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Department: Baker Institute for Animal Health More Information An Interview with Dr. Judy AppletonDr. Judy Appleton is a Professor of Immunology at Cornell’s School of Veterinary Medicine. In her lab at the Baker Institute for Animal Health research is being done on two nematodes, or roundworms, Trichinella spiralis and Parelaphstrongylus tenuis. Before coming to Cornell, Dr. Appleton attended Indiana University as an undergraduate and did her graduate work at the University of Georgia.Dr. Appleton grew up in Evergreen Park, a small suburb of Chicago. Her interest in science began when she was very young from different books about science. As a girl she enjoyed collecting rocks, which her father, a mining engineer, would then be able to tell her about. Her interest in the field of biology evolved through a science project that she did in seventh grade, culturing bacteria on agar plates from different everyday sources including her dog’s nose and the end of a pencil. The wonderful teachers that Dr. Appleton encountered both in high school and in her undergraduate years further stimulated her interest in biology. Over her years of research Dr. Appleton became interested in intestinal immunity and parasitical worms through the different labs that she worked as a graduate student and a post-doctoral associate. In her lab at the Baker Institute there are 7 other researchers including post docs, graduate students, undergraduates and lab technicians. The lab works to discover how parasitical worms are able to live within a mammal’s body for years without causing an immune response against the worm and without harming the host enough to kill it. To do this they are researching the proteins that are synthesized by the worms. This work can be applied to areas such as autoimmune disease and allergies since they cause similar immune response inside the human body as a worm causes. Dr. Appleton’s loves exciting discoveries and new data and says that this is her favorite thing about her work. The most rewarding part of a career in research is seeing the graduate students in her lab. She likes to have the excitement of young, new researchers who come in not really knowing a lot about the worms that she works with and by the time they leave they have made their own discoveries and end up knowing even more then she herself knows about the subject. She believes that young people are a necessity to science because they bring with them the enthusiasm needed to make new discoveries. As head of her lab she spends most of her time editing papers, writing grants and progress reports, meeting with the students in her lab, and reviewing articles for science journals. The downfall of having her own lab is the bureaucracy that is involved in science such as filling out forms to be allowed to use animals in the research, permits for using recombinant DNA, biohazards and chemical safety. Outside of the lab Dr. Appleton enjoys cycling with her husband, swimming and gardening. She also likes to spend time watching her two sons participate in their different athletic events, which include soccer, golf and hockey. |