Summary

Nicole’s career experience has been a true adventure in science that began as a field biology technician for Tuscola County Mosquito Abatement when the West Nile Virus was first detected in the United States in 1999. Four years of Integrated Pest Management Michigan summers and Molecular Biology/Biotechnology degree program from the University of Michigan Flint in falls and winters provided her with a strong foundation of scientific work experience along with a hot new bachelor’s degree program to graduate from in 2001. 

Post graduation, Nicole’s career ladder began as a grant-funded Research Assistant in the Cell and Developmental Biology department at the University of Michigan Medical School using fruit fly nervous systems to study axon guidance mechanisms responsible for nervous system growth and repair.  Her next career move was into a hard money-funded position at Michigan State University’s Cytogenetics laboratory where she solved chromosomal mysteries in human blood, bone marrow, amniotic fluid, and tissues.  Unfortunate budget cuts resulted in the need to jump back into grant-funded research with an NIH contract-funded lab that was part of the Microbial Research Unit at the Food Safety and Toxicology Center at MSU.  Several holidays were sacrificed, and many hours were spent collecting samples from 80 chickens to study Salmonella.

Nicole began to embark on a professional master’s degree program in Industrial Microbiology in 2006.  In 2007 an opportunity for advancement presented itself and Nicole became the lab manager for a very active husband and wife research team in the Pharmacology and Toxicology department at MSU.  The lab studied Idiosyncratic Drug-Induced Liver Injury (IDILI).  In 2009 her son Charlie was born, and the master’s program got put on the way back burner. 

Budget cuts struck again and with a son to support it was critical to seek out a hard money-funded position.  A career adaptation to Radiation Safety was born and after one year as a Radiation Safety Technologist Nicole saw the opportunity to advance into the role of Health Physicist in charge of Radioactive Waste Management for MSU.  All it took was a Commercial Driver’s license with Hazmat endorsement, Department of Transportation certificate in Hazardous Materials Transportation, and Environmental Protection Agency certificate in Hazardous Waste Management. 

Five years of heavy lifting is enough for a career that began with an education in Molecular Biology so with a peek at the University of Michigan jobs page in early 2018 discovered the Safety Officer for the College of Pharmacy appeared as a golden opportunity to put all this education and experience to good use for a great cause.