Name: Emily Hatch
Hometown: Glens Falls, NY
Hobbies: Reading, traveling, having dinner with friends
What do you study? I think about how structures in our cells are put together and how they are changed over time to do different jobs. For the last 5 years I’ve been focusing on the membrane that separates your DNA from the rest of the cell. It’s called the nuclear envelope.
Why is it important? Having a nuclear envelope allowed our cells to evolve from simple organisms, like single-cell bacteria, into complex organisms like us that are made up of trillions of cells that do lots of different jobs. Yet even after all this time we don’t really know how it’s put together or why it’s messed up in human diseases like cancer.
What do you like about being a scientist? Because we have access to all sorts of new technology, I get to see new things that have never been seen before. Even better, sometimes these new things turn out to be important for understanding how the cell works or why a cancer cell behaves the way it does. As a scientist in a lab I also get to work with a group of people that are excited about the same things I am and can help me out when I’m stuck or feeling frustrated. Having this community of people around you who are going through the same things you are and who want to help you succeed is one of my favorite parts of being a scientist.