After advanced training in psychology, neuroscience, and endocrinology, Lana Gent found job satisfaction as a director of science at the American Heart Association in Dallas. Here she describes what the job entails and how it uses her scientific training in a very different setting than a lab.
Tell me about your academic training.
I started in phenomenological psychology, looking first at chimpanzees in a zoo and then how dogs were making decisions based on social influences from their species. I did that throughout my graduate school career at the University of Texas at Arlington, but there aren’t a lot of jobs in the consciousness of animals. So I started research in neuroscience at UT Southwestern Medical Center, doing stereotactic surgery on rats and mice, to understand what was happening in the brain during cocaine addiction.
After a complicated pregnancy, I decided to stay home with my daughter for a year. I went back to UT Southwestern in a different lab—my surgical skills were in high demand —this time looking at the effect of estrogen on metabolic syndrome.