Eunice Akintade, ‘14
Why did you choose to come to UMR? My parents were told about UMR from a family friend who was going there, and since I still wasn’t sure where I was going, we visited UMR. My parents liked that everyone seemed studious and I liked that it seemed like a place where exploring opportunities was encouraged.
What did your Capstone experience at UMR involve? My Capstone experience combined two of my favourite things, traveling and learning by doing. I took classes through a program called CAPA in London, which allowed me to live with students from other universities and have the freedom to explore London on my own while also having excursions with other students. I also had an internship at University College London in the Laboratory for Protein Crystallography, Centre for Amyloidosis and Acute Phase Proteins. It was a great chance for me to see science in real life and use the lab techniques I had learned.
How did your Capstone experience prepare you for your future in what you’re currently doing? My current job is a mixture of working in data compliance, assisting in clinical trials and managing other projects. My experience in the lab during my internship created an interest in research and an understanding of how everything comes together in a research study. I literally send research articles to my friends all the time and I’m certain that it’s because of my time working with researchers. There are so many moving parts to make a study happen and from the outside, we really miss that. I worked with people who had been working in studies for years and now when a study is getting delayed, I’m able to understand why. The researchers I worked with were also great at simplifying things for me and that’s helped me when dealing with donors who I need to simplify information to, in order to get their informed consent. I will also say that being able to be exposed to a multitude of different cultures in a short period of time helped me grow in effectively communicating with people from different backgrounds and adapting to different situations, which I find myself doing a lot in this company.
Is there a certain instructor that greatly impacted your time at UMR? There are a lot of instructors that impacted me. I honestly feel like I was blessed to attend a place where I got to learn from my professors in and out of the classroom. Yuko Taniguchi definitely played a big part in my growth, not only as a writer, but as a leader. Whether it was in her writing classes or in ballroom, it always felt like she saw things in me that I wasn’t recognising yet and she encouraged me to dig deeper. Doing planks and wall sits taught me discipline and to not quit, which applies to a lot of post grad life. I started UMR in a hard season of my life and so many professors unwittingly gave me the motivation to keep going. I’m very grateful for that.
What are you currently doing? I’ve been working at a company called Be The Match and just moved from being a workup specialist to being a project coordinator in the prospective research department. It’s very cool to see how much work is being done in cellular therapy and how many lives have been saved through it. I left UMR wanting to know that I was making an impact and it’s been gratifying to know that lives have been saved because of the work we do daily.