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Who is Caroline Sussman?
From Dancing to Research

 

Caroline Sussman was born in New York, NY on December 24, 1966. She has loved animals for as long as she can remember. As a child she had many pets – as many as her parents would allow, including fish, hamsters, cats, and a snake. Later, as she became a teenager, her interest in nature grew when she discovered that spending time in a nature reserve near her house provided a lot of relief from the stress of life as a teenager.

Dance Turns Into Biology
Caroline never really liked science in high school. So when it came time to choose a college to attend, she chose Connecticut College because of their dance program (modern and ballet). She majored in Dance and then decided to become a physical therapist (someone who helps people get better after surgery and accidents by showing them how to do different exercises). That meant she had to take a General Biology class, which was the only reason she took it. But once she got into it, she was immediately fascinated. She especially remembers dissecting many different kinds of small animals (for example, worms, crayfish, sea stars, clams) and being amazed at the incredible complexity of even these small, relatively simple animals.

Caroline decided to change her major to Biology because she felt in constant awe of the beauty and intricacy of plants and animals and just really enjoyed understanding how they work. Her favorite class was Cell Physiology. Dr. Stephen Loomis taught it and he did a great job of making a cell come alive. You could just picture all those busy little molecules racing around inside the cell doing their jobs that keep an animal or plant alive. Caroline thought it was especially amazing because you would never know about all that important activity unless you looked for it with a microscope. It is like magic, you can’t see it (with the naked eye, anyway), yet it is always there and without it there is no life.

Caroline graduated from Connecticut College with a B.A. in 1988. She decided to continue her education and went to the University of Connecticut for a Ph.D. in physiology, which she received in 1997.

A Research Career
After graduating, Dr. Sussman got a job as a Research Associate doing research. She got this position due to the research experience she’d gained in graduate school. Her job allows her to design and carry out experiments, write grants proposing the experiments she wants to do and justify why those experiments are important and why she should be given money to do them, write papers describing the experiments she has done and why the results are important and how they can be used, and give talks about her research at Universities and at national meetings. She chose to focus on research because she gets very excited about discovering new information about how animals work. She is especially interested in how animals are put together during development and how different cell types are specified, for example, how skin cells “know” to be different from muscle or bone. She finds it really fun to be the first person ever to know something.

Her research focuses on the development of the brain and spinal cord before birth. With a few exceptions all the cells of the body have the same genetic information. Different types of cells develop because that information is used differently in different cells. She is trying to figure out how cells know to use their genetic information to become the main cell types of the brain and spinal cord. Specifically, she is trying to identify the genes that are critical for this process. Dr. Sussman hopes that her research will contribute to treating disease and helping people.

Family and Fun
Outside of work Dr. Sussman focuses on spending time with friends and family. She is married to another physiologist (see Dr. Michael Romero) and they have 3 small children who take up most of her free time. Their fun activities are limited for now to things the family can do together, like going to the beach, zoo, playground or museum. She also likes to read and play the guitar. As soon as the kids get big enough, she’d like to resume some of her old hobbies with them, like horseback riding, hiking, camping, bicycle riding, and taking dance classes.