Brenda S.J. Winkel
Associate Professor of Biology
Virginia Tech
What do you like about your job?
I feel so fortunate to have a job where I can help others through teaching and research, and one that still continues to challenge me on a daily basis—the very things I was looking for in a career all those years ago.
Even as a little kid, I enjoyed math and science. I studied chemistry in college, thinking I wanted to be a medical doctor. But my senior year I attended my first research seminar, and all of a sudden my eyes were opened to the world of scientific research. I was amazed to discover all the interesting things that were going on in the buildings on campus that I had never even known about.
I went to graduate school and worked for a biotechnology division of a small college. At the same time, scientists were discovering ways to introduce foreign genes into plants. I decided if I really wanted to have fun as a scientist, I would need a Ph.D., so I went back to school for a degree in plant molecular biology.
After my degree, I worked at Harvard Medical School, learning about a little weed called Arabidopsis—the latest breakthrough at the time in plant molecular biology. There I was, at Massachusetts General Hospital, doing research on plants! In 1992, I became a professor at Virginia Tech. I've had a great time watching my ideas develop into research projects that my graduate students and undergraduate students work on and contribute their own ideas to.
