Ph.D. Student Katie Partington (left) and BBI's Doug Fowler: 'Science can feel like magic. When you begin to understand how and why things work, it’s incredible.'
“There are good cells and there are bad cells and they are fighting.”
Katie Partington was five-years-old when her mother used these simple, but profound words to explain the passing of her husband – Katie’s father – from Glioblastoma, a common and aggressive brain cancer.
“Looking back, his illness was a catalyst for my interest in biomedical research,” said Partington, a Ph.D. student in the lab of BBI Principal Investigator Doug Fowler. “Along with other experiences in my childhood, it launched me on the journey to become a scientist.”
Those other experiences included frequent visits as a child to the Lawrence Hall of Science, a museum and science center in Berkeley, California, just a few miles from Orinda, where Partington grew up. In addition, in the fourth grade, her teacher gave her and each of her classmates a battery, some wires, and a small light bulb, but no instructions, other than, “Play with this until you get it to work.”
It didn’t take long until Partington’s bulb lit up.
“Science can feel like magic,” she said. “When you begin to understand how and why things work, it’s incredible.”
“Incredible” also describes Partington’s passion for solving problems in Fowler’s lab.
“Katie is an intellectually adventurous scientist.” Fowler said. “I loved that, when she first rotated in the lab, she was interested in diverse problems and ideas. She was also smart and great to work with, which is why I was excited for her to join the lab.”
For Partington, 26, charting the course from electrifying that light bulb in the fourth grade to isolating human T cells in Fowler’s lab has been more direct and intentional than many Ph.D students.
After graduating from a private, college-preparatory high school in San Francisco, she chose Harvey Mudd College in Southern California for her undergraduate studies.
“I liked the core curriculum at Harvey Mudd,” she said. “It included physics, chemistry, biology, and a lot of math and computer science. I have broad interests in a lot of areas and I was not sure what would be the best fit for me.”
It also offered her “a small community,” Partington said.
In the fall of 2024, the college enrolled just over 900 undergrad students, with a student-to-faculty ratio of 8 to 1. By comparison, the UW has more than 35,000 undergrads and a ratio of 19 to 1.
Partington graduated in 2021 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering. Her plan had been to apply for graduate school, but a visit by a few “Mudders” (Harvey Mudd alumni) from Berkeley Lights, a Bay Area biotech firm, led her to join the firm in June of that year as an Associate Development Engineer. (The company was acquired by Bruker Cellular Analysis in 2023.)
“I really enjoyed this job,” Partington said. “The role was at the intersection of biology and technology. I got to do a lot of problem-solving, experimental design, and troubleshooting issues when things were not working.”
One of those projects involved human memory B cells – improving by 80 percent the efficiency of recovering single B cells that were being stimulated on-chip, thereby potentially allowing for more effective selection of B cells that bind to specific antigens. But after two years at Berkeley Lights, her “rate of learning had slowed down,” and “it was more of a pull than a push to leave,” she said.
Graduate school was beckoning, and Partington had to decide among some of the top universities on the West Coast.
So, why did she choose the UW?
“What drew me here was the rotation program, the chance to try out labs before joining them,” she said. “I was excited about working in multiple labs and exploring research areas I had been learning about.”
Partington enrolled at the UW in 2023 and is working toward a Ph.D. in Bioengineering. She is especially interested in developing technologies to study disease mechanisms and test potential therapeutics.
“Genomic technology was not on my radar, until I joined Doug Fowler’s lab,” she said. “Now it’s something I’m pretty excited about.”
Fowler also is pretty excited to have Partington among his students.
“Katie thinks deeply about questions and, also, about the data she gathers,” he said. “She isn't satisfied with a superficial or inexplicable result, which I think is one of the hallmarks of a successful scientist. She also is unflappable, even when things don't work out as planned, which helps since research can be so difficult!”
