Sarah Boyton, MBA, Owner, Biopharma Staffing and Consulting Solutions, LLC, sat down with fellow Women In Bio – Capital Region member Savanah Shumaker, M.S., Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy Scientist, SCS Laboratory Solutions, INC., for our first ever Day in the Life series. Savanah spoke about her journey into biotech and what her day looks like!
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy stands as a beacon of discovery in the realm of scientific inquiry, offering a unique window into the hidden world of molecules. This powerful analytical technique harnesses the principles of nuclear physics and quantum mechanics to probe the atomic-scale structure, composition, and dynamics of matter. Like a cosmic symphony, NMR spectroscopy exploits the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei to unveil the intricate dance of molecules in solution. By subjecting samples to magnetic fields and radiofrequency pulses, NMR spectroscopists can decipher the subtle signals emitted by nuclei, unraveling the complex tapestry of chemical bonds and interactions. From elucidating protein structures to elucidating the composition of organic compounds, NMR spectroscopy serves as an indispensable tool in fields ranging from chemistry and biochemistry to medicine and materials science. In this introductory exploration, we embark on a journey to unravel the mysteries of NMR spectroscopy, peering into its inner workings and illuminating its profound impact on scientific research and discovery.
Learn more about it by watching Savanah Shumaker’s A Day in the Life.
Sarah Boynton [00:00:03]:
Okay. Hello, everybody. Welcome to our biobuzz’s first ever day in the life interview. My name is Sarah Boynton, and I am here with the lovely Savannah Schumacher. And she is going to take us through a day in the life of a nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy scientist. Okay, a big mouthful there. I’m not going to be the one talking, so don’t worry. She’s going to go into that.
Sarah Boynton [00:00:33]:
So we will jump right in. Thank you so much, Savannah, for being here. Why don’t you start off with the first question of the day, briefly introduce yourself and your current role in the life sciences biotech industry.
Savanah Shumaker [00:00:47]:
Yeah. So, hi, everyone. Thanks for joining. And thank you to Sarah for inviting me to participate in the series. It’s really exciting. I like to know what other people are doing, so I hope this is interesting for everybody watching. So my role is, like Sarah said, I do nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, or NMR. The thing that most people can compare it to or might be familiar with is MRI magnetic resonance imaging.
Savanah Shumaker [00:01:12]:
NMR is the precursor to MRI. So if you’ve had any sort of MRI work done in a hospital, you’ve seen the person, like, laying down and they slide into a big instrument horizontally, very, very similar looking. Just rotate it. So at the top of our magnet, we put a glass tube going downward instead of a person sliding in. And I use this technique for drug discovery. I’m a federal contractor at the National center for Advancing Translational Sciences, which is one of the NIH institutes, and I’m in the division of preclinical innovation. So all of the work and different components of my role that we’ll kind of get into have to do with dirt discovery.
Sarah Boynton [00:01:52]:
Very, very cool, which is so important in our industry. Why don’t you tell us, how did you get started in this career? It’s not something, you know, many people, I think, know about. So what got you involved?
Savanah Shumaker [00:02:05]:
Yeah, so I got into this. It pretty much was everything that ever happened in my adult life led me into this role. None of it was super linear or intuitive. It was a lot of serendipitous sequence of events. So growing up, I didn’t have any interest in science or stem. I spent all of my time dancing and doing ballet. And that’s what I thought I wanted to do come the end of high school, kind of pivoted and decided that wasn’t the direction I wanted to go, just due to the shorter career span in early 2010. Just the opportunities and security of those types of performing art roles are really different.
Savanah Shumaker [00:02:41]:
And so I decided I wanted to go in a different, more stable direction. That being said, I didn’t have any other hobbies. I didn’t care about anything else growing up, so I didn’t really know what I was going to do as an adult. My mom works at the Northeastern Wisconsin Technical College in Green Bay, Wisconsin. That’s where I grew up. And she said, just come into the school, take the accuplacer test. That pretty much sees where you at in terms of all of your general academic skills, and then tells you what programs you could participate in. And one of the programs I was eligible for was dental assisting.
Savanah Shumaker [00:03:13]:
So I went over. I liked that it smelled like mint toothpaste. Everything seemed really clean. The teachers were really nice, so I was like, sure, I’ll do this program. So after I graduated high school, I did that year and a half technical diploma at the more or less a trade school, worked at a dental clinic for about six months, and I really liked the hands on aspect of it. Talked to some of the different dentists and thought, this is something that I would be really interested in doing. I wanted to help patients, and again, I just enjoyed the environment. So I went back to college when I was 20 ish years old.
