Making Up For Lost Time

When it comes to college, I have heaps of happy memories. From living in a house with a bunch of guys I still keep in touch with, to the knowledge and experiences which shaped my adult foundation – I consider university a home run. However, there’s always been one regret I’ve held for over 2 decades. I never published my thesis.

I had the rare honor to be an Undergraduate Research Fellow. With only 25 of us out of a student body of 40,000, we were given a budget, lab bench, and told to “go forth and explore.” And for the next 15 months, I did exactly that – looking at the electron transport chain in the membranes of blue-green algae. It may not seem sexy today, but at the time greenhouse gases were all the rage.

With the experiment finished, I pondered how to write up the results and which scientific journals might accept it for publication. Just at that moment, personal tragedy struck my sponsoring professor, and I found myself not having the skills nor motivation to take it across the finish line alone. With graduation and a medical school start beckoning, I sent my thesis to the university library stacks for eternity.

Last year, opportunity knocked in the form of a medical journal publication. Medtronic had published our artificial pancreas systems in the New England Journal of Medicine and needed a subteam to slice the data for sub-population studies in further publications. I jumped on the chance, and despite my career upheaval from a new CEO, was allowed to work on and finish the project.

So if you’ve ever wondered what happens to type 1 diabetics when they use an artificial pancreas system to avoid dangerously low blood sugar when sleeping, look no further than this month’s issue of Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics. Despite taking over 20 years to become a published scientific author, holding the paper in my hands today created a source of indescribable satisfaction.

K