ThisIsWhatAScientistLooksLike

#ThisIs WhatA Scientist Looks Like

Abigail Munteanu

By Catherine Walsh

Abigail “Abi” Munteanu’s journey to UTSA began when she found out about scholarships, something that would change her life forever. “The cost was always a concern,” recalls Munteanu. “When I was 11, I heard that schools will pay you to go to school if you do well enough.” Munteanu’s parents immigrated from Romania to Seattle at ages 18 and 19 and moved to California when her older sister was very young. After the 2008 stock market collapse, the family relocated to Texas to start over. Her family’s financial struggle had a profound impact on Munteanu and motivated her to excel academically. “When I heard what scholarships were, I promised myself from that day on that I would work really hard in school. I knew where I wanted to go with my future,” she says. “My sister helped and pushed me through high school, where I graduated first in my class.”

Now a third-year student in UTSA’s biochemistry program, Munteanu is the recipient of two scholarships: the Distinguished Presidential Scholarship and the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo Scholarship. She is currently researching green chemistry, which identifies chemicals that are safe for the environment. In Dr. Karl E. Klose’s microbiology lab, Munteanu is also researching vibrio cholerae, a bacterium that causes severe dehydration and affects people primarily in developing nations. “Our goal in the lab is to find a vaccine,” she explains. “When you go into the lab, you don’t know what you’re going to expect and can spend hours researching. But I always enjoy it.”

Munteanu is actively involved in multiple clubs at UTSA, including the Student Affiliate Chapter of the American Chemical Society and the Dean’s Ambassadors. She also is a member of the American Medical Student Association, which works with a local rehabilitation center that helps children, adults and felons transition back into society.

Driven by her desire to help others, Munteanu’s ultimate goal is to attend medical school in Texas. Because she was accepted into the Joint Admissions Medical Program (JAMP) at UTSA, Munteanu has the opportunity to attend any medical school in Texas that has JAMP affiliation. “I am keeping an open mind about what area of medicine I want to pursue,” says Munteanu. “There are so many areas of the human body to explore, and you don’t actually know what you will fall in love with until you experience it.”

Finis Stribling IV

Finis Stribling IV wants to understand everything. “Looking at physics, it’s just fascinating how the majority of everything can be explained through science,” he says. “When you get deep into it, there’s a lot of things that are not answered, but the fact that they aren’t answered makes you want to learn more. It’s like solving a giant puzzle.” Stribling is a physics master’s student who plans to pursue his doctoral degree and become a professor. “The word, physics, intimidates pretty much everyone,” he says. “I feel like that prevents people getting into this field of STEM. I want to be able to simplify this complex topic to where it is easily understandable.”

Growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, Stribling was a curious kid who enjoyed learning about science. He thought he would study criminal justice and forensic science in college, but a physics class during his senior year of high school changed everything. “I had that ‘aha’ moment of this is what I want to do,” he remembers. In college, physics helped Stribling improve his game as a defensive back on the University of Missouri’s football team. “I feel like I understood the game differently,” he remembers, noting his knowledge of physics assisted his understanding of trajectory, motion and taking the shortest path.

As a student at the University of Missouri, Stribling worked with Dr. Angela Speck, who is now chair of UTSA’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. Stribling says Speck was one of the reasons he chose to continue his graduate education at UTSA. “She is not only a great supervisor but a great mentor as a whole,” he says. “She cares about more than just my academics. She asks me how I’m doing.” Stribling is currently researching circumstellar maser (an acronym for microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) emissions. “More specifically, I look at these masers in asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars,” Stribling adds. “AGB stars are older stars, similar to our sun, that have mainly carbon and oxygen cores. There is evidence that suggests that these maser emissions are connected to clumps of molecular gas in ionized regions of planetary nebula (cometary knots).”

Motivated by his own experience as a minority in STEM, Stribling is passionate about educational outreach. “There is a stigma to being African-American with dread hair,” he says. “When I was walking for my undergrad, one of my teammates told me a lady in the crowd said I didn’t look like a scientist.” Along with several other UTSA students, Stribling established the Black Students in STEM Association. “We felt like it was important to have a group on campus that has some inclusivity with the African-American population,” he explains. “My personal goal is to work on community and outreach. If there is a young Black kid that wants to get into STEM but is deterred because they’re Black, I’d like to be one of those figures. Just seeing someone in that field can make all the difference.”

Follow the Black Students in STEM Association on Instagram (@bssa.utsa) and Twitter (@bssautsa).

Carol Chase

If you summarize the last 10 years of Carol Chase’s life, it sounds something like this: Chase graduates from Brigham Young University in Hawaii, serves on a church mission in Canada, works as a lab technician at Pioneer Flour Mills, earns her master’s degree at UTSA, begins her Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology at UTSA, gives birth to a son, and continues her doctoral work. “My path to getting here was not very direct,” Chase says with a laugh. “I was a gravy and flour tester. It was a good job and paid well and had good benefits, but I wanted to do something more and do more research.”

Chase discovered her passion for immunology while volunteering in Dr. Thomas Forsthuber’s autoimmunity lab. Now a Ph.D. candidate, Chase is looking for blood biomarkers to monitor the progression of multiple sclerosis (MS). “Most people can spend the majority of their life in what you would call remission with little symptoms. They are always at risk of having a relapse,” Chase explains. “There are no medical tests for that and no way of monitoring that. I’m trying to find proteins in the blood that you can test in patients that will give you an idea of if they are going to have a relapse and if their disease is progressing or getting worse.”

Chase hopes that her findings will help MS patients experience a better quality of life. “I always tell my mom, this is important and someone has to do it,” she says. “And I want to do it.”

Chase’s son, Teddy, was born during her second year in the program. “I remember being up at 3 a.m. with a crying baby and then having to do a presentation that morning,” she says. During the particularly difficult days, Chase considered leaving for a less demanding job. “I would look at the other people and think, I don’t fit in anymore,” she remembers. “But I worked through it. I love what I’m doing, and I think it’s important. I just kept showing up and doing it.”

Chase is grateful for the support of UTSA’s Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (RISE) community, a federally funded program that provides financial and professional development support for underrepresented students. “They gave me a community that I belong to,” she says. “When I didn’t necessarily feel like I fit in that well, I always fit in there.”

With the end of her doctoral journey in sight, Chase is looking forward to a future in immunology research. Her dream is to work at the National Institutes of Health. “I want to become someone that my son would be proud of and look up to, which sometimes means making sacrifices and doing difficult things so he can see that education is important, serving other people is important, and it’s worth making those sacrifices,” she says.