The Art of Discovery
Jody Ebanks finds research to be extremely creative. Which is a good thing,
considering that in addition to science, one of her passions is art.
The third-year PhD student selected the University of Cincinnati James L. Winkle
College of Pharmacy’s cosmetic science program so that she could weave
her love for art into the art of discovery.
Born in Jamaica, Jody moved to Massachusetts when she was 7 years old and was
always interested in drawing and painting. She was also pulled to science and
earned her undergraduate degree in biochemistry from Boston College.
She received the Albert C. Yates Scholarship from UC—an honor designed
to recruit and retain underrepresented ethnic minorities in UC’s graduate
programs. It’s given only to those nominated by their department. As
a Yates Fellow, Jody receives a scholarship which covers tuition, general fees
and a stipend to assist in the first year of graduate study.
While an undergraduate student in Boston, Jody participated in research, but
now in graduate school she writes her own research protocols and has a lot
more freedom to focus on the science most interesting to her—pigment-cell
chemistry.
Within the cosmetic science program, Jody works with her advisor, Randall Wickett,
to obtain guidance on coursework and research interests. With many graduate
programs, students also work directly with their advisors to conduct research,
but in Jody’s
case, her interests—spurred by a colleague in the dermatology department—were
better suited for another lab. Although she’s a student in the College
of Pharmacy, Jody is working in the College of Medicine laboratory of UC dermatology
professor Raymond Boissy. A graduate assistantship supports her as she investigates
the biochemistry of skin pigmentation. She’s doing this by studying the
specific cells responsible for making and receiving the skin’s pigment,
called melanin.
Jody’s research is relevant to beauty-care products, but could also be
applied to skin disorders such as hyperpigmentation, a condition that leads to
darkening of areas on the skin, or burn patients who’ve lost pigmentation.
She spends much of her time working with human tissue cultures, which means
she’s
in the lab a lot. In fact, culturing skin cells can take several months.
“
The skin cell cultures kind of become your children,” says Jody.
She admits that much of what she does involves troubleshooting since the studies
she’s conducting are so novel, but it’s that type of work that
allows Jody to channel her creativity.
“
Research is about elucidating some process that everyone has been wondering about,” she
says. “It’s about the quest to find some answer that no one has
ever found before.”
Jody says that with research, you often think that you will get started and
that there is a set path to how things will go. But, she adds, that’s
not the case.
“
It often doesn’t do what you want it to do. You get in there thinking
this is going to be easy. It becomes a challenge of course. It guides you and
you
are not guiding how it will happen. You sometimes get the complete opposite
of what you expected.
“ Which is just fine.”
The “unexpected” is where researchers get creative, rethinking
logic, making changes, modifying timelines or going in different routes.
And what frustrates her most about research?
“
Repetition,” she says. “But you have to remember that all the time
you’ve spent hasn’t been wasted. It is a process and it might not
work the first time you do it.”
UC’s cosmetic science program, which was the first of its kind when it
began in the 1970s, is one of only a few PhD-granting cosmetic science programs
in the world. Fewer than five master’s and PhD students are accepted to
UC’s program each year. The university added an online cosmetic science
master’s program in fall 2006. Nearly 40 students have taken classes
through the online program, with four already admitted as matriculated students.
Graduates of the cosmetic science program often go on to work in the
cosmetic or beauty industry, or continue research and teaching in an
academic setting.
Jody isn’t sure where she’ll end up. For now, she remains focused
on her research—which she estimates she’ll wrap up in about two
years or so and is looking forward to the day she sees her name in print in
a research
publication.
“
I’d mail it to my mom to say, ‘Look what I did!’”
