{"id":200223,"date":"2023-06-15T07:00:26","date_gmt":"2023-06-15T11:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=200223"},"modified":"2023-06-16T11:47:01","modified_gmt":"2023-06-16T15:47:01","slug":"international-recognition-for-uconn-healths-sara-olson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2023\/06\/international-recognition-for-uconn-healths-sara-olson\/","title":{"rendered":"International Recognition for UConn Health\u2019s Sara Olson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sara Olson is nearly 31 years into a research career that started at UConn Health in immunology, then shifted to genetics and genome sciences.<\/p>\n

Working in the lab of Brenton Graveley<\/a>, chair of genetics and genome sciences, for more than two decades now, molecular and cell biology has been her focus. And it\u2019s that stretch of her career that\u2019s earned her international recognition, in the form of the 2023 RNA Society Outstanding Career Researcher Award.<\/p>\n

\"Sara
Sara Olson, research associate in the genetics and genome sciences lab of Brenton Graveley at UConn Health, is the winner of the 2023 RNA Society Outstanding Career Researcher Award. (Photo by Chris DeFrancesco)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI am humbled and honored,\u201d Olson says. \u201cIt\u2019s an important award recognizing great work and contributions over a long time to the study of RNA. My boss said, \u2018Sara, why don\u2019t you apply for this?\u2019 I\u2019ve been working with him for over 20 years, and we have a lot of papers published in well-respected journals.\u201d<\/p>\n

The RNA Society, a nonprofit international scientific society with more than 1,800 members, says its Outstanding Career Researcher Award recognizes exceptional contributions of career research scientists in advancing scientific discoveries in the field of ribonucleic acid, an important molecule in biological systems. Olson was honored for her \u201cunparalleled\u201d work in splicing and RNA binding proteins in fruit fly and human cells.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe study proteins that bind to RNA, and we study something called RNA splicing,\u201d Olson says. \u201cThe biological systems of using the RNA require a lot of proteins, and so we study these proteins. We can deplete the proteins in the cells and then ask what happens. That can tell us what the protein does.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the bench, it\u2019s a combination of harvesting RNA from tissue culture cells grown in a Petri dish or from fruit flies grown in a vial, and sequencing the RNA purified from those cells.<\/p>\n

Graveley says Olson has contributed to nearly 40 published papers, including 24 in his lab, eight of which were published in Cell<\/em> or Nature<\/em>, two of science\u2019s most notable journals, and she was first co-author on several of those.<\/p>\n

\"portrait
Brenton Graveley accepts the 2023 RNA Society Outstanding Career Researcher Award from RNA Society President Sandra Wolin on behalf of Sara Olson at the RNA’s international conference in Singapore June 3, 2023. Olson was unable to attend. (Photo provided by the RNA Society)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cSara honestly has a stronger resume than most applicants for faculty positions,\u201d Graveley says. \u201cShe is without a doubt the key member of my laboratory and has been for over two decades. Sara oversees my entire laboratory, managing all aspects of its operation, training new students, postdocs and research assistants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Olson studied molecular and cell biology as a UConn undergraduate, which included a six-month co-op working full-time at Pfizer. That positioned her for her first job out of college, in Leo LeFrancois\u2019 immunology lab at UConn Health. Nine years later, Graveley arrived and started working in the Department of Genetics and Developmental Biology. That would become the Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences<\/a>, which Graveley now chairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw this as an opportunity to switch, to get back to more of the molecular and cell biology, which I really preferred over immunology,\u201d Olson says. \u201cSo I felt like I was coming home.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the science advanced, so did the technology, and Olson found herself, to her surprise, gaining computer skills, including coding, in order to handle all the data RNA and DNA sequencing can generate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen talking about her with colleagues, I often refer to Sara as my \u2018number 1\u2019 (Star Trek Next Generation<\/em> reference), and jokingly (kind of) say that we can communicate without speaking out loud,\u201d Graveley says. \u201cIt is fair to say that my lab would not be the same without her.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Genetics and genome sciences research associate wins RNA Society\u2019s 2023 Outstanding Career Researcher Award<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":200210,"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":[147,2076,1868,179],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2010],"class_list":["post-200223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-research","category-meds","category-uconn-health"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 15:13:34","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\/200223","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\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200223"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":200314,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200223\/revisions\/200314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/200210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200223"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=200223"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=200223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}