GradGamut Annie Rappeport & Q-mars Haeri

Imagine falling in love with baby zebrafish in high school and spending years of your life dedicated to cancer biology research. Now imagine becoming a cancer patient yourself in your mid-twenties. Annie and Q sit down with Brittany, an amazing graduate student to listen to her story and how the merging of the researcher and patient experience, especially during a global pandemic has forever changed how she and her fellow researcher will approach their work. Also touching upon the importance of graduate student advisors to be flexible and how amazing it is that a R1 public institution provided comprehensive health insurance during this critical time.

An episode months in the making, Here Comes 'Rona, brings together stories from fours graduate students working creatively in response to the challenges by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. With Christina we see what field research in the Arctic entails during a time of rigid safety rules and travel restrictions. In Atlanta, we go to Emory where Evan is continuing work at a clinic while also gathering insights on the mental health of graduate students, then we visit with Drew who had to cancel his field research in the Chesapeake Bay but who has found ways to use data from the past that will greatly help their work in environmental science. Then we go to New York City with Beryl Liu who shows us how graduate students in the performing arts are getting even more connected and creative around the world to make the arts a place for processing the events in our world in ever-increasingly inclusive ways.

So we are all living through a global pandemic. We may not all be scientists, but most if not all of us have heard about how key a vaccine for the Coronavirus is for all us. Our knowledge beyond knowing a vaccine is important may be fuzzy and many of us do not realize that we have opportunities to help progress vaccine development by volunteering in vaccine trials. David Rach was one of the first to volunteer at the University of Maryland Baltimore vaccine trials and shares the experience with GradGamut hosts Q and Annie. He helps us, and all our listeners understand how vaccines work using the metaphor of the wild west.

You apply, get in, get your Student Visa, move to the US, teach, study and then one day the US government tries to change the rules. Annie & Q talk to a few graduate students who found themselves stuck and unable to return to the US this fall. Hear first hand from Surya, Binbin, Yujin and Juliane, international graduate students from India, China, South Korea and Indonesia recount their varied experiences in US graduate programs. We will share the ups and downs and the perennial challenges faced by students. Plus what you can do about it!