[Nfb-science] Introduction

[Stephanie Hirst]

Hi, nice to hear from you.  I'm also visually impaired and working in the
biomedical sciences.  I have about 20/400 visual acuity, with about 20/240
corrected.  I'm currently wrapping up my second year in grad school at
Vanderbilt University. I did try my hand at organic chemistry and
biochemistry, but now I find myself working in a computational biology lab
doing protein structure prediction. I'm really excited there's another
biologist here!  It seems the vast majority of people on this list work in
more physics, computer science, etc.  What kind of research do you do
exactly?  Where do you work? This is really exciting!

I think I can understand how hard this will be.  Are there ways for you to
hire assistants/staff to help you with interpreting some of the data?  How
about shifting focus to the more bioinformatics/computational biology
aspects? One reason why I like what I'm doing is because I can still think
about biologically relevant problems but don't exactly have to have good
vision to do it. It is hard though because I do structural biology, which
requires looking at models etc. Other people in our lab work on
cheminformatics and QSAR analysis for predicting active compounds from high
throughput screening (for drug discovery). For these, I don't think you need
to see as much. We do a lot of programming and scripting, but it's all to
the same end of forwarding biomedical research.

Although Im only a graduate student, I've found that people (in academia
anyway) are pretty accommodating as long as you can show that you're capable
of doing science and have good ideas and are very motivated. There are often
ways to work around the disability. And the NIH seems to be very eager to
give money to disabled people to do research, including money for special
visual aid equipment, travel, etc.

Good luck, and maybe we can keep in touch!

~ Stephanie HIrst

On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 12:06 PM, Robert Jaquiss <rjaquiss at earthlink.net>wrote:

> Hello John:
>
>    Welcome to the list. You might want to check out the site:
> http://www.blindscience.org
>
> This site contains an assortment of information for students, teachers etc.
> Have a great day.
>
> Regards,
>
> Robert
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "John D. Trawick" <jdtat at cox.net>
> To: <nfb-science at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2010 2:46 AM
> Subject: [Nfb-science] Introduction
>
>
>
>> Hi,
>> Hope that this isn't too long of an intro. I am not blind but have dry
>> macular degeneration. Though diagnosed 'officially' only a couple years ago
>> I can trace my first symptoms back about 20 years when I was in my mid
>> 30s--back then I realized that I couldn't see chemiluminescence on Western
>> blots that the lab tech I worked with could see clearly (this is a dim,
>> green glow that we used to expose to Xray film before digital imagers).
>> Today, I have a central blind spot in my formerly dominant right eye and
>> that eye's visual acuity is 20/70 to 20/100 with correction. That little
>> blind spot has an large effect in impairing function--reading with my right
>> eye is out unless I use a 3x magnifier. My left eye is correctable to 20/20
>> but I can tell that contrast and fine detail have some problems and dark
>> adaptation is slowly getting worse. All this really isn't so bad; I am
>> supplementing my bifocals with a hand held magnifier that makes most reading
>> easier and fine print possible to read.
>> The reason why I am joining this group is that I am a professional
>> scientist with lab and bioinformatics experience. While I am sure that
>> various adaptations will keep me functioning for the foreseeable future I
>> want to be prepared because this is a progressive condition. Also, I would
>> like to learn more about others coping with visual impairments and science
>> including issues such as remaining gainfully employed...
>> Are there folks here with similar experiences?
>> John
>> _______________________________________________
>> Nfb-science mailing list
>> Nfb-science at nfbnet.org
>> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfb-science_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> Nfb-science:
>>
>> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfb-science_nfbnet.org/rjaquiss%40earthlink.net
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Nfb-science mailing list
> Nfb-science at nfbnet.org
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nfb-science_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> Nfb-science:
>
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nfb-science_nfbnet.org/sjhhirst%40gmail.com
>