Savanah Shumaker [00:03:48]:
So started my bachelor’s degree at age 20, and I was pre dental. So at my school, University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, all of the pre degrees, pre dental, pre med, pre physician’s assistant, anything of that nature was human biology. And so that’s predominantly biology classes, but you have to take some chemistry classes. And in those chemistry classes, I made some really good friends, a lot of whom were pre pharmacy. And so for all of their electives, they were taking extra chemistry classes and research. And I decided to take all those same classes for my electives, not because I needed to, but purely because I wanted to be in the same classes as all of my friends, naturally. And I ended up really, really liking organic chemistry. I did a whole year of.
Savanah Shumaker [00:04:37]:
Yeah, I actually struggled with it. I did have to retake almost my entire second semester of my junior year of college. I just had some life things going on and didn’t do well, either failed or almost failed all of my classes, including ochem two. So I just buckled down, retook everything, ended up doing really well. And because I took the time to redo that, I was able to participate in organic chemistry research and then also take an advanced organic chemistry and an advanced synthesis design class my senior year. And in that time, my professor, she used to work in the pharmaceutical industry. She brought in someone she used to work with who was creating this new master’s program at Concordia University, Wisconsin School of Pharmacy. It was a master of science in product development program, and I didn’t really know anything about chemistry other than that I enjoyed it.
Savanah Shumaker [00:05:29]:
I didn’t know what applications were outside of just becoming a chemistry teacher or professor. So having this person come in and talk about drug discovery or how you make paints or makeup or all of these different things coming from chemistry just totally blew my mind. I was really interested, but I was still thinking I wanted to go to dental school. So I just kind of put it on the back of my mind and then didn’t revisit the topic. After I finished undergrad, I. Within, like, a couple weeks of graduation, I was like, you know, I really don’t think I want to apply for dental schools. I’m just not as excited about the idea anymore. And I really sat down and kind of made a list of what I liked about dentistry and what I didn’t like about it, and the things that I liked about it all lined up with chemistry.
Savanah Shumaker [00:06:15]:
So the hands on aspect, having a tangible final product, kind of sitting down and doing something with my hands, like a really granular, tangible end product, but the patient care aspect and kind of the interrupt stop start throughout the day, I guess, like the emotional part of it and dealing with patients, it wasn’t something that I was necessarily as excited about. Like, I wanted to help people, but in a more, I guess, behind the scenes type of way.
Sarah Boynton [00:06:43]:
Right?
Savanah Shumaker [00:06:44]:
So I re looked up this program that I heard about, the master of science in product development program at Concordia School of Pharmacy in Mequon, Wisconsin. So it’s like 20 minutes outside of Milwaukee, and I just put in like a send me more info thing. It was like five in the morning. I was working my first lab tech job. It was third shift. So I got back from work and was like, oh, I’ll put in an inquiry for a brochure or whatever. And then by the time I got up the next day, I had the whole pamphlet. The professor that came to my school was like, hey, here’s some information if you want to apply.
Savanah Shumaker [00:07:14]:
We could probably get you in for fall. And so I thought, what the heck? I just filled all of it out, did the interview, it went really well, and I was accepted, but I decided to defer for a semester because I just didn’t have enough money to move, and I just needed a little bit of time because I was working two jobs at that time. I was teaching dance in the day and working as a lab tech at night. So it was just a little bit of a rough summer for me. But then one of the professors, doctor Christopher Cunningham, who did my interview for the program, said, I just got some money. He was very new into his PI career, and he said, I can pay a part time lab tech. Would you be interested in moving down early and working for me? And that really kind of set the ball in motion. I worked for him before, during, and after I did the master’s program.
Savanah Shumaker [00:08:00]:
I started out as his lab tech, and then by the time I finished up, there was pretty much his only staff scientist at the school. Loved the program. We also got to take MBA classes as well. In his group, we focused on med chem for treatments of substance use disorders and kind of alternative pain medications, less addictive substances. We mostly did cannabinoid chemistry, opioid chemistry, really exciting stuff, and I really loved it. But as I was more senior and had been around for a while and people were coming and going, I started getting more and more analytical responsibilities. So sometimes people from other schools or other smaller entities in the area would ask us to do like an HPLC method development. So I would do that, or people would ask me to help them analyze their NMR spectra, so I would help them do that.
