CAREER PATHWAYS
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‘ Well these things cost this much , and we bought two of them .’ It was very easy .”
At the Iowa laboratory , the funding allowed for software upgrades the fellows needed to complete their projects .
“[ The Project Supply Fund ] covered the funding that we needed to do a sequencing validation and we needed to buy a bunch of reagents . Then there was a software upgrade for the analysis software that we used ,” Nelson said . Shortly after the laboratory finished the validation , the software company released an upgrade to the software the Iowa laboratory just purchased .
“ They gave us that upgrade for free and gave us a bunch of sequencing reagents . They also came on site and did some more hands-on training with us ,” Nelson added . “ And then [ Infectious Disease Fellow ] Kanwal Alvarez went through and updated all of our SOPs again to
make sure that the new software analysis instructions were in there .”
Other laboratories echoed the significance the funding has made in their ability to successfully host their fellows .
“ I think if we did not have funding available , we would have been very surprised about our inability to move forward with these projects in the way that we ’ d hoped . We would have been cutting other work to finish validating or preparing to validate these two methods ,” Josefiak said .
Driving Innovation
In Florida , a fellow ’ s project involving rabies validation received help from the program and removed a funding obstacle for the Tampa laboratory .
“ One of our fellows is working on validating our rabies molecular assay and we ’ ve received limited funds from ELC for any rabies testing . All our rabies testing is basically supported by state funds , and
those are very limited . So , her project is benefiting from the funding . I ’ m not sure how we would have gotten approval to use the state funds for that project ,” Heberlein said .
The Project Supply Fund ensures that the fellowship project work will happen , be completed and be successful , and have all the resources needed . The funding is an added perk for having fellows , but mentors and host laboratories are reaping benefits as well . While laboratories benefit from the fellows by getting wish list projects completed that may not otherwise be done , mentors benefit from the enthusiasm fellows bring with them to the laboratory .
“ I ’ m a little longer in my career , and I still love my job , but I don ’ t get all excited about some of the little things that they do ,” Heberlein said . “ It brings me back to when I was early in my career and had that same excitement . I enjoy getting that feeling again from them .” g
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