Commencement 2020 profile: Katia Brock

Katia Brock could be called a Renaissance woman. Though a biologist at heart, she also rose to the presidency of the Spanish Club while at Binghamton University, and some of her favorite courses on campus were in German history.

Having lived the life of a military child moving many times while growing up, she wasn’t wedded to any particular part of the country when looking for a college to attend. But Binghamton was put on her radar and her acceptance letter included an invitation into the First-year Research Immersion program.

“That was my deciding factor for coming here,” she said. “I always knew I wanted to go into biology and science and be a lab person, so I was looking and asking a lot of people at other colleges about getting involved in research freshman year,” she said. “Most people told me that it wasn’t possible and the best-case scenario is you’re doing dishes and things like that. So having the opportunity really meant a lot, and being offered it just right off the bat was amazing.”

Another factor for Brock was the welcoming atmosphere she found at Binghamton. “I’ve made a lot of good friends here and the professors are just so willing to help and willing to advise you on how to get where you want to go — and even talk about crazy things that are happening in your life,” she said. “I feel like that’s one my favorite things about Binghamton. When I came here to visit, there was that overwhelming feeling that no matter what happened I would have that support to get to where I need to go.”

Her interest in research began in high school — two high schools in fact. Brock lived in Florida as a freshman in high school and had “a really good biology professor.”

“It was the one thing that really challenged me, and at that point I knew I wanted to do biology, but I wasn’t sure I could do research,” she said. “And the next year I had a chemistry teacher — now in Brattleboro, Vermont — who made us design our own experiments and it showed me that I was able to do it. From then on I’ve been on that track.”

In the FRI program, Brock followed the biomedical anthropology stream, working with Michel Shamoon-Pour, and her love of research took off from there.

Brock moved right into a lab on campus the semester after FRI ended, working with Laura Musselman on Type 2 diabetes research. She made the connection through networking.

“I was going to the Biochemistry Club to make connections and they have a faculty mixer. She [Musselman] presented and I ended up talking with her afterward and we just hit it off,” Brock said. “It was a funny because there were a lot of us asking each other questions and like, ‘Are you just too much biochemistry for me? Too much biology?’ It was a good match for me.”

Brock created fly models that could be tested in Musselman’s lab. “I alter the fly’s genotype to overexpress a novel gene meep, meaning I increase the amount of that protein in the flies,” she said. “Dr. Musselman’s lab has given me many valuable experiences, allowing me to gain experience quantifying the expression of the gene and investigating what changes the overexpression triggers in the fly.”

She also took it upon herself to find summer research experiences by contacting faculty at schools in the Northeast, ending up working with Wei-Lih Lee, first when he was at UMass and then when he moved to Dartmouth College.

“I actually emailed a bunch of professors here and at the colleges around my hometown and he ended up replying to me and his research was interesting, so I got a position and I stayed there for three summers,” she said.

Brock used what she learned during her summers to advance her work in Musselman’s lab.

“Katia immediately impressed me with her inquisitive nature and critical thinking,” Musselman said. “She is extremely bright, has good hands and learns more quickly than other students I’ve trained.

“In my lab, she used molecular cloning techniques to generate transgenic flies that overexpressed a gene named Meep, which protects against diet-induced ‘diabetes’ in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and led effects to quantify the gene product from fruit fly organs,” Musselman said. “She used the expertise gained in her summer research project to help move this project forward, taking responsibility for rigorous RNA isolation and quantitation approaches that the graduate student supervising her didn’t even know.”

And, in fact, Brock has two publicatons currently under review — as second author from her work with Lee in the Journal of Cell Science —and another as second author from her work with Musselman.

Outside of the lab, Brock worked for four years with Binghamton Sound, Staging and Lighting (BSSL), working her way up to sound director. “It’s a job I found that sounded cool and so I applied and I got it and I’ve loved it ever since. A lot of it is just fun learning something outside of biology,” she said. “I love biology, but learning how to set up a sound system and make things sound good — there’s a little bit of learning physics and the electric side of things to it, too — that’s not something I normally do.

“You always get some great stories about crazy events that happen, like when you get locked out of a show, or when a show goes four hours over and you have to get back into the Union,” she added. “I’m there for the performances but sometimes our equipment is not housed wherever the performance is so there’s a lot of trying to figure out how to get it to and from. I learned how to drive a U-Haul for this job, which is great. It’s been a fun time and there’s a weird type of family in the job.”

As for Spanish, she simply loves the language and the culture. “I wouldn’t say I’m really good at it, though. I wanted to be on the e-board of Spanish Club because it’s an open environment so it didn’t matter if I was good, it just got me speaking so I could get better,” she said.

The unusual end of her final semester was sad for Brock. “Both Spanish Club and BSSL shut down due to COVID, and so for me and a lot of other people in the job it was a very sad time because we do the big events on campus,” she said. “It was like a tradition to go do Spring Fling and work for 14 hours and then go to Denny’s at 3 a.m. and we didn’t get to do that for our senior year, so that was sad.”

In addition to her remote coursework, Brock has kept busy with physical puzzles and word puzzles. She particularly enjoys letter boxes, which are like reverse word searches where you have to fill in the blank letters. “I love those and puzzles where you use your brain,” she said. “They relax me.”

As does listening to rock music! “I’m a big rock person. I listen to a lot of Theory of a Deadman, Three Days Grace. Usually my big activity is I go to concerts — when there’s not a pandemic,” she said. And her first concert? John Prine. Her favorite concert? Saving Abel and Hinder in a bar on her 21st birthday.

Next up for Brock is pursuit of a PhD. Starting in August, she’ll be attending SUNY Upstate Medical University in its umbrella Biomedical Science program, following a cell biology track. “I’m excited! I’m moving early and I’m going to get a cat!” she said. “I have cats at home, but I can’t take them away from my mother so I’m excited to have one of my own!”

And her dream career? “I’m hoping to go back into academia. I want to be a professor and run my own lab, most likely in cytoskeletons,” she said. “My secret dream is the University of Virginia. I lived in Virginia when I was a kid and it’s kind of my home.”