Olivia Ballew knows the difficulties of both science and running, but “if I had to pick,” she tells The Scientist, “I would say that getting a PhD is much harder than qualifying for the Olympic Trials.”
It was Ballew’s time in the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon in November 2018—2:43:15—that qualified her to compete in the Olympic trials to be held later this week in Atlanta. The top runners will advance to the summer Olympics in Tokyo this July. Ballew has been training for the run as she simultaneously writes her dissertation on meiotic commitment in yeast cells.
Her research in Soni Lacefield’s lab at Indiana University investigates what keeps a cell in meiosis once it decides to undergo the process, and she has found that knocking out two meiotic checkpoints—one in yeast cells and another in mammalian cells—results in a loss of meiotic commitment.
As the trials approach, she has been ...