Savanah Shumaker [00:08:50]:
And the more and more NMR I did, I became really, really interested. And I would always look forward to that time of the week when I would sit down and do all of this stuff. And then COVID happened. So everyone’s at home. I’m kind of reassessing what I want to do next. The great thing about the role was it was at a small school. I got to do so many different projects, and I really loved everybody there, and I loved working in his group. But that was also on the flip side, because it is a small school, there’s not necessarily, like, ranks I can move up in things like that.
Savanah Shumaker [00:09:22]:
I just thought I might want to expand my horizons. And then I thought about, maybe I’ll go back to school for NMR or do something more that direction. And I ended up finding my position now out here in Rockville, Maryland, because I was looking for a job for a friend of mine who was looking to relocate. She does vaccine formulation, so I was looking up vaccine formulations in DMV area. No idea why this early stage drug discovery NMR government role popped up, but it did. And from the time I put in my application to the time I got the offer, it was like less than two weeks. And I moved out here in October of 2020.
Sarah Boynton [00:10:01]:
It was made for you. That’s so cool. What a jump dancer, dentist, scientist. Do you still dance?
Savanah Shumaker [00:10:12]:
I did pretty much up until I moved here. The other thing that I stayed involved with during my whole school journey was folk dancing. I was involved in a mexican folk dance troupe in Green Bay, Wisconsin, for about eight years, age 15, until, like, 23, 24. That’s my late father’s heritage. And then I was also involved with a ukrainian group in Milwaukee from the age of, like, 17 all the way up until I moved, because that’s my mom’s heritage on her side. And then I ultimately became the director of that group for a while in Milwaukee. So, still doing dancing for fun on the side. And I would teach ballet in college and during my master’s program and sometimes sub for people.
Savanah Shumaker [00:10:53]:
But since I’ve moved to Maryland and kind of started a new life, I’ve kind of left that behind and focusing on other things in my free time.
Sarah Boynton [00:11:02]:
Well, since we’re both in women in bio, I think this is a future team building. Savannah, teaching on some dance. I’m ready to learn.
Savanah Shumaker [00:11:10]:
Well, here at NCATs, I guess some of the fellows get together, and they’ll take turns teaching a dance class, and I’m like, I feel like that’s something that would be really fun.
Sarah Boynton [00:11:19]:
I know irish dancing. So I’ll do a little bit of Lord of the dance, and you can teach us some of your. Some ballet or, you know, mexican heritage dance. I’m all for it.
Savanah Shumaker [00:11:31]:
Sounds like a plan.
Sarah Boynton [00:11:33]:
Okay, so why don’t you tell us, now that you’ve reached this point, you’re an NMR scientist. What does your typical day and your role look like? What are you doing every day?
Savanah Shumaker [00:11:44]:
Yeah. So we have a really small NMR team here at the center. It’s myself, one other teammate, and then we have one postbac trainee. And so our roles in the group is kind of like three roles in one. So part of it is traditional NMR facilities maintenance. So the magnets require weekly cryogenic liquid nitrogen fills. So having big tanks of really cold liquid nitrogen and filling that in, we do liquid helium fills quarterly. If there’s any type of errors in the software, any, like, bugs that pop up, we might need maintain working with the vendors for routine.
Savanah Shumaker [00:12:39]:
Can you hear me?
Sarah Boynton [00:12:42]:
Yeah, we had a little bit of a blip there, but I think we’re good.
Savanah Shumaker [00:12:46]:
I will keep talking.
Sarah Boynton [00:12:58]:
Can you hear me?
Savanah Shumaker [00:13:03]:
Anything to keep the facilities running.
Sarah Boynton [00:13:20]:
All right. We lost Savannah. She will be back in a moment. Always a risk with live interviews that we might have some technical issues, so please hold, and we will get her back on the call to find out what else that she does in her day to day NMR scientist role. Okay. Welcome back. All right. Do we have you back?
Savanah Shumaker [00:14:10]:
Can anyone hear me?
Sarah Boynton [00:14:17]:
Yes, I can hear you. Are you. Can you hear me? Just as you were talking about fixing maintenance and technical issues, we had a glitch.
Savanah Shumaker [00:14:40]:
Are you able to hear me?
