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“Research Ethics Reimagined” is a podcast created by Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R), hosted by Ivy R. Tillman, PRIM&R's executive director. Here, we talk with scientists, researchers, bioethicists and some of the leading minds exploring new frontiers of science. This season, we are going examine research ethics in the 21st century -- and learn why it matters to you.
Welcome to today's episode of Research Ethics Reimagined. I'm your host, Dan McLean
Catherine Batsford:And I'm Catherine Battford.
Dan McLean:We're joined today by our PRIM&R 25 Pillar Award recipients, Lisa Chuba and Alison Pohl, as well as the first ever PRIMR 25 outstanding student poster award recipient, Leah Huff. We're excited to have a conversation with both established and emerging voices in research ethics. First, we'd like to introduce Lisa Chuba. She is a Research Compliance Monitor and Post Approval Monitor Coordinator at UConn Health. Alison Pohl also serves as a Research Compliance Monitor and the IACUC Administrator at UConn Health.
Dan McLean:Together, Alison and Lisa submitted a poster being presented at PRIM&R's Annual
Dan McLean:Conference this year. Their poster was titled Engaging the Research Community Through Outreach to Promote Animal Welfare and Compliance. Leah is a senior at University of Virginia. She's majoring in history and American studies. She submitted a winning poster titled What if Consent Worked Like a Good Lesson Plan?
Dan McLean:Optimizing Participant Understanding in the Ongoing Consent Process. Thanks for being on the podcast today. Let's get started.
Lisa A. Chuba:Thank you. Thank you.
Dan McLean:Let's start off with Leah. You're the first recipient of a student poster award. Could you take a step back and share with the audience what that actually means and what it represents?
Leah Huff:Yeah, so thank you for having me. So how I got interested in research ethics is actually I applied through to the HRPP at UVA through it's a program at UVA called the internship placement program. That's how I got placed in the HRPP at UVA. And I really got interested in that because I wanted to do something more research related. I knew I wanted to have a career in research, something related to maybe helping people with their studies, things like that.
Leah Huff:That's how I got interested in it. My poster for the PREMER twenty five conference, I guess my poster was mainly about it's called what if concern what if consent works like a good lesson plan, and it looks at how we can make the research consent process more engaging, adaptive, and respectful of participant autonomy. For this, I surveyed over two fifty university students about their learning preferences and connected those results to adaptive consent models, like dynamic and iterative consent. And so the idea is that if we tailor consent to different learning styles, like using visuals, discussion, or periodic check ins, participants can make better informed decisions throughout a study. So in short, my project reimagine consent as an ongoing educational process that builds understanding, trust, and respect, and not just as a one time form that you have to sign at the beginning of a study.
Dan McLean:I'm curious when you went around UVA campus talking with students, how familiar people may or may not have been with this entire process.
Leah Huff:Yeah. So we put up these signs, I guess you could say, across campus. I would say people at UVA are pretty smart, so I didn't really have to explain that much about what consent was. The survey that they filled out, it was only about 15 questions, so it was very straightforward. It had said what they were going to do, so I didn't really have to educate people in that way, but
Catherine Batsford:That was good. So Alison and Lisa, you're coming at it from a different perspective, maybe with older researchers or maybe not. Can you tell us a little bit about your poster submission and congratulations on winning the outstanding award? We get a lot of submissions, so it's great work you're doing.
Alison D. Pohl:Thank you.
Lisa A. Chuba:Thank you.
Alison D. Pohl:Go ahead. Start it off.
Lisa A. Chuba:Well, I'll start it off. I mean, I started up here in the IACUC office '24, and I was tasked with relaunching our post approval monitoring program. And what was happening is we were doing the we call them pause reviews here at UConn Health because we are the Huskies and it stands for Post Approval Animal Welfare Support. So we were doing these pause reviews with labs and they were just very resistant. They were very defensive when we would go and just, it was almost a us versus them.
Alison D. Pohl:It was like pulling teeth just to get the answers.
