Yesterday afternoon I went to the University of Washington Department of Genome Sciences. No, they did not want to clone me. That was a good question though.
My friend Jon Ulmer is graduating with his PhD in Genetics this year. When I met Jon he was applying to the program, that was six years ago.
Part of the graduation process is the thesis defense. Jon gave a 50-60 minutes presentation to a small auditorium of students, professors and others about his work. He has been researching tuberculosis for the past few years and studying new possibilities for drugs to combat resistent strains of the tuberculosis bacteria. Jon always does a very good job of communicating and he is gifted at making complicated things easy to understand. A couple years ago I had Jon give a theological explanation of salvation in the simplest terms possible. It was one of the most thorough, deep and yet easy to understand presentations I had ever heard. The catch in yesterdays scenario is that he was not speaking to normal folks and had not reason to use simple terms.
Needless to say, after about five minutes I was no longer there to learn but simply be a support to Jon. Don't get me wrong, I love learning and I love to stretch my brain as far as I can. This stuff was just so deep and so scientific that I did not even stand a chance.
Thankfully Jon's wife, Rachel, created a Genetics Bingo card from the terms he would be using. It helped us "normal folks" follow along.
He did quite well and fielded questions skillfully.
It was a great experience and it has been fun walking this path with him.
Jon and president Jimmy Carter at the opening of the new Science building at UW.
No comments:
Post a Comment