downstairs to start the coffee.
7:25 am: Bundle up and pop the leash on the dog for the morning family walk.
8:00 am: Back home, pitch some milk and cereal in a bowl, and grab the first coffee of the day. I settle in for breakfast and NYT word games with my partner. He beats me handily in today’s Wordle, but I crush him in Connections so household balance is maintained.
8:30 am: Tidy up the morning dishes, throw together a lunch, and head out the door.
9:00 am: Arrive at the CWHL’s satellite environmental DNA (eDNA) lab at the Baker Institute for Animal Health and start the morning’s lab work.
The eDNA lab is where we handle low-quantity and low-quality DNA, so I try to always work here first thing in the morning to prevent carrying any contaminating DNA over from our primary lab at the Animal Health Diagnostic Center. Today, I’m setting up a plate for quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR); this test will tell me whether there is any DNA from the amphibian disease agent Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) in water samples collected from a sensitive wetland.
9:45 am: Finish qPCR setup, pack the plate in a box with an ice pack, and head over to our lab at the AHDC.
9:55 am: Load plate into qPCR machine. I BOOP our qPCR mascot on the nose for fun and good luck (a very important step!).
10:00 am: Scoot over to my desk and log into Zoom for a lab meeting.
Today is a Thursday, so it’s a small group of CWHL folks in the lab meeting; Tuesdays are our big meeting days where we get together with all our colleagues from the New York State Wildlife Health Program! Here, we’ll get updates from our team about lab happenings and have opportunities to help each other with any challenges we face in our individual work. Today, the team is discussing edits of a draft data use agreement for another project. I know almost nothing about this, so while I can listen in with interest, I’ll also use this time to start designing my next set of lab experiments.
11:00 am: Lab meeting adjourns, and Genesis, one of our student researchers, arrives.
Genesis and I catch up on her recent work and plan out her next few steps. Right now, she’s working on fine-tuning a qPCR test for the eastern hellbender salamander. Between her lab work, she’s also developing a database to summarize the amphibian and reptile species found in all 50 US states.
11:15 am: Head over to the main lab to start the next batch of lab work, this time looking for Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in a white-tailed deer
With the combination of the ongoing white-tailed deer hunting season and the recent discovery of CWD in New York, running CWD tests has become one of the most important parts of my role within CWHL. Today, I’m running a research test called Real-Time Quaking-Induced Conversion (RT-QuIC) on a lymph node sample taken from a hunter-harvested animal and submitted for routine disease surveillance. This specific sample had non-matching results on two runs of a validated screening test. No laboratory test is perfect, so when this occasionally happens, we also test the sample with a second validated diagnostic test that takes a little longer. Because CWD is such a significant disease, I’ll run research RT-QuIC on this animal while we wait for the second diagnostic test results. This process gives us a preliminary tie-break lab result and can help us respond faster if we confirm that CWD is present.
1:00 pm: Pop my RT-QuIC plate on the machine and head back to my desk to log in for a writing session and some lunch.
Today, I’m working on a manuscript about improving accessibility for neurodivergent folks in molecular laboratories. Unfortunately, this paper just got “desk rejected” from a journal, so I need to choose a different journal for the next submission and work on re-writing parts of the manuscript to fit the theme of the new journal. Rejection is a ubiquitous part of academic writing and publishing, so I’m well-practiced at working through this by now.
4:00 pm: Grab the results from the morning’s qPCR test and bring them back to my desk to analyze.
The results show that Bd is present in one part of our tested wetland but absent elsewhere. I enter the data into our project summary and start planning the next eDNA qPCR plate, which I’ll run tomorrow morning.
5:00 pm: Snooze the computer and scoot over to the vet school atrium for puppy class.
I volunteer with Guiding Eyes for the Blind, an organization that provides guide dogs to folks with vision loss. Locally I work with volunteer puppy raisers, teaching weekly classes to help raisers learn the skills they need to build a trusting relationship with their puppy and help the puppy learn appropriate house manners and basic obedience. Puppy cuddles are the best part of every week!
6:15 pm: Back at my desk, I respond to any end-of-day emails.
6:40 pm: Power down the computer for the day and head out the door. Call my parents on the way home to say hi and check in on their daily happenings.
7:00 pm: Greeted at the door by a wagging tail from the dog and the aroma of something delicious started for dinner. Help finish up the cooking, have dinner, and clean up.
8:00 pm: Our pup is getting on in years but still has energy for a few minutes of “toddler time” per day. Today, he’s sprinting around the basement, completely forgetting his manners and doing his very best to shove his ball in my mouth.
8:12 pm: Snuggle up on the couch for an episode of TV and some knitting. Tonight, I’m working on a pair of mittens and chuckling at Only Murders in the Building.
9:00 pm: Start the evening routine of yoga, shower, Russian language lesson (I’ve got a 319-day streak on Duolingo!), and read a fun book before it’s time for lights out!