Lisa A. Chuba:And so what happened was I, Alison and I were having a conversation and I just said to her, I'm like, well, does compliance have to be so serious? Like, can we lighten things up a little bit?
Alison D. Pohl:And we started talking about our titles, which are Research Compliance Monitor one and two, and it just seemed so adversarial right there. So we thought, what if we could try and really develop some relationships between the IACUC and the investigators and all of the research staff, right? See if we can get true collaborative relationships because we felt that having those relationships could lead to better compliance and ultimately that means better care for the animals. Yeah.
Lisa A. Chuba:And so we started an outreach program and it completely changed the dynamic here. And so we said, you know what? We want to share what we did. And we submitted a poster.
Alison D. Pohl:So we created the poster.
Catherine Batsford:Did you encounter anything unexpected while you were working on the poster? Actually, for either one of you, we'll start with Allison and Lisa, and then maybe Leah, if you had any anything that surprised you in the process.
Alison D. Pohl:Well, the first thing we did is I ran to Lisa when I was looking at the primer stuff and I said, Hey, you want to put together a poster for forever? And she's like, I've never done that before. I said, I have, let's go do it.
Lisa A. Chuba:So two type A people working on a poster and having everything line up correctly and and everything's equally distant. You know, it was, no. As far as the content, we we pretty much agreed on on a lot of it. So that wasn't really hard. It was just, as far as the poster, where things go, we try to have a flow to
Alison D. Pohl:it. It's kind of fun when you're working with a coauthor, right? I'm very sort of more wordy. She's more bullet point. So it was just a matter of arranging it.
Alison D. Pohl:So we thought it was really easy for other people to see, but we both thought our graphics were really gonna be the highlight of the poster.
Catherine Batsford:Yeah. Leah, did anything surprise you when you were doing the the poster? Was it similar to some other projects you've been working on at school, or is it was it very different?
Leah Huff:No. I would say it's pretty different, especially when it comes to the survey part. People have very different answers. So I was kind of surprised because at UVA, we have mainly lecture style, and then we have discussion style. That's, like, the main things that we do in classes.
Leah Huff:I was surprised that people really liked projects because those aren't things that we really do much in school, at least for my major discipline, but I was surprised that people really enjoyed projects and things like that.
Dan McLean:What did you find most challenging about translating educational theory into research ethics practice?
Leah Huff:For me, most challenging was thinking about it in terms of, I guess, how a teacher would look at things. So for me, how would consent work with a good lesson plan? It was kind of thinking about how would a researcher or a professor or a teacher look at this. Because typically how I would look at it is if because I'm more of a researcher in that field. So looking at it, trying to translate it as a teacher, I would say, that was the most difficult.
Leah Huff:And putting together the poster, trying to translate it as of, again, like how a professor or a teacher would look at it, that was pretty difficult to translate it in that way.
Catherine Batsford:So Lisa and Alison, in your departments, you said you work with investigators and researchers. Are those generally on, like, the PhD level? Are they can you explain a little bit about that interaction and why you think maybe there was the animosity?
Alison D. Pohl:Well, runs the gamut, right? I mean, all the principal investigators themselves are usually at the Ph. D. Level, but the research staff, you know, we have the Ph. D.
Alison D. Pohl:Researchers, we have postdocs, we have graduate students, you have lab staff who that's their career, they do lab work, they might have a bachelor's or a master's. So it really runs the whole gamut of personality you have to deal with. PIs themselves tend to be pretty direct upfront what they want, but they want what they want. They don't want to have the ICOG tell them that they can't do something or along those lines. They, for some reason, people were always getting a sense.
Alison D. Pohl:And I don't think this is true at our institution that the IACUC is there to just hinder them, you know, to where we have to make sure that all the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed. So we're just going to mess PIs up. And that's really not what the ICIC wants to be. But we had to get that out somehow, you know, that we're really there to be a collaborative partner. Yes, it's your work.
Alison D. Pohl:Our job is to make sure that you can do your work in accordance with the regulations that are out there.
