Kelsey Lowman is a graduate student in the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program (OxCam). She is completing her Ph.D. research in the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge and in the NIAID Laboratory of Infectious Diseases. Read more about Kelsey’s graduate experience and how it has transformed her research trajectory.
When applying to Ph.D. programs, I knew my interests lay in the intersection between virology and immunology, and I specifically looked for programs that would enable me to operate in that intersection. From previous experience during my research assistantship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), I believed the most effective way to thrive in that space was through co-mentorship from experts within each field. Upon learning about the NIH OxCam program and how its very design encouraged that kind of mentorship dynamic, I was hooked and worked hard to make acceptance to the program a reality.
Something else I recognized during my experience at UAB, particularly through working on SARS-CoV-2 at the start of the pandemic, was the power that truly collaborative science offers to help overcome obstacles and strengthen every facet of research. I was excited by the international collaboration underlying the OxCam structure, which imparts students with a global perspective on research. I knew I would be strengthened by my exposure to new research systems, providing opportunities to learn the skills needed to incorporate international collaboration into my future research program. Additionally, by conducting my NIH research in NIAID, I was committing myself to an institution whose research mission aligned closely with my own: to conduct research that informs and builds towards preventative and therapeutic advances that protect the public from emerging and established viral threats. By joining the OxCam program and conducting my graduate training in NIAID, I was able to sculpt my Ph.D. into an experience that provided personal and professional growth, and I would not otherwise have had the opportunity to experience this early in my career.
My thesis research focuses on understanding how dengue virus infection impacts the activity, selection, and maturation of antigen-specific B cells, with the goal of better understanding how individuals develop enduring and protective immunity. There are a variety of ways in which I explore this theme, but the one that most highlights the unique opportunities afforded me by my studies here at NIAID came from my work on a Phase 1 clinical trial my NIH lab is conducting. The trial uses a monovalent, live-attenuated dengue 3 vaccine to safely model primary, secondary, and tertiary dengue virus infection.
Our lab began developing the trial during my first year. It was truly a result of the interdisciplinary team my NIH principal investigator (PI), Leah Katzelnick, M.P.H., Ph.D., has built and the product of numerous members of our group, spanning our clinical fellow leading the protocol, to our immunological modeler providing the systems-wide perspective during development, to myself, the aspiring viral immunologist, eager to take advantage of all the opportunities NIH has to offer. I was fortunate that NIAID's clinical and translational focus also permeated through Dr. Katzelnick’s goals for her lab, because I would never have had the experience of watching, much less helping shape, the development of a clinical trial at this stage of my career anywhere else. In fact, my ideas were valued and incorporated into the very design of our trial. Most notably, I helped secure a collaboration that changed the course of my Ph.D. research. One of my OxCam classmates introduced me to her NIH PI, who is the chief of Interventional Radiology (IR) in the Clinical Center. From that introduction, we were able to pitch and establish a collaboration with IR to enable the sampling of participants’ lymph nodes after vaccination using a minimally invasive procedure. This procedure allows us to capture B cells at the site of their education and maturation to study how they progress throughout vaccination, allowing us to directly assess the B cells responsible for producing dengue-protective antibodies. Without OxCam’s multidisciplinary cohort and NIH’s promotion of inter-institute collaborations, I would not have had the support or means to pitch this idea, let alone succeed in establishing it.
The opportunities available to trainees at NIH are boundless. The exposure I’ve had to clinical, government, and international research has been transformative to my thesis research and vision of my future research program. Though I have not finished my Ph.D. training, I am already confident that my experiences at NIAID in the OxCam program have accelerated my research trajectory in ways I cannot yet fully imagine. I intend to continue pursuing translational research by completing a postdoc in viral immunology after my Ph.D. While I don’t know where or what exactly that looks like right now, I know my experiences here have prepared me for a future of conducting novel research that embraces these kinds of interconnected collaborations spanning fields and countries alike.
Learn more about predoctoral research training opportunities at NIAID.