“Unlike our amazing nurses and clinicians who are in the clinic and interact with individuals, I am more behind the scenes, working to support them in the laboratory,” explains Katie Pendo, MS. Katie is the Research Technician for MyPART: “My primary role is to help with the biospecimens, such as shipping, receiving, transporting, tracking, and even performing the experimental processing of some of the samples.” Katie works in the laboratory processing rare tumor samples for analysis as part of our Natural History Study of Rare Solid Tumors.
Katie is originally from Rapid City, South Dakota. She grew up less than half an hour from Mount Rushmore and less than five minutes from the Black Hills National Forest. She moved to the DC area about five years ago to pursue her master’s degree in molecular biochemistry. Since moving, she’s enjoyed experiencing the spring and summer seasons, and loves visiting the National Zoo.
Katie joined MyPART after finishing graduate school. When she describes working at the NIH, Katie says “working at the NIH had always been a dream of mine, and every day I cannot believe my luck that I get to work [here] with amazing, caring, hard-working, incredible people.” Speaking of the MyPART team, she explains that each member of the team “not only [sees] the science side of cancer, but [also understands] the human side of it. Everyone sees this as more than a job, and [has] their heart in the work.” Finally, Katie wants to thank each participant of the Natural History Study: “The MyPART participants are superheroes and we all incredibly appreciate them and their contributions. Thank you to our participants!”
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