Sarah Boynton [00:14:42]:
Can you hear me, Savannah, for a second? Yes, I can hear you.
Savanah Shumaker [00:15:03]:
I can hear you.
Sarah Boynton [00:15:05]:
There’s a. Can you hear me?
Savanah Shumaker [00:15:06]:
A little bit of.
Sarah Boynton [00:15:13]:
Yeah, I don’t know what happened. You started talking about maintenance issues, and then we lost. We lost our connection.
Savanah Shumaker [00:15:21]:
I see you now. Can you.
Sarah Boynton [00:15:29]:
I can hear you.
Savanah Shumaker [00:15:30]:
Hear me?
Sarah Boynton [00:15:32]:
Yes. Okay. Can you hear me? It looks like you’re back.
Savanah Shumaker [00:16:02]:
I can hear you now.
Sarah Boynton [00:16:05]:
Okay.
Savanah Shumaker [00:16:07]:
Of course, as soon as I started talking about service and maintenance, then cuts out on me, I know, I was.
Sarah Boynton [00:16:13]:
Like, what the heck?
Savanah Shumaker [00:16:15]:
Well, thanks, everyone, for waiting. But, yeah, so that’s kind of the first part is just the general maintenance of the facility so that everybody can use it. The other piece is, we are service corps, so I’m part of the analytical chemistry corps. So there’s other analytical chemists on the team. They have their own specialties. The role that NMR fulfills on that team as a service corps is we work with all of the different scientific branches at NCATs, it’s mostly the chemist, the medicinal chemists. So if they synthesize something and they’re not sure on the structure or maybe they need a little bit more of an advanced experiment that they don’t have the expertise to perform or interpret themselves, we step in and help them out with that. Part of that is also serving as a subject matter expert for internal and external collaborations.
Savanah Shumaker [00:17:06]:
So if someone has just, like, a quick question, need some type of quick experiment, we’ll help them with that. But if it’s something more in depth, something of a more ongoing project will more or less kind of serve like an internal consultant, if you will. And then we do the same thing for external collaborations as needed, some more of those longer term projects versus a quick, like, less than a week turnaround time. And then the third piece of what we do on the NMR team is we each have our own traditional research projects. So something that we’re working on, something that we’re studying, that fills a need in the institute as a whole. So kind of three things in one, which makes every day a little bit different. But there’s certain routine tasks. Like I said, we do liquid nitrogen fills in the instruments every single week, help people as needed.
Savanah Shumaker [00:17:52]:
Usually in the morning. I’ll start by checking my email to see if anything weird happened or stalled out on the instruments overnight. Anytime someone needs help. And then in the rest of the time, that’s when we do our research projects.
Sarah Boynton [00:18:07]:
So the NMR output, what does that tell you about a sample? Does it give you what the components are? What are you reading once your sample is done being analyzed? Sure.
Savanah Shumaker [00:18:22]:
So, when we’re working with the medicinal chemists, usually what they’re looking for is, did they make their structure or not? So if anyone hasn’t seen what an NMR output looks like, or an NMR spectrum, if it’s 1d, it’s essentially a picture with different spikes or peaks on it and the position of where they are, the height of them, how many are grouped together. You use that with general chemistry knowledge, organic chemistry knowledge, and that can help tell you what’s in your sample and how it’s arranged. There’s also more advanced two D and three D versions where it’s kind of like a plot, and then there’s dots where different things are connected. And so you interpret that, and that can help give you an overall big picture as to what the structure is. NMR can also be used for some other techniques. One that people hear about a lot is quantitative NMr or QNMR. And that’s where you’re actually looking, potentially, for concentration, purity, other things other than just what’s in the sample. You can learn something more about it then even more advanced than that, you can do certain types of experiments to see if a drug candidate or a fragment.
Savanah Shumaker [00:19:37]:
So those little pieces of a structure are connecting up with the target that you’re trying to study. So there’s a whole bunch of different things that you can do with NMR. It just depends what you need.
Sarah Boynton [00:19:49]:
What you need. Okay, very cool. So you kind of talked about your. The role has three parts. Can you describe the type of collaboration as part of that role? What exactly does that collaboration look like in your day to day? Sure.
