Bryn Mawr College was recently recognized by Washington Monthly for its commitment to research, ranking within the top three among 216 liberal arts colleges and scoring number one in research expenditures. More important than the numbers, however, are the faculty members who helped make this achievement possible.
One of the bustling research labs here at Bryn Mawr College is the Plummer Lab, directed by Dr. Ashlee Plummer-Medeiros, who I sat down with to interview. Dr. P.M., as she is known to her students, is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry who specializes in biochemistry.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Could you tell me about the sort of research you do?
So, my group at Bryn Mawr studies these proteins, which are big, complicated macromolecules that sit within biological membranes, and they do lots of really important jobs keeping cells alive and thriving and living their best lives. We study how these proteins interact with their surrounding molecules, and how they do the various jobs that they do.
The ones we specifically study work in bacteria, so, E. Coli, which gets a super bad reputation. You’ve heard of it in the news, I think, for foodborne illnesses and antibacterial resistance. Understanding how these proteins work is really important for understanding how bacteria work.
So, ultimately, our goal is to understand that in enough detail, to design drugs, to be able to kill bacteria.
What drew you to this specific field of study?
It’s funny, because when I took biochemistry as an undergraduate, it was one of my least favorite. Yes. I did not like it at all. It felt like a bunch of memorizing, and I didn’t really understand the applications of what we were studying. What led me to be a Biochemist was not biochemistry the class, but it was being in the research lab.
So, as an undergraduate I did undergraduate research and I was studying this protein and trying to understand how it works, which is very similar to what I do now, but I didn’t make the connection between the lab work I was doing and the classroom. To me, they were totally different things.
And so, it was being in the lab. I loved doing research. I loved asking questions and trying to understand how things work. That’s what led me to do biochemistry.
How would you describe a typical day-to-day life in your laboratory?
In my lab, we do a lot of growing bacteria, so bacterial culture. We use them to make the proteins that we study, and we do a lot of purifying. That’s just taking our protein out of bacteria and getting it cleaned up and ready for our experiments.
We also do computational biochemistry in my group, so we do a lot of simulations of our proteins. So, we sort of balance being in the lab and pipetting and doing bacterial culture with doing computational work.
Is there any reason in particular you decided to do research here at Bryn Mawr?
My favorite part about Bryn Mawr since I’ve started, I’ve been here for three years, has been working with our students. I find our students excited to be in the lab, I find our students eager to learn, interested in the problems that we’re solving in the lab, but also not people to back down when faced with a challenge. And the work we do in the lab is totally challenging. The experiments that we do are hard. The computational simulations that we run are hard, but our students are courageous, and sort of see the challenge and think ‘I can do it.’ This is one of my favorite things about working at Bryn Mawr, it’s one of the reasons I came here, to work with our students here at Bryn Mawr.
I would also say I think all my colleagues here, so all the other chemistry professors, are so excited about teaching and research. It’s nice to work with co-workers as excited as I am every day to be here.
One of the great things about being at an all-women’s college like Bryn Mawr is the ability to take STEM classes without fears of judgment or intimidation, and the ability to have female scientists as role models. How has your own personal experience been as a Biochemist?
I would say when I was an undergraduate, I lacked a set of role models of young female chemists that I could sort of look up to and think, ‘Oh, I want to be like that person,’ but I did have a high school chemistry teacher who was really impactful for me.
So, my junior year of high school, I took a chemistry class, and this teacher was just, like, so excited to be there. She was so enthusiastic about the material, and I found that infectious. So, I found that the excitement and this attitude of we’re going to do a hard thing but it’s going to be great and we’re going to have fun and it’s going to be interesting infectious. And I’m very drawn to that and I was excited, even though I didn’t know anything about chemistry.
So, that’s really played a role in my teaching demeanor and style. I try to be enthusiastic in the classroom because I find that infectious. That was a really lasting and impactful interaction I had, and that’s how I knew I wanted to major in chemistry, from this high school experience.
In graduate school, I had a really awesome female professor who was my mentor. For me, she’s still a mentor, still kind of a resource and an advocate, and someone I lean into for guidance or if I need help navigating whatever professional situation I’m in. I had more mentorships and role models in graduate school than in undergrad.
But I’m happy to fill this role.
Do you have any advice or words of encouragement for students going into Chemistry or who may be intimidated by doing laboratory research?
I would advise asking questions. There are no silly questions or dumb questions. The question you’re thinking, in a class, in a lab, wherever you have them, has occurred to someone else who might also just be hesitating to ask the questions. Ask the questions that you can. There are no dumb questions.
I would also say to use your undergraduate years to explore. Find the things that you think are interesting. You might think organic chemistry is interesting, but you might not, and that’s okay. You might think the same thing about inorganic or biochemistry. You can’t know what you like until you explore your different options. I think chemistry is hard, and I think that’s the awesome part of it.
I think what makes it hard is there’s a lot of nuance. There’s a lot of problem-solving. There’s a lot of critical thinking. I think of my research as a puzzle, and I don’t know the answer to the puzzle, but figuring out how the pieces fit together is the fun part, and it is fun, but it is also kind of daunting, because it is a 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, and I don’t have the box to see what it looks like. So, you know, we can work in a little corner, and we can do work in another corner, and that can feel scary, but you’re not alone in navigating this. In my research group, we have a team of students who work together, and I help occasionally, and then in classes you have a cohort of people who are experiencing the same things. So, lean into the hardship, but also lean into the community, because you have a community here.
You can do hard things. It is hard, and it is challenging, but that’s not to say it’s not doable.
If you were not a Biochemist, what would you be?
Okay, so I would have been a veterinarian if I could have picked another thing to study. I love animals. I love dogs, specifically, and I would have loved to take care of animals. I think that would have been a really fulfilling career path.
In retrospect, it wouldn’t have worked. Well, because you know, to be a veterinarian, you have to take care of sick animals. That would have been too hard for me.
But ultimately, I think this is the right career. If I could have done it again, I would have done exactly what I’ve done.
In response to whether she would like to share any final remarks, Dr. PM not only emphasized the importance of students joining a research lab, but also offered one last piece of advice for those unsure or feeling a bit lost:
How one gets through the curriculum doesn’t have to be a straight path, and you don’t always have to know where you’re going to get somewhere.
