A Day in the Life of Erica Washington: The Fungi Expert

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Erica Washington

Hi! My name is Erica Washington. I'm a researcher at Duke. You're going to spend a day in my life. But first, I have to get the kids ready for school. So come on in.

00:00:19:14 - 00:00:34:03

Erica Washington

Typically, my mornings look like helping my kids get ready for school, making them breakfast, and doing their hair. I also have two pets: a cat and a dog. And so I have to make sure they're fed before we can all get out of the house.

00:00:36:01 - 00:01:04:02

Erica Washington

I'm a microbiologist and a structure biologist, and I study fungi and how they cause diseases in humans. I've always been interested in science

since I was a young girl. When I was in high school, my favorite bookstore was Crown Books. My aunt gave me a gift card. One of the days I was in there,

I bought a book called “A Dancing Matrix,” and it was all about how viruses spread. And this was kind of the beginning of my interest in infectious diseases.

00:01:04:19 - 00:01:31:05

Erica Washington

I met my husband in graduate school. He's also a scientist. We worked in the same lab,

so over the years we got to know each other pretty well. I love that my littles love science. I think it is so fun. My oldest is interested in big cats. The little one is interested in bugs and so it's just fun to share it all together as a family.

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Erica Washington

Now that everyone's ready, we're going to drop off the kids

and then head to lab.

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Erica Washington

I came to Durham to attend grad school. I love Durham because I love that there's a slightly slower pace compared to larger cities. It's a great, diverse population

with different types of people. Really good food, great schools. Yeah, I love it in Durham.

00:02:13:23 - 00:02:34:13

Erica Washington

Duke's campus is beautiful. The architecture, the open spaces. I am inspired by the history of research at Duke. My office was formerly the office of a Nobel Prize winner. And so I really hope that I can get that energy and inspiration just even being in that space.

00:02:41:15 - 00:03:14:11

Erica Washington

This is my office. It's a great place to think when I need to, like, really kind of sometimes close the door and zone in. Usually when I get here on a typical day, I check my emails, check my calendar and see what's on the plan for today, and I'll head into the lab and get an experiment started, and check on the experiments from yesterday and look at those results. Some days I have blocks of time that I've blocked out on my calendar so I can do focused writing. This includes writing papers or writing grants.

00:03:14:11 - 00:03:28:07

Erica Washington

Grant writing is a big part of academic research. It's how we get funding to do the research and answer these important questions for human health. Okay, so now that, I’ve check my emails, we're going to go ahead into lab and start an experiment.

00:03:38:21 - 00:04:14:11

Erica Washington

We are here in my lab, and this is where I do my experiments and have different types of equipment to get everything done. In our lab, one of our goals is to do basic research that will lead to the development of anti-fungal drugs in immunocompromised patients. So patients that are HIV infected, those that are on suppressive therapies for cancer treatment, transplant patients, all of these populations have suppressed immunity, and that makes them very susceptible to invasive fungal infections. These fungal infections are very deadly and dangerous.

00:04:15:18 - 00:04:36:09

Erica Washington

The reason why we're really interested in this topic, and why it's super pertinent to these times, is the Earth is getting warmer, and what this can lead to is selection of fungi that are in the environment, and the ability for them to acquire traits that allow them to survive at higher temperatures that are similar to what we would find in our human body.

00:04:36:16 - 00:05:02:22

Erica Washington

We have some data that indicate these proteins, called hexokinases, are involved in the ability to cause diseases in humans. Today we're going to run a gel to determine if the protein is functioning the way we hypothesize it is. If we understand that, then we can start to understand the structure of the hexokinases and develop them as potential antifungal drugs that can really be used in the clinics to treat people.

00:05:03:15 - 00:05:07:20

Erica Washington

Okay, I'm going to go wash my hands real fast, and then, we'll go to lunch.

00:05:18:11 - 00:05:26:15

Erica Washington

So for lunch today, we're meeting my friends and colleague, Dr. Catherine Denning-Jannace.

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Catherine Denning-Jannace

How are you?

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Erica Washington

May I please have a Horton’s Club with no tomatoes?

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Erica Washington

Back to the lab.

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Catherine Denning-Jannace

I just wanted to introduce you to my grad student, Chris, really quick.

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Erica Washington

You know, when I grew up, we thought, I thought of scientists as, like, introverts and kind of quiet. And there's all types of scientists and all types of behaviors. And there’s—I see a lot of camaraderie, a lot of gatherings, scientific and otherwise. And I think it really helps build community and keep people happy, and happy scientists are good scientists.

00:06:11:14 - 00:06:23:11

Erica Washington

Now we're wrapping up for the day, and I'm going to go pick up the kids. One thing I do do for myself, I try to make time to play soccer with friends. We're going to do that tonight, and I'm really, really looking forward to it.

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Erica Washington

That felt good!

00:06:34:23 - 00:06:45:05

Erica Washington

So for years now I've played in the Durham Women's Soccer League. We're not in season right now, so today we're just kicking the ball around and catching up, making sure we still have some skills.

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Erica Washington

That was more fun. Okay, someone else do stuff!

00:06:53:18 - 00:07:08:06

Erica Washington

Soccer gives me the space and kind of sometimes forces me to take the space

to do something for myself. Sometimes these games are so intense that I literally can't even think about anything else but what's happening on the field at the moment.

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Erica Washington

Nice! Good job.

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Erica Washington

We all have camaraderie.

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Erica Washington

Hug! [laughter]

00:07:16:14 - 00:07:19:09

Erica Washington

See you guys when the season starts.

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Teammates

Bye, Erica!

00:07:23:00 - 00:07:36:01

Erica Washington

So, we’re back on campus after playing soccer. A lot of times I come back to the lab at night to finish some experiments. Thanks for spending the day with me. Yeah, I had a blast. I hope you did, too. Alright. Good night!