Savanah Shumaker [00:20:08]:
So, certain things that I might collaborate with on my own research projects, I do a lot of work with trying to automate certain NMR sample prep, things that you’re not doing the traditional manual labor, if you will, at the bench in the wet lab. So a lot of that involves interacting over video or through email with the vendors of the equipment or the instruments that we use to try to set those up, test out the methods, see if they work, and kind of going back and forth in that way to optimize them. Other collaborations might be kind of like, I talked about the chemists on site if they need help. Could be something really quick or a more long term project. We do right now have one main external collaboration with a professor from a local university in the Washington, DC area. And so she more so works with my teammate and our postbac fellow on a project. So she’ll come on site once a week. She’s doing the med chem piece.
Savanah Shumaker [00:21:07]:
So kind of like what we would do internally, but it’s with an external source, so there’s more paperwork that has to be involved. Agreements need to be in place, all of those business arrangements, more or less to make sure that it’s clear of what everyone’s role is in the project, and that also, everything kind of like, falls in line and everything has to pull into goals for the center. You can’t just do, like, anytime someone wants to do something with us, you can’t just say yes or like, do favors for people. It all needs to serve a purpose, which is really great, because anytime we’re working with someone, there’s some greater goal to it, rather than just doing research or experiments, just to see what happens.
Sarah Boynton [00:21:48]:
That’s great. Yeah. And the automation piece, I’m assuming part of that is trying to kind of work the human out of it. Those human errors that happen when you’re doing manual work, you’re trying to, you know, engineering controls essentially.
Savanah Shumaker [00:22:04]:
Yeah, definitely. So there’s a lot of moving parts, but it’s really exciting because in theory, it could help make NMR more high throughput. Again, going back to the MRI example, like, if you think of a person sliding into an MRI machine, if you’ve never seen what an NMR sample tube looks like, it’s like a long, thin glass tube, and it has to get lowered into the magnet. It needs to be equilibrate everything for the experiment that you plugged in on. The desktop gets set up and then it runs. So it’s not super fast. It’s not like a bunch of samples are coming in and out. It takes a lot of time and care.
Savanah Shumaker [00:22:41]:
And so by being able to automate some of the steps that happen beforehand, we can get more samples done, get more research done, kind of leave the human power to go work on other things or come up with more ideas and innovate. And then the physical labor of, like, filling a tube or moving something from here to there can be left to automation as well. And then also, you’re spending less time in the lab with the chemicals with these different things. So from like a user standpoint, it could also be a little bit like safer and healthier for a longer career, if you will.
Sarah Boynton [00:23:15]:
Very cool. Good. All good, good things for your role, I’m sure. What kind of tools or software do you use on a daily basis? I’m assuming this NMR machine, are they, are they common or, you know, is it a very expensive piece of equipment that really is only found in locate in research locations like where you work?
Savanah Shumaker [00:23:39]:
It definitely depends on the institute or the center or the school or the company. So when I was an undergrad, my only NMR exposure was, we call them bench top. So it’s a low field and it pretty much looks like a little microwave, kind of like that size with a hole in the top and you manually lower the sample in. It can do some simple experiments. It’s more common in certain other industries. We have a few of those here. I don’t really use them too much. Then when I did my master’s program, we had access to a benchtop and a 500 field strength.
Savanah Shumaker [00:24:18]:
So that one is a little bit bigger. You kind of need a ladder to get up to the top. If people haven’t seen what an NMR instrument looks like, I definitely recommend googling it. It kind of looks like a washing machine on stilts. Yeah. Again, the bigger they get, you might need to go up on a ladder. Some places have many, like gigahertz size, and that’s really exciting. You kind of like go up on a platform to like go from above.
Savanah Shumaker [00:24:45]:
So it just depends on the resources, it depends on the types of experiments you’re needing to do, because not everything requires this huge magnet. Some things can be done on a small magnet and vice versa. We have several different lab spaces here, and that kind of dictates what materials or supplies or software I’m using. If I’m at my desk, I’m pretty much doing analysis that would be online through our software that we use. If I’m doing some type of manual sample preparation or more like traditional bench chemistry that people think of when they think of a chemistry lab, I’ll be in our wet lab space. That’s where you would have like, pipettes, pipette tips, tubes, vials, plates, any of those traditional consumables. If I’m doing sample preparation, doing automation, I’ll kind of bring anything that I might need over to that lab. So that’s in a different space.