Dan McLean:I wonder if we could move to the career path question a little bit. We asked Leah a little bit about what's going on at UVA and obviously she's a senior and will be graduating in the spring but for Lisa and Allison if you want to take us back and in time a little bit from when you were perhaps seniors in college and thinking about what comes next so how did you end up at UConn Health and thinking about that? I don't know what insight you'd pass along to Leah as she's going through the next chapter of her life here.
Alison D. Pohl:I'm trying to remember being a senior in college. It's really, it's really been a long time.
Lisa A. Chuba:Galaxy far away is what it was. But I think I'll go first. I mean, I kind of did the gamut. I started out at, in academia, then I worked at a pharmaceutical company doing hands on animal research. And then I came to UConn Health about eighteen years ago.
Lisa A. Chuba:I worked as a vet tech, for seventeen years until I came up here to work in the IACUC office. So it was kinda funny. I was telling Alison, you know, usually when I'd show up in labs, people were happy to see me. But now you put the IACUC, you know, IACUC coordinator hat on and they scattered. So but that my career journey.
Alison D. Pohl:I had a really roundabout career path to what I'm doing. My undergraduate and graduate degrees are actually in medical microbiology. I was a microbiologist in a clinical lab, human lab all the time. And I was out in San Francisco and I kind of got tired of working in VA out there and I just saw an ad in the paper saying they wanted somebody to do medical microbiology. It just turned out that the patients were mice.
Alison D. Pohl:So I went and I applied and so that got me into biotech. And then when my husband and I decided to move back to Connecticut, floated into UConn health and came over here and just kind of fit in here. So I've been here for twenty two years.
Catherine Batsford:Wow. Oh, that's great. I've heard that happens a lot in the IACook offices. We've met with some others groups and certainly the twenty years and twenty five and.
Alison D. Pohl:That's great.
Leah Huff:That's great.
Alison D. Pohl:I think I cook I cook office staff administrators, PAM coordinators. It's really helpful if you do have that background in the actual world of using animals themselves. It gives you a little bit of knowledge that somebody who doesn't have that might struggle with for a while, it works out well.
Catherine Batsford:So now, Leah, your research was with people. So did you have to submit it through the institutional review board at your college?
Leah Huff:Yeah. For the initial survey, I did have to get approval for the IRB, which was like, a week or so pro well, it was a few weeks, actually. But, yeah, I had to submit it to the IRB. How
Dan McLean:was that process? Can you share a little bit?
Leah Huff:Yeah. So submitting it, if anyone has submitted before, you know that you're constantly submitting, and then they give you feedback, and then you have to submit again. But I had my a woman I work with, she helped me through it, and that she was really helpful in that process. But it wasn't it was difficult in the beginning because I've never submitted something to the IRB before. So just getting comfortable with the language that they like, the certain procedures that they want in the study.
Leah Huff:That was a little bit difficult, but I got used to it, further on.
Dan McLean:I also read that you served as a student IRB member. Can you share a little bit about that experience?
Leah Huff:Yeah. So I'm on the board currently right now. I would say it's a pretty good process. So I'm in the IRB SBS. UVA has two IRBs, so I'm on the social and behavioral side.
Leah Huff:I would say that that's a pretty good process so far. In the past, I've helped review studies. I've helped get them approved. So I get to talk to people who are also in the IRB research world. So it's a good experience to have, especially as an undergrad.
Catherine Batsford:Do you find that, Lisa and Allison, that there's some overlap between the human subjects review, or is there any crossover that happens, or is IACUC mainly in its lane, I guess?
Alison D. Pohl:There's really not that much crossover. We might have PIs who are going to be, say, implanting human samples, so we have to make sure, you know, that where they got it from to determine whether or not they needed IRB review and approval or not.
Dan McLean:Leah as you look forward did you have a five year or even a ten year plan?
Leah Huff:I don't have a particular five year outcome but I know that I want to stay in this field and discipline.
