Laker alumna, Claire Radtke ’20, currently a fifth-year doctoral student in the Department of Biological Sciences at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI, recently won the fourth annual Graduate/Medical student and Postdoc Communication Competition at the Wisconsin BioForward Annual Summit in October.
BioForward is a Wisconsin-based non-profit which promotes biohealth initiatives to produce positive long-term impacts on the biohealth industry and research institutions. The organization’s annual communication competition is designed to challenged participants to communicate their research in three minute videos to an audience of average people in a way that audience will understand clearly. Finalists represented their research live at the BioForward summit, where Radtke placed first.
Radtke studies how cells handle protein aggregates associated with fatal diseases under Dr. Anita Manogaran, who shares her interest in the phenomenon of normal proteins malfunctioning and causing fatal illness. Radtke named that shared interest as her reason for applying to Marquette University, and now Dr. Manogaran is her dissertation advisor, mentor, and the principal investigator on her research.
The BioForward award marks Radtke’s third science communication competition and second win. She also placed first in Marquette University’s Three-Minutes Thesis Competition in 2022, and third in the Science Coalition’s Fund it Forward Challenge in 2023. Radtke encourages other graduate students to sign up for similar competitions and to challenge themselves to overcome their excitement for the details of their research and simplify it in a way that is both interesting and digestible for a non-specialized audience to raise awareness and build a relationship with the general public.
To read more about Radtke’s work and the successes of her fellow graduate students, click here.