{"id":51805,"date":"2017-02-22T13:08:19","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T17:08:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?p=51805"},"modified":"2022-10-21T15:34:07","modified_gmt":"2022-10-21T19:34:07","slug":"office-artifacts-karen-allen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2017\/02\/22\/office-artifacts-karen-allen\/","title":{"rendered":"Office Artifacts: Karen Allen"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/strong><\/span>This CAS\/ENG scientist loves pop culture, especially Marvel comics<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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\"Karen<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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By Joel Brown<\/a>. BU TODAY. Photos by Cydney Scott<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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A visitor might think that the MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3-D Printer in Karen Allen\u2019s<\/a> office at the Metcalf Science Center is official BU apparatus, part of her lab equipment. Not so.<\/p>\n

\u201cKnowing what a nerd I am,\u201d says Allen, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of chemistry, \u201cmy husband bought it for my birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now the 3-D printer produces items for both work and pleasure. The tiny dinosaur skull with the unicorn\u2019s horn? Purely for fun. The red blobby thing? That, obviously, is a molecular model of acetoacetate decarboxylase, an enzyme used to make acetone. The model is a reminder that Allen and her team spent more than a decade uncovering the enzyme\u2019s structure and published their results in 2008.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The Allen Lab<\/a> focuses on understanding how enzymes work to catalyze reactions, studying them with such methods as X-ray crystallography. The goal is to achieve better paths to drug discovery. \u201cEnzymes do amazing, amazing things,\u201d says Allen, who is also a College of Engineering professor of materials science & engineering. But she was a nerd long before she was a scientist, devouring Marvel comics like X-Men<\/em>, Silver Surfer<\/em>, Fantastic Four<\/em>, and Spider-Man<\/em> as a child in Huntington, Conn.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found comic books to be a fantastic way to think about all the possibilities in life, all the possibilities in the universe that you don\u2019t always see in your everyday life,\u201d she says. \u201cIn comic books you can really stretch your imagination.\u201d And, she adds, there\u2019s a strong social justice component to many of them.<\/p>\n

Mainly, she is a Marvel fan. Her proudest office possession is a framed print of Spider-Man, signed by the late Marvel artist Norman Lee<\/a>, who gave her the print at the 2011 Boston Comic Con<\/a>. \u201cI learned that people who ink and write comic books think it\u2019s just as cool to be a scientist as we think it is to ink and write comic books,\u201d Allen says. \u201cI mentioned that we clone proteins, and he\u2019s like, \u2018You make clones? That\u2019s so cool!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Other Marvel items around the room include a tiny plastic Wolverine perched atop her computer monitor. \u201cHe has to work to remain civilized, which is something good we can all remember in our everyday lives,\u201d she says. The Marvel items share space with Star Trek<\/em> memorabilia, a Homer Simpson clock, and funny keepsakes from coworkers and students.<\/p>\n

Another item that makes Allen light up is a tiny LEGO figurine of a woman scientist, given to her by a colleague from MIT. \u201cShe\u2019s incredibly well-versed in safety,\u201d Allen says. \u201cShe\u2019s wearing her safety glasses and latex gloves to protect herself during this experiment, where she\u2019s holding two Erlenmeyer flasks. But on top of that, she\u2019s fashionable\u2014notice the purple shirt.\u201d<\/p>\n

In their series \u201cOffice Artifacts<\/a>,\u201d <\/em>BU Today highlights interesting artifacts professors display in their office. Have a suggestion about someone they should profile? Email orourkej@bu.edu.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This CAS\/ENG scientist loves pop culture, especially Marvel comics By Joel Brown. BU TODAY. Photos by Cydney Scott A visitor might think that the MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3-D Printer in Karen Allen\u2019s office at the Metcalf Science Center is official BU apparatus, part of her lab equipment. Not so. \u201cKnowing what a nerd I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1409,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[909],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51805"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1409"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51805"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131339,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51805\/revisions\/131339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}