Catherine Batsford:So Lisa and Allison, do you have any plans to submit another poster? Is there something brewing that you're finishing this up and you're like, oh, no, we should do this?
Lisa A. Chuba:You never know what we're going to come up with next. Do come up with some fun things.
Alison D. Pohl:Yeah, we do tend to scare people around here. So it's always a lot of fun. It is fun. Yeah.
Lisa A. Chuba:We just had fun yesterday.
Alison D. Pohl:We had a big Jeopardy game where we had our institutional visual versus our attending veterinarian versus a research director here. So we're off our high of that today.
Catherine Batsford:Yeah. We're still learning. That's fun. That's fun. Just to kind of get everybody together talking and
Lisa A. Chuba:learning. Yeah. People learns things too.
Alison D. Pohl:They learn. It was great. We were, we were grabbed by a lot of people. I did not know that. And this was, this was really great.
Alison D. Pohl:It was a lot of fun. And, you know, so we found out that doing some stuff that's although nerve wracking to put together, I mean, we've planning our Jeopardy! Game since March, you know, we just had it yesterday. But it is a lot of fun and people are experiencing the fun. You know, we're giving out the vibes that it's fun.
Alison D. Pohl:They're taking it in. And a lot of things I think have improved at our institution. People are coming down and they're seeking us out for questions. And I think we're, we're going in the right direction that we wanted to when Lisa came on board last year as an eye, as a eye cook office member.
Catherine Batsford:That sounds amazing and scary. So what was your best Jeopardy question do you feel like that you threw out there yesterday?
Lisa A. Chuba:Oh gosh.
Alison D. Pohl:Oh, there were so many.
Lisa A. Chuba:Probably the one about the iACUC chair. That was a
Alison D. Pohl:Yeah, we had one of our questions that nobody answered it, which I was surprised. But this position is required by the Animal Welfare Act, but not mentioned in any other law. And it was IACUC chair, but even our IACUC chair didn't
Lisa A. Chuba:get it. Yeah, yeah. But what's funny, this was our second game show. We actually did a family feud game. We pitted, two labs against each other.
Lisa A. Chuba:Both of the PIs were on the IACUC and we had program related questions. And again, it was the feedback was great. People learned some things. They're learning about compliance. They're having fun doing it.
Lisa A. Chuba:And it's it's really changed the culture around here.
Alison D. Pohl:And the hardest question for that one was what was in a mouse cage, believe it or not.
Lisa A. Chuba:Yeah.
Alison D. Pohl:You know?
Lisa A. Chuba:Yeah. They almost lost. Yeah.
Alison D. Pohl:They got bedding and they got food and they got water and then they even got poo and that but they they didn't have mouse. Mouse. The last one selected before they were going to get the three strikes.
Lisa A. Chuba:Yeah, yeah.
Alison D. Pohl:So we're
Lisa A. Chuba:having some fun.
Leah Huff:That's good.
Catherine Batsford:I see future posters there.
Dan McLean:If there's one thing that you're hoping people who are milling about and taking time to absorb them, if there's really one thing from each of your posters, what do you think they'll come away with from what you presented?
Alison D. Pohl:Who wants to go first?
Leah Huff:You can go.
Alison D. Pohl:We go? Okay. I think one of the things that would be great to get out of our poster is, you know, the laws are so prescriptive, right? There is wiggle room in how you can do a law, but, you know, the laws have to be maintained. But I'd like I think we'd like people to get out there that, you know, you can still have fun with it.
Alison D. Pohl:You can still learn without being stuffy. You can get knowledge out there without having some sort of didactic session, you know, and to almost entertain people, but to get them involved has really done a lot for our program. Yeah.
Catherine Batsford:Leah, what do you think? You'd like people
Alison D. Pohl:to take away.
Leah Huff:So for me, I hope that they walk away with the idea that consent doesn't doesn't have to be static. It can be relational, engaging, maybe even empowering. I think when we treat participants as partners and people, we can and people with different learning preferences and communication needs, we can think about consent in terms of one that builds trust between researchers and participants.
