Choosing an MIT PI – Dr. Areej Alhhazmi

In this video, former IBK Fellow, Dr. Areej Alhhazmi speaks about choosing her MIT PI, Prof Graham Walker and the excitement of getting to work with the author of her biology textbook.

Transcript

Dr. Areej Alhhazmi: One of the amazing things about this program, this Fellowship, is it gives you complete freedom to select the lab you want to work in and also your PI. I wanted to select a lab that actually helped me to grow, learn more skills, and Walker Lab was the perfect fit for me. Walker Lab actually focused on studying DNA repair systems and also on plant peptides. And I wanted actually to continue in the DNA repair system project, but actually I fell in love with these plant peptides and continued working on these peptides. This DNA repair system, that I  worked on during my masters, my PI, Professor Walker, Graham, actually published the first [text] book, DNA Repair and Mutagenesis. And I want just to give you a feeling and flavor how exciting [it was for me] to be trained and to work with one of the top scientists and top stars for me in the field.