‘Stupid’ errors precede Summa cum Laude
By Clint Talbott
The student graduating with the college’s highest honors—who broke new scientific ground as an undergraduate and who’s been accepted to 11 prestigious M.D.-Ph.D. programs—is clearly brilliant. But she also knows the value of “stupidity.”
Seven years ago, Anna Janas’ family moved from Poland to Boulder, where her parents became researchers in the University of Colorado’s Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology Department. After graduating from Boulder High School, she enrolled in CU, where she excelled.
Last month, Janas graduated Summa cum Laude and “With Distinction.” She graduated with a triple major in MCDB, biochemistry and psychology (minoring in chemistry). And she was named the 2009 Outstanding Graduate in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Janas has spent two years conducting ground-breaking research on genes responsible for regulating circadian rhythms such as the sleep/wake cycle—work that her thesis adviser describes as being comparable to that of an “advanced graduate student.”
But when Janas first enrolled at CU, she had no idea she would become passionate about research. Even though her parents are scientists, they encouraged her to consider other career paths, including becoming a psychologist and a medical doctor. Once she started doing research, however, she realized she’d found her niché.
“When I started doing research myself, I realized this is something I feel passionate about. This is something I can make a difference in.”
No question. Robert Spencer, a professor of psychology and neuroscience and Janas’ honors-thesis adviser, says that Janas has made “some very interesting scientific findings.”
For instance, “She is the first to determine that the relative expression levels of a ‘core clock’ gene (a gene essential for circadian function in mammals) is modulated in opposite directions by psychological stress and a stress hormone (corticosterone).”
Spencer explains that this reaction to stress occurs only among neurons that control the secretion of corticosterone. “This finding is noteworthy because in other brain regions, activity of the core clock genes have been found to be largely resistant to environmental influences” other than an organism’s daily exposure to light, he said.
In a congratulatory meeting in May with Todd Gleeson, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Janas explained her work further. She described the methods of detecting gene expression in a rat brain, future directions and implications for human disease.
The larger goal is to begin to understand how stress correlates with and is implicated in disease, including psychiatric disorders.
Next on Janas’ agenda is graduate school. Since she was accepted to 11 M.D.-Ph.D. programs, choosing one was not easy. In the end, she accepted an offer from Columbia University, where she will complete her medical training as well as a Ph.D. in neuroscience
Becoming a physician and a Ph.D. researcher should help her become more effective, she said. “As a researcher who will focus on mechanisms of human diseases, interacting with patients is crucial. Patients help physician-scientists ask the correct research questions and often provide them with insights they would not discover anywhere else.”
“It’s eight years of hard work and study, but I wouldn’t want to spend it any other place,” she said. In the end, she hopes, “medicine is better, people are healthier and happier.”
On commencement day, Janas addressed the graduates of the Honors Program. After congratulating her fellow honors graduates, she offered some advice: Don’t be afraid to make mistakes; simply persevere and learn.
She shared some of her own mistakes, such as “running hysterically in the lab” while trying to dissolve chemicals for her next experiment. “On another occasion, an experiment that took at least one month to complete turned out to be inconclusive because I did not think about how side effects of the drug we used would confound the results.”
However, with time she understood that making mistakes is part of the process of becoming an honors graduate. In fact, when Spencer sent her an article titled “The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research,” she couldn’t help but smile.
The article underscored an important truth. Doing academic research will sometimes make the researcher feel stupid. “However, by approaching our setbacks with the method of trial and error, we ultimately discover new knowledge,” Janas said. “Our failures become successes.”
As she concluded her commencement-day remarks, Janas invoked the Latin phrase per aspera ad astra—through hardships to the stars.
For Anna Janas, minor failures have preceded great success. And having endured hardships, she appears to have charted a clear path toward the stars.
The student graduating with the college’s highest honors—who broke new scientific ground as an undergraduate and who’s been accepted to 11 prestigious M.D.-Ph.D. programs—is clearly brilliant. But she also knows the value of “stupidity.”
Seven years ago, Anna Janas’ family moved from Poland to Boulder, where her parents became researchers in the University of Colorado’s Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology Department. After graduating from Boulder High School, she enrolled in CU, where she excelled.
Last month, Janas graduated Summa cum Laude and “With Distinction.” She graduated with a triple major in MCDB, biochemistry and psychology (minoring in chemistry). And she was named the 2009 Outstanding Graduate in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Janas has spent two years conducting ground-breaking research on genes responsible for regulating circadian rhythms such as the sleep/wake cycle—work that her thesis adviser describes as being comparable to that of an “advanced graduate student.”
But when Janas first enrolled at CU, she had no idea she would become passionate about research. Even though her parents are scientists, they encouraged her to consider other career paths, including becoming a psychologist and a medical doctor. Once she started doing research, however, she realized she’d found her niché.
“When I started doing research myself, I realized this is something I feel passionate about. This is something I can make a difference in.”
No question. Robert Spencer, a professor of psychology and neuroscience and Janas’ honors-thesis adviser, says that Janas has made “some very interesting scientific findings.”
For instance, “She is the first to determine that the relative expression levels of a ‘core clock’ gene (a gene essential for circadian function in mammals) is modulated in opposite directions by psychological stress and a stress hormone (corticosterone).”
Spencer explains that this reaction to stress occurs only among neurons that control the secretion of corticosterone. “This finding is noteworthy because in other brain regions, activity of the core clock genes have been found to be largely resistant to environmental influences” other than an organism’s daily exposure to light, he said.
Anna Janas explains her work on 'core clock' genes to Arts and Sciences Dean Todd Gleeson, who is also a biologist.
In a congratulatory meeting in May with Todd Gleeson, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Janas explained her work further. She described the methods of detecting gene expression in a rat brain, future directions and implications for human disease.
The larger goal is to begin to understand how stress correlates with and is implicated in disease, including psychiatric disorders.
Next on Janas’ agenda is graduate school. Since she was accepted to 11 M.D.-Ph.D. programs, choosing one was not easy. In the end, she accepted an offer from Columbia University, where she will complete her medical training as well as a Ph.D. in neuroscience
Becoming a physician and a Ph.D. researcher should help her become more effective, she said. “As a researcher who will focus on mechanisms of human diseases, interacting with patients is crucial. Patients help physician-scientists ask the correct research questions and often provide them with insights they would not discover anywhere else.”
“It’s eight years of hard work and study, but I wouldn’t want to spend it any other place,” she said. In the end, she hopes, “medicine is better, people are healthier and happier.”
On commencement day, Janas addressed the graduates of the Honors Program. After congratulating her fellow honors graduates, she offered some advice: Don’t be afraid to make mistakes; simply persevere and learn.
She shared some of her own mistakes, such as “running hysterically in the lab” while trying to dissolve chemicals for her next experiment. “On another occasion, an experiment that took at least one month to complete turned out to be inconclusive because I did not think about how side effects of the drug we used would confound the results.”
However, with time she understood that making mistakes is part of the process of becoming an honors graduate. In fact, when Spencer sent her an article titled “The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research,” she couldn’t help but smile.
The article underscored an important truth. Doing academic research will sometimes make the researcher feel stupid. “However, by approaching our setbacks with the method of trial and error, we ultimately discover new knowledge,” Janas said. “Our failures become successes.”
As she concluded her commencement-day remarks, Janas invoked the Latin phrase per aspera ad astra—through hardships to the stars.
For Anna Janas, minor failures have preceded great success. And having endured hardships, she appears to have charted a clear path toward the stars.