Communication manager 2023: Kathryn Waller

What are you investigating?

I’m an immunologist by trade and currently trying to work out what dendritic cells are doing in the liver under various pathological insults, namely fatty liver. Why do some individuals walk around (probably me in all honesty) with a fatty liver with no symptoms whilst others develop the more harmful steatotic hepatitis? How are dendritic cells contributing to this? All answers I hope to address/answer during my postdoc.  

Outside research, what is your favorite thing about VIB?

Honestly, it’s the people, moving here from the UK and then landing straight into a pandemic was a shock to the system and without the people I have met it would have been even harder. A good coffee break with good people cannot be underestimated in my opinion. We brainstorm, we talk nonsense “If you woke up one day and found you were a mouse in a cage how would you convince your colleague it was you?” We de-stress and some of the people I have met here have such sharp wit and impressive minds, they have kept me sane when experiments fail! Alongside the people I think the VIB have some of the most cutting-edge technologies and it’s so cool to be able to use them! Not only that, we have really knowledgeable cores to help you design experiments and work out the analysis the other end, so much support!

When did you know you wanted a career in science?

I was actually very late to this, as a kid I thought I wanted to work in a racehorse yard! Then as time progressed I thought I wanted to work with animals, technically I suppose I do, just not in the way I had in mind. It wasn’t until my bachelors where I did a year in industry that I realised my interest in research, the freedom from trying out hypotheses, I really enjoyed it. After that it was clear what I wanted to do!