For the last seven years, I have worked as a lab analyst at a 24-hour laboratory in the field of Biodefense. My work has been focused on analyzing environmental samples for detection of various agents. I am familiar with various techniques from the fields of Microbiology and Immunology. I have the necessary discipline, technical aptitude, and working knowledge of varied laboratory processes and equipment applications that allows me to efficiently achieve reliable testing results. My goal as a public health epidemiologist is to be able to apply my scientific work background, experiences, and undergraduate Biology degree to expand my knowledge base, analytical and technical skills.
My experience overseas set my career in motion. In Freetown, Sierra Leone, I worked in a mobile lab performing diagnostic tests on blood samples and swabs for Ebola and Malaria. On Friday, July 10, 2015, I had tested and confirmed my team’s first positive Ebola sample. I remember this day vividly, as the number of cases had dropped dramatically and no positive tests had showed up in months. We found out the patient was a 23 day old deceased baby and the mother had tested negative. The CDC representative passed the case to an epidemiologist, who, in turn, indicated that s/he would check back with the Center Public Health Reference Laboratory. As further discussions regarding this case was outside our lab’s scope of operations, I never found out the reason for the unexpected result.
As a scientist, I wanted to be able to close that gap from benchwork that provides results, but cannot provide explanations: in specifically, how was the baby infected and not the mom? Due to my experience in a Bio-Safety Level Three lab in country and in Sierra Leone, I am now confident that I have the discipline, experience, and work ethic to work successfully with infectious diseases. I have learned first-hand the importance of early response to bio-terrorism threats in mitigating public health dangers those threats represent to specific populations. I am certain my laboratory experience will be useful in understanding epidemiologic investigations involved in addressing and hopefully, solving important public health problems.
