2024 Outstanding Student Achievement Award: PhD Community Service Category
Katharine Babcock, PhD, ’24
Katharine Babcock is a January 2024 graduate of the PhD program in Anatomy & Neurobiology. She has been at Boston University for almost 10 years. From September 2014 to September 2016, she worked as a research assistant at the BU Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Center Brain Bank, before pursuing her master’s degree in the same lab until 2018.
From 2018 to 2023, Katharine pursued her PhD, graduating in January 2024. She is now a postdoctoral fellow at the CTE Center, working to publish two of her thesis chapters.
Katharine’s community service project, “BUtiful Brains,” won her the Outstanding Student Achievement Award in the PhD Community Service category. Read more below!
Can you share a bit about the community service project that led to your recognition with this award?
I became chair of my department’s outreach committee during my first year in the Anatomy & Neurobiology master’s program. This position mainly involved teaming up with students from the Graduate Program in Neuroscience to host booths at various events in the community, such as the Cambridge Science Festival and local school science nights.
During my second year in the program, I held brain demos in the Hall of Human Life at the Museum of Science, using two real human brain specimens to engage museum visitors in a dialogue about the brain. These kinds of tissues are extremely fragile, however, and gloves are needed for handling due to the chemicals they’re preserved in. One of my advisors at the time, Dr. Ann Zumwalt, showed me a paper she’d recently seen presented at a conference, detailing a novel technique for encapsulating an entire brain and spinal cord in a special silicone gel, allowing it to be used for display purposes. She asked if I’d be interested in trying to replicate this, and of course I said yes.
I teamed up with engineers at the museum and got to work, using tissues donated to the medical school’s body donation program. We started small and then worked our way up to encapsulating two whole brains, each showing off a different neuroanatomical dissection. This inspired me to experiment with other methods, such as resin embedding. It took a lot of work and troubleshooting, but eventually, I found techniques that worked well and built a small collection of specimens that I could use at our outreach events. Prior to this, we just had hands-on activities and plastic brain models, but now, we have real human brains to showcase and grab people’s attention. Thus, the “BUtiful Brains” initiative came to be.
What inspired you to get involved with community service?
My hope is that by increasing people’s awareness about neuroscience, we’re giving them tools to better understand themselves and their own mental health. I discovered neuroscience by happenstance when I was 16, rummaging around old magazines in my parents’ attic, and it was a life changing experience. I’d always been interested in why people are the way they are, and here was a scientific field dedicated to understanding just that using technology. I couldn’t wait to learn more. My hope is to give others that same spark of curiosity and inspiration.
Can you describe a particularly memorable moment or experience you had while participating in this project?
One time during an event at the Museum of Science, a young girl, probably 8 or 9 years old, approached my booth with her eyes wide and her jaw dropped, totally in awe of the brain specimens. We talked for a bit before I moved on to engage with other visitors, but she remained at the table, still marveling at what she saw. I could empathize—I could easily spend all day studying the brain as well. I saw myself in her. I’ll always remember my first time seeing a human brain, and I know she will, too.
How do you believe your community service initiative has impacted the communities or individuals you’ve worked with?
I would like to think it’s helped people better understand not only the brain, but themselves, and motivated them to continue learning about it. For instance, one of the things I like to discuss with people who visit my booth is the vagus nerve (cranial nerve X). It starts in your brainstem, at the base of your brain, and travels down into your chest and stomach where it innervates your internal organs. It’s a key player in your body’s parasympathetic nervous system, helping to convey messages between your body and brain. When people say to take a deep breath to try to relax during a stressful situation, it’s the vagus nerve that senses the deep breath and tells your body to calm down and your heart rate to slow. It really works! I hope this helps people self-regulate next time they start to feel overwhelmed or stressed, which isn’t hard to do in today’s day and age.
How do you envision continuing your community service efforts in the future, and do you have any specific projects or causes you’re passionate about pursuing?
I think I’ll always try to be involved in community engagement efforts, regardless of what my future job entails. It’s in my nature to connect with others. For instance, even during my maternity leave, I’ve been writing letters to an eighth grader in Ohio through a STEM pen pal program called Letters to a Pre-Scientist. I’ve had people inspire and mentor me throughout my life and I plan to pay it forward.