Courtney McDougal (center) and Marion Pepper: 'In grad school, I was a microbiologist who also did immunology. Now in Marion’s lab, I’m an immunologist who also does microbiology.'
Undergraduate internships enable students the opportunity to explore potential careers, identifying one’s interests, as well as disregarding undesirable subjects.
Courtney McDougal traveled nearly 8,000 miles in 2013 – from Ithaca, New York to Cape Town, South Africa – to discover she had no interest in practicing medicine.
“I asked the doctors lots of questions about their patients like, ‘How is that virus or infection making them ill?’ or ‘We’re giving them this drug. How does the drug work?’” she said. “More times than I was happy with the answer was, ‘We don’t quite know,’ or ‘We know how to manage symptoms, but we don’t know what the problem is.’”
For McDougal, that summer internship was frustrating – and invaluable.
“The doctors were doing a great job caring for children with HIV and TB based on the knowledge they had,” she said. “But there were underlying questions I had that the physicians could not answer. I was more curious about how things work than the treatment side.”
Thirteen years and two degrees later, McDougal, 33, is still asking questions, but getting better answers. She is a Postdoctoral Fellow working with Marion Pepper, Ph.D., Chair of the UW Medicine Department of Immunology. She arrived at the UW in 2021, after completing a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
“In grad school, I was a microbiologist who also did immunology,” she said. “Now in Marion’s lab, I’m an immunologist who also does microbiology. Immunology and microbiology don’t seem that different in the span of science, but we don’t talk enough between those disciplines. So, that’s been fun.”
What also has been fun, McDougal said, is “having both perspectives” in the Pepper Lab “My project is understanding strategies the parasite that causes malaria (Plasmodium) uses to manipulate immune responses," she said. “So, it is interesting to have a microbiology background, and be able think about the parasite and what it is trying to do, with my colleagues on the immunology side. Having those discussions can be really helpful.”
Pepper said McDougal “has a gift for communicating her science” that came through during her interview for the post-doc position.
“I felt like this project in particular would require someone who could interact with grant funders, as well as the public, to explain a complicated, but really important, finding,” Pepper said. “When I interviewed Courtney and asked her about her research during her Ph.D., she explained it so clearly. She’s clearly very brilliant.”
McDougal was raised in Minnetonka, Minnesota, a suburb west of Minneapolis. Her father, “an outdoorsy guy,” encouraged his daughter’s interests in nature, including sharing an excursion through the Boundary Waters, the one million-acre nature reserve along the Canada-U.S. border.
She enrolled in Cornell University in 2011; two years later, she joined a lab as a researcher in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology.
“That’s when I really fell in love with science,” McDougal said.
Her work in the lab of Eric Denkers, now at the University of New Mexico, included having a paper published in 2015 in the Journal of Immunology on Beta-Catenin, a protein that serves as a structural anchor for cell adhesion and a regulator of gene expression. McDougal is the third author. The fourth? Marion Pepper.
Their paths did not cross in-person, But McDougal was intrigued and started following Pepper’s research.
That same year, McDougal entered the Ph.D. program at the University of Wisconsin to study under John-Demian (JD) Sauer, who would become a key mentor in her academic career.
“He taught grad students how to think, not just show data,” she said. “He created a ‘Secret Science Program,’ where one had to do an experiment alone. It was usually a crazy idea outside your field. High risk, high reward. You might fail, but it also could also lead to something really cool. For younger grad students it was terrifying, but also really helpful.”
After completing her Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology, McDougal was determined to pursue a post-doc position.
“Marion is the only one I interviewed with,” she said. “She was my top choice. The most important thing I have learned from her is the importance of working and interacting with other scientists. She is fearless in reaching out to people to propose projects or collaborations. I will have a certain question, and Marion will know four different scientists to work with.”
So what will McDougal be doing in 10 years?
“I hope to be running my own lab with a diverse group of students and trainees,” she said. “I love interdisciplinary research. While I’m interested in infectious disease, my work has applications for other areas, such as autoimmunity and cancer biology. I plan to stay in academia and study new things. This has been my dream since I was 18 years old.”
Pepper has not doubt that dream is within McDougal’s reach.
“Courtney is collaborative, she’s collegial, she’s driven,” Pepper said. “And, she’s competitive. As a former hockey player, she has an athlete’s mindset. She’s a team player, but she has a competitive edge that she wants to do well, she wants to succeed. And she wants to bring those around her with her. Courtney is going to be very successful.”
