Interview Reflections

This last Wednesday, January 24​th​, I had the privilege of meeting and discussing my

research with Dr. Samuel Rabkin of Harvard Medical School. Our meeting started at 3:01 sharp,

as I did not want to cause him any delay or inconvenience. I started the interview by first asking

if I could record the meeting. With much respect, Dr. Rabkin told me that without sufficient

context and a lot of background, he would rather me not record it. I accepted and continued. My

interview questions were run off one at a time. My first question to Dr. Rabkin was to ask the

benefits or drawbacks of multimodal approaches inside the research field. My specific question

was, “​Numerous modes using molecular biology processes have been researched in the effort to

optimize viral oncotherapeutics. Currently, the research effort is to use multimodal approaches in

the optimization effort. Is there utility in applying the modes of interest sequentially, as opposed

to simultaneously?” Now, at first, I was slightly shocked as Dr. Rabkin only responded to my

question with “yes”, but not before laughing and commenting on my word usage (I think) as well

as my question overall. I could have taken this personally, but I do understand that Dr. Rabkin is

a professional and has most likely seen high level questions and mine came as either a shock or

as an elementary question. Dr. Rabkin could effectively answer most of my questions, and

answered in a high quality fashion. I also ensured before ha that my volume and clarity was

satisfactory before the fact to ensure that I didn’t give Dr. Rabkin any issues. As our interview

progress I assume Dr. Rabkin felt my tense as I was talking to a professional in a field which I

was unfamiliar with, and he guided me through the process and told me to work small and

advised me (like a good advisor should) on future steps I could take to further my proficiency in
the research field. Overall, I am really glad that I could take the opportunity to talk to Dr.

Rabkin, his knowledge matched with his passion served me well in my research and his research

efforts align to mine well

Interview 2:

On January 31st, 2018 I visited Dr. Underwood in Fort Detrick at her place of work to

interview her. She took me to her office where she had a typical layout. I had met her before at a

convention, so I briefly knew how she looked like, how she talked and somewhat thinked, so that

relieve some stress. Dr. Underwood first asked me how things are going from when we last

emailed. I told her what I had learned regarding our topic and what I would like to do in the

future. This type of “small talk” helped me become more comfortable talking to her. After a

while of talking, we slowly transitioned to my questions. I had 6 questions to ask Dr. Underwood

I started with my first dealing about vitro and vivo to which she explained the benefits of each

and where clinical research was at the current moment. I then asked Dr. Underwood about

oncolysis and rates/ways to measure it which was a blessing when dealing with my data

collection and my data analysis. Before ending our conversation, Dr. Underwood gave me

articles to analysis and get back to her. I asked for another phone call time to which we agreed

upon two weeks from the day of our interview.

 I gained a lot from this interview with Dr. Underwood. It certainly helped having

someone who cared and was personalized to my requests and specific needs Also, I enjoyed

meeting with someone in person, it made the situation more comfortable.