Ada Watkins' Summer at Vanderbilt
By Emma Steadman, c'26
For many students, discovering a passion for science happens gradually. But for Ada Watkins, C’27, it was the influence of a single biology teacher at Franklin County High School, just down the Mountain, that turned curiosity into commitment. “I came into Sewanee wanting to be a biology major because I had a great biology teacher in high school,” says Watkins. “She was my favorite person ever, and she sparked my love for the subject. I decided to stay with it in college.”
Now a rising junior, Watkins is spending her summer pursuing the Vanderbilt-Sewanee Undergraduate Research Experience (V-SURE), a fully-funded research and clinical shadowing opportunity for pre-health students considering M.D. or M.D./Ph.D. career paths. As a molecular biology major, gaining hands-on lab experience and shadowing physicians within Vanderbilt’s medical system is both a natural next step and an exciting challenge for Watkins.
The lab where she’s working focuses on bone cancer and breast cancer metastasis. The project centers on a developmental transcription factor called GLI2, which becomes reactivated when tumors spread to bone, mistaking the cancer as normal cells and mimicking early developmental processes. More specifically, Watkins is looking at GLI2’s influence on collagen expression, a critical component of bone structure and flexibility. Understanding the relationship between tumors and collagen production could help explain how cancer spreads, and lead to better ways to detect or treat bone cancer.
This work builds on her previous research experience at Sewanee with Associate Professor of Biology Alyssa Summers, with whom she investigates hereditary breast cancer scoring. For that project, they’re looking at refining risk estimates for individuals with known mutations like BRCA by analyzing smaller genetic variants, or single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The goal is to improve accuracy of risk predictions, which currently range broadly from 45% to 85%, particularly for non-white populations who are significantly underrepresented in the genetic models used to develop these estimates. By conducting next-generation sequencing and secondary analysis, Watkins works to generate individualized risk scores that can help better inform patients and physicians as they make healthcare decisions.
In addition to lab work, Watkins also spends a half-day each week shadowing Vanderbilt’s Trauma Intensive Care Unit. While shadowing, she observed a surgery on a man whose sternum had been cracked horizontally, and watched as the doctors worked to pull it back together with a metal plate and screws. “What I thought was really cool was that none of these doctors had ever seen this kind of injury before. But nobody looked scared, nobody looked confused. They were curious, and they were excited to deal with this thing that they had never seen before,” Watkins recalled.
After completing this summer with the V-SURE program, Watkins will spend the upcoming semester in Kenya for a global health and human rights study away program. She will take courses in Swahili, ethics, Kenyan health systems, and research methods, and has an opportunity to intern at a local hospital. Before her senior year, she will return for the second summer of V-SURE to further her research and clinical experience.
As Watkins continues working toward a career in medicine, she has already begun to see how well Sewanee has prepared her to enter the field. “Emergency medicine is unpredictable, so you have to stay curious and ready to solve problems,” says Watkins. “Sewanee has really fostered my critical thinking, and it makes me really excited that those skills are going to translate outside of Sewanee.”
