Monika Franco
Ph.D. Candidate
Program in Chemical Biology
Koutmou Lab
What are your research interests? My thesis work is centered around investigating mRNA modifications and how they impact protein translation.
Who/what brought you to science? People. People brought me to science. My friends, my family, my professors. It was the idea that through science we could make changes that positively affected my life and others.
What do you hope is the outcome/impact of your research? I think basic science is always necessary. We need the foundational work to help us understand these mechanisms. I hope that my mRNA modification work can be used to help the mRNA therapeutics world.
What advice would you give to students who’d like to get more involved in research? Reach out to labs you are interested in. Talk to faculty as soon as you can. Getting in a lab during my undergraduate career was the best thing I ever did.
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? So, that is a funny question. I am actually defending in June and going off to start my new job as a policy analyst. I will be working at a non-profit helping to make science policy recommendations to congress.
April 2022