Savanah Shumaker [00:25:37]:
So two chemistry labs that I work out of, and then right now, we have two different NMR labs. That’s where all of the magnets and their auxiliary equipment are. Soon there’s going to be some renovations done, and we’re going to expand our NMR facilities at the institute. So that’s really exciting and kind of combine everything into one space. So that’s something that we’re looking forward to as a group. But again, to answer your question, it kind of just depends on what I’m doing. But it’s pretty much all traditional chemistry or NMR facilities and the auxiliary equipment that you need.
Sarah Boynton [00:26:12]:
And I’m an industry girl. I worked in manufacturing operations. So do you have. Do you follow kind of the rules of GMP? Are you recording the materials you use? Are you documenting everything you do when you run each test?
Savanah Shumaker [00:26:28]:
Yeah. So we have a really nice system. Everything that is run gets saved based on the user. So it’s kind of organized in that way. We pretty much record everything electronically. Again, it is just a small group and lots of different projects, lots of different experiments. So to keep track, you want to follow the traditional lab notebook style of recording things. We don’t necessarily need to be GXP for our purposes, but we do keep track of everything as much as possible, especially because if we do want to, in theory, run all of these hundreds or thousands of samples and these new fancy ways, trying to just write things on your hand or on a sticky note or on a paper towel like you do sometimes in school and whatnot, wouldn’t necessarily help.
Sarah Boynton [00:27:17]:
Okay, very good. What are some of the common challenges you face in your role? I mean, you’re working with, you know, like you said, you’re climbing up, lowering a glass tube, you got magnets, and working with potential, you know, hazardous materials. What challenges do you face?
Savanah Shumaker [00:27:37]:
I think probably the perfect example was the video cutting out before everything is very technology based. It’s like the perfect example of things that can happen. So if there’s some type of connectivity issue or an example would be if there’s power outages or like a power blip in the night. There was a storm sometime semi recently that can affect everything more or less that’s plugged in. There’s plenty of safeguards in place, but sometimes things just sneak through. So we need to go and kind of reset certain things. So kind of being at the mercy of technology, it’s a great thing. It helps you do better research.
Savanah Shumaker [00:28:16]:
Everyone uses technology, but it can be frustrating sometimes if those things are fighting against you. So that would kind of, I would say, be the biggest challenge that we face in terms of continuity.
Sarah Boynton [00:28:30]:
And would you have to rerun a sample? Like during the storm, everything goes out. Do you have to start from scratch or do you just get things up and running again and it continues?
Savanah Shumaker [00:28:42]:
It depends. If something was maybe running overnight and something happened in the night, we’ll want to look at the results. Maybe it happened after a sample ran or during that time. It kind of just depends on the situation. So that’s where that facilities management piece comes in, is analyzing the situation, seeing what happened, how can we fix it as soon as possible and taking it from there?
Sarah Boynton [00:29:03]:
Risk based approach. Very cool. If someone were to want to get into this role, are there specific technical or soft skills that you think are going to be really important for them to be successful?
Savanah Shumaker [00:29:16]:
Yeah, in terms of technical skills, there’s kind of like two ways that people get into NMR. I think part is the physics and engineering side, and then the other piece is the chemistry side, kind of like how I got into it. So definitely if you have a good understanding of basic engineering, physics, chemistry, that’ll really set you up for success, because then you’re not having to play catch up or feeling like you’re playing catch up. Something that I think I maybe wish I would have gotten more into previously, before I got here, was coding. I’ve been slowly but surely trying to learn because that can make things a lot easier. Didn’t do any type of coding in school. Definitely would have made my life easier in a lot of ways. So even if people can have a basic understanding of different things, that could be helpful.
Savanah Shumaker [00:30:03]:
Another thing is, if you’d be interested in doing something like I do with automation, or working at a place where automation is a big piece of your research, learning the basics of robotics. Thankfully, I work with a lot of really nice people who are very patient and have helped me understand how to do all of these things that I’m working on. Again, I didn’t have any background in that necessarily, aside from, you know, you know, what procedures need to be automated and transferring that over. But in terms of the behind the scenes, certain terminology, those are things that could be really helpful if you have a more, more training starting when you’re younger, I think.
Sarah Boynton [00:30:42]:
Okay, very good. Are there any recent innovations or developments that you have been involved in?