Dan McLean:And speaking about your project, know you mentioned the phrase dynamic consent, which I thought was, intriguing. When you're thinking about different types of consent, also learning about some AI tools that they're exploring using different types of AI whether it's LLMs to help inform and teach people about the human subjects research that they may be opting to go in. I wonder if you have any thoughts along those lines or if that was some of the things that dynamic consent considered.
Leah Huff:So I guess I would say adaptive or dynamic consent, it kind of deals with the needs of participants over the course of a study. So it could be AI. Maybe if they're very far away, we can use AI. We didn't really focus on AI, but I guess that's something I could definitely look into in the future. But it for me, it mainly focused on, I guess, building flexibility and accessibility to the consent process.
Leah Huff:So that's something that AI can definitely help with. Maybe building consent sheets, something related to that, but, that kind of fits into it, would say.
Dan McLean:And Lisa and Allison, I was curious of what advice you may give to other institutions looking to enhance their animal welfare outreach programs.
Lisa A. Chuba:Probably our key takeaways. We've got several. First one is you can't be afraid to fail, you know, try different things. Know, engage with the research community, put out a newsletter, have a contest, create a game, have a lunchtime learning event, something.
Alison D. Pohl:I mean, not everything that we tried actually worked, right? You can't get stuck with the failures. You just pick yourself up and move ahead. I really think that to get people on the same page and our ultimate goal is the welfare of the animals, right? Everybody wants the animals to be happy and healthy and everything is done correctly.
Alison D. Pohl:And if we can have that relationship of trust between the experts, you know, the iCUC and the people doing the research and their expertise with the science that they need to do, I think the trust is a key bridge to get us where so we can all go down that same path to welfare.
Catherine Batsford:When you were trying to prioritize, what different ideas to try out, what did you think of first? Was it cost of a program? Was it access to different materials?
Alison D. Pohl:Part of me thinks that was how much out of the box could we do? What we're going to do, you know, like really throw it out there. But we actually did start small. I mean, the first thing we did was just start creating policy posters that we stuck in our facility.
Lisa A. Chuba:Yeah. And they just have a cute little animation on them and they have a QR code that'll take you to a policy or something. It was small, but we got really good feedback with that. So people were coming up to us and saying, Hey, listen, you know, people in the research community, I have an idea for a poster.
Alison D. Pohl:Then we started using them and they started doing our job for us. So it was like great on both sides.
Lisa A. Chuba:Yeah. Yeah. So that's how we started. And we got a little more brave.
Alison D. Pohl:Yeah. So we're still thinking about what the next big thing is going to be. We think we're going to have, see UConn health is part of the university of Connecticut system. And we're thinking of having some sort of challenge game between the Storrs campus, which is the main campus. That's where I got my undergraduate degree and the health center, you know, trying to do a cross campus thing and seeing how that goes.
Alison D. Pohl:That's that's kind of one of the next steps that we're thinking of bring, bring more people into it. Yeah.
Catherine Batsford:Love it. Love it.
Dan McLean:Leah, I was going to ask you how many people of your peers, upperclassmen or other students at UVA are also interested in getting involved in human subjects research. It was not something that was on my radar when I was in college. So I'm just curious about how it came to the forefront in your mind as something you wanted to further explore.
Leah Huff:So I would say you're right. Not many people are worried about human subjects research mainly because they don't really think about it. Even though every university has an IRB, it's not something that especially people in non STEM fields think about. Maybe people who are more on the medical side, they want to go on the board, especially medical students, but that's mainly in grad school. But my peers specifically, not many unless they want to get help on a study or maybe they want to get board experience because that would look really good, especially in their future career.
Leah Huff:How I got interested in that, I applied through my university, so it wasn't something that I had in the front of my mind either. But I think once you get experience in it, it's definitely something that I want to stay in and pursue in the future.
