Hannah Boekweg (PhD ‘24, BIO) spent the last four years studying bioinformatics in Dr. Samuel Payne’s lab. As the lab’s first graduate student, she faced numerous challenges, but her drive and dedication led her to succeed.
Fascinated by scientific questions, Boekweg was captivated and challenged. “There’s always something new to learn,” she shared with enthusiasm. Her favorite courses, cell biology and microbiology, gave her a foundation in cellular structure and function, setting the stage for what was to come.
As an undergraduate, Boekweg worked as research assistant in a computer science lab. Here, she was encouraged to find a question that interested her. Researching different topics, she stumbled upon proteomics, which focuses on identifying and quantifying all the proteins in a given system—a field she had never encountered but was immediately fascinated by.
Determined to learn more, Boekweg searched for life science professors working with proteomics and found Dr. Payne, who, coincidentally, was seeking students for his lab. While in his lab, Boekweg developed a love for research that led her to approach Payne about graduate school.
Charting New Territory
Even before becoming the first graduate student in the Payne Lab, Boekweg was a trailblazer. Spotting a unique opportunity, she redirected her research to specifically address types of cancers affecting women. She focused on ovarian and endometrial cancers, designing a project and crafting a proposal that earned her BYU’s Women’s Research Initiative Award. “We had this massive cancer data set that a lot of people were plowing into, but no one had taken that approach yet,” Boekweg explained.
In her first two years as a graduate student, Boekweg published several papers and gained a reputation as an insightful researcher. She was invited to speak at the Mass Spectrometry in Life Sciences Conference to introduce the new field of research she was working on for her PhD: single cell proteomics. Unlike traditional proteomics, which analyzes millions of cells to measure average protein expression, single cell proteomics dives deeper, focusing on the uniqueness of each individual cell. Within a cancer tumor, for example, some cells remain healthy while others are highly diseased. By sequencing individual cells, they can build a time course trajectory to describe how cells are changing throughout a disease (or any biological process).
Boekweg later applied for a Simmons Center Cancer Research Fellowship and was sent to Northeastern University in Boston to study as an intern with Dr. Vitek, a statistician in the field of proteomics, over the summer. This experience pushed Boekweg beyond her usual focus and expanded her knowledge of statistics.
The Power of Faith and Science
Boekweg deeply appreciates the integration of intellectual and spiritual development in her studies. Having initially attended a different university for her undergraduate degree, she’s seen how combining faith and science has led to greater progress in her life.
Boekweg is grateful for BYU’s forward-looking approach that urges students to not only excel in their fields but to also consider how their careers can be a force for good. She wants to continue conducting research after she graduates and plans to pursue a career in the industry where she can use her knowledge and experience to help others.