to a lot of diseases actually. So cancer has some relation. There's also some association

with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. I'm actually from Canada. Hamilton, Ontario. So I'm far

away from home. When I was younger I actually, I played or did karate for awhile and I really

enjoyed reading. When I got into it I really went into it. I was way too curious when I

was younger and when I started drinking coffee, I looked up the effects of caffeine and then

it's like okay, caffeine is a phosphodiesterase inhibitor and I was like oh, what does that

mean and so I looked that up and it just ended up with me reading a whole bunch of research

articles out a great age of like 13. When I was younger we had a class and a guy came

in to give a presentation on like career day and he's like I'm a scientist and I get to

pick my own hours. And my first response was that's what I want. I actually was a weird

child in that before the boogie man I was actually scared of cancer. My parents used

to scare me to eat my vegetables by saying you'll get cancer and so obviously I ate my

broccoli and then I was like you know, maybe I should actually work something that could

prevent this or at least help this and so it was really a fear of cancer that drove

me here.

My overall goal is actually trying to figure out how cells in like populations or aggregates

are actually communicating so there's like proteins called connexons that form like gap

junctions so basically channels between cells so they can allow things to pass directly

through and I'm trying to figure out how in a large population this communication network

is actually arranged and how spacial patterns could form from that and really just trying

to find out how if there's rules that govern this intercellular communication in multiple

different cell types. You pretty much have regular stuff in the lab. Pipettes, flow cytometry

which allows you to separate different cells based on like fluorescent tags and get a size

distribution.

My dreams for where this can go is really by creating this model of intercellular communication.

I hope that I can actually determine what is going wrong, especially in diseases like

Parkinson's or Alzheimer's and also epilepsy. There's like some disruption in gap junction

function that I think my research could help to develop some connection between what is

going wrong to cause the symptoms and how you can potentially correct it.

speaker 2: Chad, you're still doing the [??]

speaker 1: I am, yes.

speaker 2: Oh, wow.

speaker 1: The most special thing about the lab is definitely the ability to actually

come in, talk to people and then go do research, come back, still have a conversation.

Where's your protective gear?

speaker 2: Where's my protective gear? It's okay. Its just cancer cells so it's not going

to hurt, what hurts you makes you stronger right?

speaker 1: I don't know if that quite works in science but...

speaker 2: Very interesting work.

speaker 1: And everyone sort of understands exactly like they don't think oh, he's sitting

at his computer. He's not doing any work. It's oh, he's in between experiments because

there's always these long like breaks in between and it's a great place to be. The fact that

you can actually understand exactly what's going on in your life for the most part, just

everything you could possibly want to know is collected together and you slowly cascade

between different points and it's a great experience."