UAMS’ Gaddy Says Scientists Have ‘Best Job There Is’

By David Robinson

 Dana Gaddy, Ph.D., was the featured UAMS speaker at the 10th Annual Career Day for Biomedical Sciences.

Nov. 15, 2010 | UAMS’ Dana Gaddy, Ph.D., warned an audience of prospective researchers that the life of the scientist carries its share of rejection and pain. But for her, there have been far more ups than downs.

Gaddy, the featured UAMS speaker at the 10th Annual Career Day for Biomedical Sciences, titled her presentation: “The Roller Coaster of Running Your Own Lab – Why Would Anyone Want to Do That?”

“It’s a roller coaster, like most careers,” she said. “Some of the lows are pretty low.” But Gaddy used a graph projected on a large screen to document the highs and lows of her own career, noting that despite the lows – primarily from grant rejections – the trajectory was consistently up.

Gaddy is a professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics in the College of Medicine. Her research interests are receptor kinase signaling in reproductive tumor cells, metastatic bone disease, matrix metalloproteinases and metastasis, and ovarian cancer.

She spoke to 108 attendees from 13 colleges in two states that included undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
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Her success in the field, she said, meshed with her own goals and attributes. Those include curiosity, wanting a career filled with learning and discovery, a strong desire to control her career path, and a joy of working with students and colleagues.

Gaddy spoke fondly of her research “family,” students, former students and colleagues who remain close. Her work schedule is flexible, but she puts in well over 40 hours a week. She also gets to travel to exotic locales around the world for scientific meetings.

“Although this is a roller coaster, I’m having a blast. This is a great life; it’s incredibly rich,” Gaddy said. “You’d have to pay me a lot of money to do anything else.”

By the end of her lecture, she answered her own question: “Why would any intelligent, curious, scientifically minded person not want to run their own lab? Because I really think it’s the best job there is.”

Other Biomedical Career Day speakers and topics were:

• Traci Hall, Ph.D., National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences; “Love Research but Not Writing Grants? How About NIH Intramural Research?”; Research Triangle Park, N.C.
• Mike Stern, Ph.D., vice president of research, Allergan; “The Role of Research and the Researcher in a Pharmaceutical Company”; Irvine, Calif.
• Lincoln Wilkins Jr., Ph.D., senior medical science liaison, Cephalon; “Medical Science Liaisons: Linking Science With Application”; Frazer, Pa.
• Denise Croix, Ph.D., technical sales consultant, Miltenyi Biotech; May the Force Be With You – A Jump to the Dark Side”; Coppell, Texas
• Barbara Clancy, Ph.D., associate professor of biology and neuroscience, University of Central Arkansas; “The Joy of Egg Juggling: Teaching and Research at an Undergrad Institution”; Conway, Ark.