Samantha Lang
There’s no need for a fire extinguisher or flame retardant clothing, but you should know if you approach Samantha Lang, her brain will be on fire – all the time, everyday.
And she wants you to know that she never thought scientific research could be that spark for her; that it could happen to you and that’s a good thing whether you know it or not.
Lang, a second-year biological sciences M.S. student, admits to average high school grades and being academically adrift and non-flammable until her junior year at CSUSM. That changed after she took animal physiology with Dr. Deborah Kristan. Lang, then a pre-med student, remembers actually understanding muscle movement, learning to read a scholarly paper and getting a glimpse at the benefits of undergraduate research – all in Dr. Kristan’s class.
The flame spread quickly after Lange went to work in Kristan’s lab studying immunology and infectious disease. Lange won the California State University annual Student Research Competition and has been named a Sally Cassanova Pre-Doctoral Scholar. She’ll be off to Harvard University this summer for a research experience and hopes to pursue her Ph.D. there after finishing her Masters Degree in 2013.
And now she says she’s almost always thinking about what she will do, might do or change in her research. But for Lang the real accomplishment isn’t rewards or recognition but rather a change in perspective. She said that can happen when students look at college as a chance for self-discovery and resist the pressure to declare and stick with a major to have a specific direction.
“I found I have a place in this world,” she said. “To be wanted and wanted in something that you never thought you had the brains for or ability to do, because one person helped you discover that. I love helping people, bettering the world. I have an opportunity to have a large global impact by what I do with immunology and infectious disease. To sit here and tell someone that I am going to have a global impact, it’s crazy. Just crazy. But it’s great.”
On second thought, you better bring a jug of water.
