Nebraska Women in STEM Talked to Dr. Heather Jensen-Smith about overcoming career obstacles and thriving through collaborative research.
When you ask Dr. Heather Jensen-Smith what piece of advice has helped her along her STEM journey, she will tell you one that helped her navigate roadblocks and setbacks: “Just bloom where you are planted.”
While Dr. Jensen-Smith is now the Director of UNMC’s Advanced Microscopy Core Facility (AMCF) and principle investigator on research and instrument grants, she still considers herself an accidental STEM researcher.
During her undergraduate at University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), she was unsure of what she wanted to do. Her curiosity in her introductory courses led to her being recommended for an upper-level biopsychology class. After she nearly missed the final exam for this class, her professor used this as an opportunity to encourage her to get involved in undergraduate research while at UNL. This is where her interest in research was forged.
From UNL, Jensen-Smith continued her degree at Arizona State University, supported by a competitive scholarship providing funds to conduct research on drug seeking behavior. However, when she developed a severe rodent allergy, she found herself unable to stay on the project and graduate program. “I was doing great and even had a special scholarship for women in neuroscience, but ultimately, I had to walk away. There was no way for me to separate myself from the animal dander in that research environment,” Jensen-Smith explains. “Like a lot of STEM careers, it was a roller coaster.”
She returned to Nebraska and started a research technician job at Creighton University. “I was deflated. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had all these things lined up and then the house fell apart, so to speak.” Jensen-Smith attributes her next pivot to the guidance of her lab supervisor, Dr. Richard Hallworth, who encouraged her to apply for the Biomedical Sciences graduate program at Creighton University.
Creighton University was where her interest in microscopy, advanced imaging, and analyses was established. These became foundational elements for her work as an individual researcher and as Director of a shared research resource supporting hundreds of researchers, scholars, and projects each year.
In the AMCF, she enjoys working on a variety of projects as well as being an advocate for students and fellow researchers. Supporting very diverse imaging projects often creates unique opportunities to collaborate. For example, while supporting then PhD candidate Kyrsten Vance’s dissertation research, Jensen-Smith and Vance used software and analytics developed by NASA and Jet Propulsion Lab to model the tumor microenvironment in patient samples with pancreatic tumors.
“Describing the tumor cells in a three-dimensional space is not that different from trying to describe a distant galaxy. Both researcher’s questions were fundamentally the same.”
This collaboration led to the first author publication of Dr. Krysten Vance.
Along Jensen-Smith’s bumpy journey to where she is now, she has learned the importance of authenticity, reflection, and perseverance. Echoing the words of one mentor, she advises other women in STEM to “find a way to thrive wherever you’re at. Don’t worry about the ebb and flow or wherever you’ve been transplanted. Just figure out how to bloom wherever you are.”