[Nfb-science] Introduction

Sat Aug 14 19:22:25 UTC 2010

Hi Stephanie,
I think your research is really fascinating. My name is Ronit, and although I am not in a lab, I do work in science. I"m a genetic counselor, I explain genetic concepts to patients who rae pregnant or who have a family history of a genetic disorder. I had to do alot of science in undergrad and grad school. Let me know if I can be of any assistance to you.
Ronit

On Aug 14, 2010, at 10:20 AM, Stephanie Hirst wrote:

> 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
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> 
>> 
>> 
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