Dan McLean:And something that we've been talking about at Primer, and we've talked about it on the podcast today, is how to build trust and to increase that feeling of trust between participants and the researchers and the scientific community. So as you are sharing your time at UVA there, I'm wondering if students who are not in the STEM fields I suspect that they don't know a lot about this world do have ideas of how people who are in other majors could become at least somewhat familiar with the scientific process and the IRBs and National Research Act and a lot of these concepts that probably don't leave the scientific classes as much as they should.
Leah Huff:Yeah. So I worked with someone over the summer who he was a political science major, and he got involved in the IRB through he was in a distinguished majors program, and he got into it because he wanted to submit a study. So I think that's how mainly people who are in non STEM fields get involved is because they submit studies with a professor they're working with and their DNP. So I would say mainly that is if maybe more people can get help to submit studies with the IRB, then that will lead them into internships, which can lead them into full time positions.
Catherine Batsford:And in turn, when we start to think about the IACUC, I'm guessing most of the general population of the campus doesn't know necessarily that you're there and the work that you're doing. Do you think it would help build trust if they understood more when we talk about animal welfare and, it's a whole new world for many people.
Alison D. Pohl:It really is. It took me years to get just my family to understand what I do. Right?
Leah Huff:Yes.
Alison D. Pohl:One of the things we do at the health center is our IACUC webpage is open to the public. And we really, I really thought for that because I think it's important to have your things as transparent as possible. You know, we have our policies out there so people know what our policies are. We have links to all the laws. We talk about alternatives to NOL use.
Alison D. Pohl:We talk about alternatives to painful procedures. We get all that information out there. I've had people contact me. They were high school students and they say, a project in class and I wanted to learn about this and your website was really so good. Can I talk to you?
Alison D. Pohl:So we made a time and they called me up and I even went over it more, But to get that information out is important. And I know a lot of people like to have things behind a firewall, you know, and I don't think that's helpful nowadays as we're using human structures, we're using research animals. People have to I mean, they want to know that things are done right. And even with my family, they may not know really what the right thing is, but the more you learn about it and the more you're exposed to it and the more people are willing just to talk about it and share their websites to the public, I think is really important for
Lisa A. Chuba:the field. One of the things that we did want to do that it didn't work, but we had the, BRAD event here. And so we are a hospital. We had nurses come and they had no idea that we were doing animal research in the same building they were working in. And so we reached out to the head of nursing.
Lisa A. Chuba:We just wanted to do just a quick, you know, just tell them about our animal research here and about the regulations and animal welfare issues we take into consideration. And it got shut down because obviously they're very busy and things like that. But there is a whole group of people, even nurses that have no idea the very drugs they're you know, giving their patients were tested on animals. So
Dan McLean:How do you suggest getting more people comfortable with stepping outside the firewall? So I I think you're right, and I think you explained it pretty well but I think there is a tendency for whatever reason to stay where they have felt comfortable.
Alison D. Pohl:I think that is changing. I think people are realizing that this is important because who does red day? Not blocking on the person to block, but you could look it up. I mean, they've been really doing a good job at getting the information out there. And we've had conversations here with our communications department showing them the need.
Alison D. Pohl:The more you can get out there so people can get that trust, the better off you're going to be. So it's just communication. It's just talking. It's just getting people to realize this is important. I mean, a director of communications might be working with, you know, all these headline news that something like, you know, I cook an animal, you know, welfare and research doesn't even come into their day.
Alison D. Pohl:Right. It's something you have to break into and, you know, and let them see it.
Dan McLean:Leah, I guess it's a little off topic for you, but also related. Do you have, do you have thoughts of, of how people who are in the IACUC world and people doing research with animals can be more vocal about the work that they're doing.
Leah Huff:I don't have many ideas because it's not really the world I'm in, but I do admire people who help with animals and try to see how animals can benefit from studies in a non harmful way. I don't have any ideas, but I think, it's really a good thing what you two are doing. So
Catherine Batsford:thank you. I loved the the woman who trains the rats in a little motorized vehicle. It she's social behavioral, so it was trying to do the motivation of why the rat would wanna do this. I thought that was such a neat crossover between, you know, social behavioral and I cook and she got all that play. Because it's fascinating.
