Where I'm Coming From: Alicia Wooten

By: dhahn (344) in BU Today

When Alicia Wooten (MED’19) was three years old, doctors told her parents that she had [...]progressive hearing loss. Today the PhD candidate, who works in the pneumonia biology lab on the Medical Campus, studies the ways that host pathogens respond to Streptococcus pneumoniae. While she says lab work will always be harder for people who are deaf, her work is made easier by some very supportive colleagues.

“They’ve become really aware of what I need,” she says. “If I didn’t have a PI that supported me, I would probably have given up. I remember when I joined the lab, we were doing a five-minute American Sign Language lesson for the whole lab. I was teaching them different signs, and then I would go into my PI’s office and he would sign, ‘Hello, Alicia.’ That makes my day.”

Tags: academia, science, research, minorities, underrepresented, higher education, minority, representation

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