Emma Allen-Vercoe - Edit 1
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- My name is Emma Allen-Vercoe,
I am in molecular and cell biology
here at the University of Guelph,
and I'm a microbiologist
and I specifically work
on the human gut.
My research is really about
the microbes that live
inside the human gut and that's
actually a huge area
and it's a very exciting
new rich area of research.
And we know very, very little about it
and the reason its suddenly become
very important is because
we're now realizing that the microbes
living in the gut controls
so many aspects of health.
What motivates me to do
this research is really just because
I'm a microbial ecologist now,
I've really kind of changed fields
from doing microbial pathogenesis,
And I spent most of my formative
years in microbiology
and during that time I was thinking,
"Well, what about
the microbes in our pathogens?"
Nobody works on those.
If someone tells me not to do
something,
that makes me want
to do it even more
and this certainly was the case
in my career as well.
And so I decided I was gonna
get, "These are unculturable, okay,
I'm going to show you
how to culture them,"
and that's in fact what my lab
is known for now.
Getting this award is wonderful
to have because it's really
is recognizing and appreciating
that this field isn't as crazy
as it first might have seemed,
you know, those sad years ago
when I first started out
in this profession,
I think my mentors thought
I was crazy.
And so it's really nice to be
recognized and sort of validated
that what I did was actually...
is a good field to get into,
it's going somewhere, the research
is important and so...
and I think that that's really
what drives me most of all.