User talk:Kam D. Dahlquist

Hello Dr. Dahlquist, If you were not a biology professor nor doing research, what career would you see yourself in?
Natalie Williams 19:26, 17 January 2015 (EST)

Recently, I've gotten interested in public policy and investigative journalism. I would like to use my scientific training in data analysis to tackle broader societal questions. I think investigative journalism is important to holding our elected officials accountable for their actions. — Kam D. Dahlquist 20:13, 21 January 2015 (EST)

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Hi Dr. Dahlquist,
What is your favorite book and why?
Kara M Dismuke 17:03, 18 January 2015 (EST)

It's hard to choose just one! I'm a big Harry Potter fan, the 5th, 6th, and 7th books are my favorites. Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress (and the two follow-ups in the trilogy, Beggars and Choosers and Beggar's Ride) is up there--it's about genetically modified people that don't need to sleep and I use it in my seminar class BIOL 585: Issues in Biotechnology. — Kam D. Dahlquist 20:15, 21 January 2015 (EST)

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Hi Dr. Dahlquist, If you had a time machine but had to use it for science, which past research or experiment would you most want to be part of?
Kristen M. Horstmann 17:55, 18 January 2015 (EST)

If I can answer your question this way, I'd love to go back to the beginning of life on earth and see if it really happened the way we currently think--the RNA world. I'd love to take some samples and bring it back to the present to analyze. — Kam D. Dahlquist 20:55, 29 January 2015 (EST)

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Hi Dr. Dahlquist, What do you know now that you wish you knew when you were my age? Alyssa N Gomes 22:37, 18 January 2015 (EST)

Ahhh, so many things! I guess the big two things that I wish I had known (or believed) in college are:

• I am not my results, i.e., my self worth is not determined by my academic performance. I took feedback on my work too personally so that if I did badly, I felt bad about myself, which was self-destructive. We actually learn by making mistakes and critical feedback is extremely valuable.
• Slow and steady wins the race, i.e., treat my academic work like a job, work away at it steadily, instead of procrastinating and making an upcoming deadline force me to work.

— Kam D. Dahlquist 21:05, 29 January 2015 (EST)

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Hello Dr. Dalquist,
What exciting things do you expect to come out of biomathematics in the coming decade?
(William A. C. Gendron 20:47, 19 January 2015 (EST))

I am excitedly awaiting the day that we have a whole cell model (for yeast or other single-celled organism) that can accurately model and predict the dynamics of all molecules in the cell. I think it will happen in the next decade. — Kam D. Dahlquist 21:07, 29 January 2015 (EST)

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Hi Dr. Dahlquist,
If you could take one class at LMU, what would it be?
Tessa A. Morris 23:00, 19 January 2015 (EST)

That's a hard one, there are actually many classes that I would like to take. I would love to take a theology class, since I've never actually taken one in my life. I would also like to re-take Organic Chemistry. I struggled with it when I took it in college because I just didn't have a framework for it in my brain. It would be interesting to take it now and see what the students are getting simultaneously with me teaching BIOL 201: Cell Function in the Fall. — Kam D. Dahlquist 21:11, 29 January 2015 (EST)

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Hello Dr. Dahlquist,
My question for you is as follows: What has been your biggest challenge as a researcher and how did you overcome it?
Lauren M. Magee 23:06, 19 January 2015 (EST)

I've faced some technical hurdles to get experiments to work at different stages of my career, most recently with getting the DNA microarray technique to work in my laboratory here at LMU when I first started here. I was able to overcome the challenge because of a couple of things. First, a bunch of faculty got together to write an equipment grant to the Keck foundation that I was able to use to purchase my own DNA microarray scanner. That made it easier to do more experiments faster and try to work things out. Second, I asked advice of a mentor and she pointed me in a direction that I hadn't thought of before and once I tried that, the experiments worked. — Kam D. Dahlquist 21:16, 29 January 2015 (EST)

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Hi Dr. Dahlquist, Who would you say is (or was) your biggest role model and why?
Lucia I. Ramirez 01:34, 20 January 2015 (EST)

This is an interesting question. I guess I would say that I could name several people who were and are significant mentors to me, for example, Dr. Martina Ramirez. She was a faculty member at Pomona College when I was a student there and shepherded me through the grad school application process. But I guess I haven't thought of my mentors as role models, per se, in that I want to model myself after them. Weirdly enough, there are some fictional characters that I would consider role models for how I would want to be as a person: Ambassador Delenn from the Babylon 5 television show and Vicky Turner from the novels Beggars and Choosers and Beggar's Ride that I mentioned above. — Kam D. Dahlquist 21:20, 29 January 2015 (EST)

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Hi, Dr. Dahlquist. What would you say was a critical pivotal point in getting where you are today?

• Karina Alvarez 03:06, 20 January 2015 (EST):

Choosing to change research directions from what I did in graduate school to what I did as a postdoc. In grad school I was studing the biochemistry of the riboosome in a very narrow, reductionistic sense. For my postdoc, I entered the realm of genomics and bioinformatics which is what I still do today. — Kam D. Dahlquist 21:23, 29 January 2015 (EST)

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Dr. Dahlquist, how extensive is your knowledge in epigentics, such as DNA methylation? I'm curious about the subject and have some questions on it.
Jeffrey Crosson 2:22, 22 January 2015 (EST)

I know something about the subject, what are your questions? — Kam D. Dahlquist 21:24, 29 January 2015 (EST)