Savanah Shumaker [00:30:50]:
Yeah, so one of the collaborations I didn’t get into or didn’t get into a whole lot was working with vendors. So we have the chance to kind of be at the forefront of different innovations. So working with, whether it’s on the automation side or the analysis side. The companies that we use their products, kind of giving them feedback and saying, hey, this worked. Or, hey, this didn’t work. Or, you know, maybe this could be optimized or really liking this kind of being able to interact with them and give our feedback. Although it’s not maybe like a formal collaboration, but because we do do such exciting things here, people want to know, do we like it? Does it work? What can be fixed? So being able to know that our opinion and experiences matter and can help improve products for other people is really awesome.
Sarah Boynton [00:31:40]:
Very good. What advice would you give someone looking to pursue this career, even if they kind of happen upon it like you did? You know, what is the best advice you think you could give?
Savanah Shumaker [00:31:53]:
Yeah, I think my, like, two pieces of advice kind of go together. The first is just be open minded to anything. Again, I literally got here just because things came my way and I was open to it. I wasn’t super tunnel visioned with my life. And that being said, the other piece is like that saying there’s no small small parts, only small actors. So even if you’re a lab tech or a director or something in between, everything matters. You can’t have everyone be a director. You can’t have everyone be an entry level lab tech.
Savanah Shumaker [00:32:25]:
You can’t have everyone be like a mid career scientist. All of the pieces come together. And as long as you’re doing a great job taking pride in your work, you matter. Nothing can function without your teammates. You can maybe do some basic research by yourself, or I do certain things by myself throughout the day, but it’s all part of a bigger picture. So never think that what you’re doing isn’t important. Take everything really seriously, but also know that you are part of a team, so everything isn’t the end of the world.
Sarah Boynton [00:32:55]:
That’s really beautiful. I love that.
Savanah Shumaker [00:32:57]:
Thank you.
Sarah Boynton [00:32:59]:
Last question today, and thank you again so much for your time. Savannah, this is. I’ve learned a lot. And do you have any resources or networks you could recommend for career development for people maybe who are watching this that are NMR scientists or want to be? What might those resources or networks look like?
Savanah Shumaker [00:33:22]:
Yeah, there’s several groups that I would recommend. The first would be women in bio. Obviously, that’s how we know each other. And it was kind of my first dip into science leadership. As you know, I’m part of the sponsorship committee for the women in bio capital region chapter. So that’s really helped me interact and mingle with women in the local biotech scene who are maybe at that mid to senior career level that when I first got involved, I might not necessarily have had a lot of access to people at that level. So that’s been really instrumental to me. And then on the flip side, I’ve also made just a lot of social friends.
Savanah Shumaker [00:33:58]:
So finding women in science who have jobs or careers similar to mine so we can relate to each other. Another group would be Awis association for women in science. I attend the Baltimore chapters meetings. They’re more academic focused in terms of who participates. But again, that’s a different crowd that being in government, being government contractor, I might not necessarily interact with those people in terms of NMR. I’m on the scientific organizing committee for an NMR conference. It’s the practical applications of NMR and industry conference or panic. And that’s a really great resource for non academic ways of using NMR in jobs.
Savanah Shumaker [00:34:43]:
We actually have. On May 14, I believe it’s going to be at 11:00 a.m. We’re going to be doing an NMR career panel. So we’re going to have five people talking about kind of like we did today. Like, what does a day in your life look like? How did you get into your role? What advice do you have? So definitely follow me or the panic NMR page if you’re interested in that. And then the last group that I would recommend that I participate in is the Chemical Society of Washington. That’s the local chapter for American Chemical Society. I just joined the board of managers in January as a volunteer.
Savanah Shumaker [00:35:16]:
And that’s great because that has the other flip side of the traditional chemistry approach. So knowing that kind of overall professional development is being supplemented through these women oriented science groups, but then also participating in an NMR group so specific to what I like actually do on a day to day basis, but then also being a part of the overall picture of chemistry as a whole, more than just analytical chemistry, kind of has created a nice, well rounded environment for me to participate in activities and network outside of my job.
Sarah Boynton [00:35:50]:
Very good, excellent resources. Okay, well, thank you again so much. I loved taking this journey in down NMR and your career and just learning more about the impactful work you’re doing. Again, thank you and have a great, wonderful rest of your day. And thank you to all who jumped in and joined. We’ll see you next day in the life interview. Take care.
Savanah Shumaker [00:36:17]:
Thank you so much for your time.
Sarah Boynton [00:36:19]:
All right, bye.
