Hahn pursuing Ph.D. in genetics

Since seventh grade, Alyssa Hahn wanted to study genetics, and starting this fall she’ll do just that at the University of Iowa as a Ph.D. student.

Hahn, a biochemistry and molecular biology major, said the seed for her interest in genetic research was planted when she saw the 1997 movie “Gattaca,” about a future society where genetic engineering is the rule. The movie especially sparked her interested in the societal impact of genetic research.

There is a personal aspect to her interest in genetics. Her mother is a caseworker who works with people with developmental delays, intellectual disabilities, and mental illness. Hahn wants to study the causes of the conditions that affect people like her mother’s clients.

“I not only want to conduct genetics research because I am fascinated by it, but also because I believe that by knowing more about how the disease is inherited, and what pathways are affected, we as a society will be able to better care for these individuals and give them the lives they deserve: lives not filled with pills and institutions; lives not overcast by their diagnoses,” she said. “I believe people are more than their diagnoses or genetic predispositions.”

Hahn will spend her first year in graduate school taking courses and rotating through three different labs. This process is designed to help Ph.D. students choose a lab to join during the second year, and then start work on their theses. Hahn is in the process of meeting with faculty and exploring their lab projects.

Hahn applied to UI because of its strong human genetics program. One Cornell course that helped prepare her for her graduate work was a course on developmental biology with biology professor Craig Tepper. Tepper spent a week covering  developmental biologists’ tools, and how they’re used to answer questions. The class also covered the developmental process of zebrafish, mice, and amphibians.

“I want to try and incorporate developmental biology into my research at some point,” she said.

She also took a course on neurobiology with biology Professor Barbara Christie-Pope thatused case studies and patient histories to examine conditions that have neurological bases. It covered the way the brain sends signals and the development of the brain, among other topics.

Hahn’s research experience the summer before her senior year reinforced her desire to work with diseases that affect humans. She worked at a clinical genetics lab at Baylor College of Medicine studying Parkinson’s Disease. The lab’s research was focused on variation in the number of copies of certain genes and how that might affect the progression of the disease.

Hahn also had a research internship at North Dakota State University, where she studied proteins used by bacteria to fix nitrogen in the soil. Scientists are still working to understand how nitrogen fixation happens at the molecular level, she said, and she spent her time there isolating the proteins used by the bacteria.

Hahn said that her research experiences helped her gain the skills to enter graduate school, as did the layout of the biochemistry and molecular biology major. The courses offer the ability  to conduct experiments in the lab that directly relate to the subjects covered in the course, which helps students get experience with research tools and techniques. The hands-on nature of science courses at Cornell was one of the reasons she chose the college, she said.

“Cornell’s science courses continually build on previous courses,” she said, “so you remember what you learned in a previous course and then you expand on that. It’s a great progression.”

The courses did more than just give her a good scientific grounding; they also deepened her understanding of the potential social impact that genetics research can have.

“These classes have also challenged me to further my understanding of the societal implications of genetics research,” she said. “While I understand that ‘Gattaca’ is a fictional story, I believe that as research begins to elucidate the causative agents in disease, the future depicted in ‘Gattaca’ becomes a distinct possibility. Therefore, I have actively tried to understand not only the research itself, but also the societal implications through my coursework.”