“I think CSP has just always been my number one choice,” says Riki Mae Duevel, a senior in CSP’s science program. Double majoring in Chemistry and Biology, Duevel has fully immersed herself in the opportunities CSP has to offer. With a passion for forensic toxicology, Duevel was sure that would be her career path after graduating with a Chemistry degree. However, her time as a research student through one of CSP’s ongoing research projects shifted her goals for the future. “I came in as a chemistry major, and I was like, ‘Yes, I love chemistry. I’m going to do chemistry all throughout my three years here.’ But that definitely changed once I got into the research department with Doctor Yang, and she showed me how important biology is.”
As a participant in the FLHCC research project, overseen by Dr. Mary Ann Yang, Duevel embraced a multifaceted role where she collaborated closely with a small team to tackle different aspects of the study. She and three other students spent two semesters researching dysregulated protein data from patients with a rare type of liver cancer. The goal of the project was to study how the dysregulated proteins could be altered to come up with new and individualized treatment plans for cancer patients with this rare type of liver cancer. CSP’s science department partnered with The Mayo Clinic and confirmed the accuracy of Mayo’s semi-quantitative proteomic screening data by using Western blot analysis, a method that provides quantitative measurements.
“Coming to CSP, I never thought that research would be a career field for me. I guess when I thought about forensic toxicology, I knew I was going to be in a lab, but I didn’t think of being in a research job,” Duevel says. “But after Doctor Yang’s research group, I really did feel that research was very important for our society.”
Duevel’s passion for research led her to a remarkable opportunity—she was one of just seven underrepresented minority undergraduate students selected for the prestigious NIH SURETox research program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As part of this elite program, she joined a specialized research team studying the effects of forever chemicals on reproductive health, seamlessly blending her newfound love for research with her long-standing passion for toxicology.
“What I specifically had to do was take care of specific culture cells. I guess I should say. The main treatment for this specific testicular cancer is cisplatin-based chemotherapy, and my cohort and I didn’t know how cancer cells would react when they became cisplatin-resistant, Duevel says. “So, I had to look at suspension-resistant cells and cisplatin-sensitive cells. My goal was basically to see how these cells were changing and how their biologies were changing after these forever chemical exposures.”
Duevel is glad to have chosen CSP, both for the opportunities surrounding campus, but also for the culturally diverse setting, “I also thought I would have more opportunities to be more culturally involved than I was.” She’s a big advocate for mental health and encourages all students to focus on themselves and their well-being so that they can be the best version of themselves. “Be mindful that if you don’t make mental health a top priority, it’ll topple over into things that you want to prioritize in the future.”