B.A.S. in Biology and History from the University of California Davis
Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of California Davis
"SOMETIMES WHAT THEY SEE CANDLING AN EGG...could look normal to them and then we open it and we see something that’s unusual that they weren’t able to see on candling. You never know what you’re going to find until you open it."
"MY FAVORITE PART OF RESEARCH...even when you kind of finish a project it often creates more questions than answers, so you aren’t doing the same thing every day. I like having something new to do all the time."
Dr. Katrina Counihan tells why she likes working in the lab on the Steller's eider project. (0:55)
I like working in the lab because it’s hands-on work. I like pipetting things and working with samples, and you work with the different equipment.
And the eggs are always fun because each one can be a little different, so it’s always interesting to see what result you are going to get with whatever experiment you're doing.
The hardest part is usually not breaking the yolk, because you want to have the albumen and the yolk separated cleanly. Everyone thinks they are going to be like a chicken egg and have pretty tough yolks, but eider eggs have very delicate yolks, so you have to empty it into the dish very gently and take your samples very quickly because the yolk breaks pretty fast.
That’s usually the challenge we always set for each other, to not break the yolk. After three hundred plus eggs you get pretty good.