{"id":161975,"date":"2020-06-18T11:01:55","date_gmt":"2020-06-18T15:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?post_type=school-college-post&p=161975"},"modified":"2020-06-18T11:02:37","modified_gmt":"2020-06-18T15:02:37","slug":"meet-graduate-student-tyler-gavitt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2020\/06\/meet-graduate-student-tyler-gavitt\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet graduate student Tyler Gavitt"},"content":{"rendered":"

This interview originally appeared on Naturally@UConn.<\/a><\/p>\n

In the midst of a worldwide pandemic, Tyler <\/span>Gavitt<\/span> says he\u2019s never felt more relevant. <\/span>I<\/span>t<\/span> took him a few<\/span> departmental moves<\/span> as an undergraduate to find his ni<\/span>che<\/span>, but h<\/span>e now feels a<\/span> calling<\/span> to use his knowledge and join the fight <\/span>against infectious <\/span>respiratory diseases<\/span> such as COVID-19.<\/span> He is interested in a career with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), <\/span>studying <\/span>transmission rates and reemergence of diseases. Here\u2019s what he had to say about his experience<\/span>s<\/span> at UConn.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Where did you study as an undergraduate? What was your major?<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

I did my undergraduate degree at UConn as a <\/span>m<\/span>olecular and <\/span>c<\/span>ell <\/span>b<\/span>iology major<\/span>, then a ma<\/span>s<\/span>ter\u2019s in pathobiology.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why did you decide to go to graduate school?<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

I wanted to go to graduate school because I\u202freally wanted to have my own lab someday, and I knew that to do that, I\u2019d need to get my Ph<\/span>.<\/span>D.\u202f<\/span><\/p>\n

Who is your advisor? What is your field of research?<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

My advisor is Dr. Steven <\/a><\/span>Szczepanek<\/span><\/a> in the Department of Pathobiology and Veterinary Science<\/a><\/span>. I predominantly study respiratory pathogens, with a specific focus on dysregulated host immune responses to infectious organisms. Our lab also does a lot of research on both vaccine design and vaccine efficacy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Name one aspect of your work that you like.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Learning things that have never been known before. At the Ph<\/span>.<\/span>D<\/span>.<\/span> level, a lot of the work being done is very specific and usually very novel. When I make a new discovery in the lab, I\u2019m always amazed by the fact that it\u2019s entirely possible that no one has ever learned that information before, and that I just learned something completely new that I can share with other people. It\u2019s my absolute favorite part of my job.<\/span><\/p>\n

In your opinion, what is your greatest accomplishment so far?<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

We have a paper<\/a> that was published in <\/span>Vaccine<\/span><\/i> that I\u2019m very proud of. The data didn\u2019t quite work out the way we expected it to, and a lot of the other scientists involved in the work thought it was a dead end, but I managed to put together an explanation of the data that we all felt contributed something important to that field, and got it published. From what I understand, a couple of people reasonably high up in the USDA saw the publication and really liked the work. It took me something like <\/span>seventeen<\/span> months and <\/span>eleven<\/span> drafts to get that paper to where I was <\/span>happy with it, but I\u2019m proud of the end result.<\/span><\/p>\n

When do you expect to get your degree? What then?<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

I\u2019m hoping to graduate with my Ph<\/span>.<\/span>D<\/span>.<\/span> by fall 2021 or spring 2022. After that, I\u2019d like to try to p<\/span>ostdoc<\/span> with the CDC and eventually try to get full time employment working there.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is there anything else you would like us to know about you?<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

I really love landscape and astrophotography. When I\u2019m not working on campus, I try to go out with my cameras as often as possible to take photos. I really love that fulfilling feeling I get when I\u2019ve been chasing a particular photo that I\u2019ve been thinking about for weeks and then finally get that one perfect photo.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This interview originally appeared on Naturally@UConn. In the midst of a worldwide pandemic, Tyler Gavitt says he\u2019s never felt more relevant. It took him a few departmental moves as an undergraduate to find his niche, but he now feels a calling to use his knowledge and join the fight against infectious respiratory diseases such as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":161976,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2224],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1871],"class_list":["post-161975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cahnr"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 00:45:45","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/161976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161975"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=161975"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=161975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}