Catherine Batsford:Apparently, the rats love to do it for Fruit Loops. That's like their their go to.
Alison D. Pohl:Anyway, you'd be amazed, you know, these animals could get motivated to do anything. I know peanut butter they'll, they'll do it all.
Dan McLean:And while we're exploring some of these issues, was learning more about NAMS and you talk about some research that comes for the IACUC. Can you share your thoughts on NAMS and what they may be used for at UConn and what they're good for and what they may not be good for?
Alison D. Pohl:There's a lot of potential for non animal models. It's one thing that PIs are obligated to look at. It's something that the eye could look at. I mean, look at right now, ten years ago, you didn't have organs on a chip. You didn't have organelles.
Alison D. Pohl:These weren't things you could do. The hard part is though, the body is just so incredibly compact, complex, and there's so many interactions is you just can't do that all from a computer chip. You know, we have people that do a lot of pre work, you know, with cell cultures and with organelles and everything, but the ultimate final thing has to be, you know, in an animal. And we still have laws out there that say, if you are going to do X, Y, Z into a person, I'm thinking of some GLP studies and everything, you know, these have to be done, you know, in an animal. Some of them have to be done like in a guinea pig or a rat or something.
Alison D. Pohl:There's still laws out there that say that. So I think things are heading more in that direction, but the animal still provides us with so much information that we just can't get from those isolated chips organelles.
Dan McLean:Yeah, the technology is fascinating, but it also seems like it continues to develop and emerge.
Alison D. Pohl:Like one of the things that people we're supposed to look at that PRs are supposed to tell us about is methods. How are they going to reduce animal numbers, right? The law says you have to use the least number of animals necessary for you to meet your research objective. Well, how can you reduce them? One of the ways they do is they do a lot of their initial studies in, like I said, in the cell culture, in computer modeling.
Alison D. Pohl:We have a big computer modeling program here, you know, sometimes with the organelles, but still, so we may get to reduce animals by that. But some things, I just can't see at this point how you're going to not use them.
Catherine Batsford:I think we do feel safer for it too. And knowing that the protocols and policies that they are protecting everybody, it's so important.
Alison D. Pohl:Yes.
Catherine Batsford:Well, has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for doing this.
Alison D. Pohl:Thank you. Thank you.
Catherine Batsford:Dan, do you have any final question or?
Dan McLean:No. I think I learned a lot. I guess I'd be curious if you had another poster that didn't get made and you opted for the one that won, if you want to share that or if you had another one that you're ready to produce.
Catherine Batsford:I'm waiting for the jeopardy one. And Yeah. No. You're AI.
Alison D. Pohl:I tell you when we got I got the we submitted our poster and everything. It was just an abstract at the time. You don't submit your poster. Right? You have the abstract.
Alison D. Pohl:And then I got this email from Emily, and I and I was reading it in my office phone. And I'm like, what? Because I had told her, our poster's gonna be accepted. Don't worry about it. I know they'll accept the poster.
Alison D. Pohl:But when they said that we, you know, won this pillar where I'm I literally thank god, our office is only like five doors down from it. I ran down to her office and I said, you get into my office now.
Lisa A. Chuba:I didn't know what was wrong.
Alison D. Pohl:She ran back that we were just over the moon over this. You know, you won this pillar and primer, you know, on our abstract. Was we were just dumbfounded and then, of course, we went to, now the poster's gotta be
Catherine Batsford:awesome. Yeah. So
Lisa A. Chuba:little pressure. A little pressure.
Dan McLean:Once again, congratulations, and thanks for sharing your work with us today.
Alison D. Pohl:Thank you. Nice meeting you, Leah. Congratulations for your first award winning thing. That's great.
Leah Huff:Yeah. Thank you. Nice to meet you too.
Catherine Batsford:We're lucky to have you start so young in the IRB. They're, I'm sure, thrilled that you're there.