SUBAH PACKER, Ph.D.
associate professor,
Department of Cellular
and Integrative Physiology,
Indiana University School of Medicine

Like many kids who grow up with animals, Subah Packer had always wanted to be a veterinarian. She had cats and dogs as pets. She rode horses and trained with an Olympic coach for 13 years. And she even received a degree in zoology from the University of Manitoba.

Although Packer has gone on to work with animals, it hasn't been exactly in the way she expected. Now an associate professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine, she admits she wasn't as good a student as she hoped she would be—and she even worried that she might not have the grades to get into veterinary school. But one of her professors, H.E. Welch, thought she'd make a great scientist, and he encouraged her to enroll in a master's program in physiology before committing to veterinary school. "Dr. Welch gave me good advice, but more importantly, [he] believed in me," she says.

Physiology, the study of the function of cells, organs, and organ systems, was the perfect fit for Packer, who loved trying to puzzle out how everything worked together. "Since living cells and tissues are dynamic, the relationships between one process and another can change," she says. "For example, if blood pressure increases, a physiologist must consider what the heart, brain, and kidneys will do in response."

Before long, she started work on her master's research project that studied how muscles in artery walls may cause high blood pressure in animals. She knew that the more scientists understood about what caused high blood pressure—the leading cause of cardiovascular disease, which itself is the number-one cause of death in North America—the more likely they could find ways to prevent it and treat it.

Packer was quickly hooked on research. "Conducting real research is like being an explorer," she says. "You're the first person to see something that no one else has ever seen or understood before."

At that point, Packer had been accepted into veterinary school with the condition that she complete her master's degree first. But, as she completed the master's project work, she realized that she had discovered her passion for research. Instead of pursuing a path to become a veterinarian, Packer pursued a PhD in physiology. Today, she continues to study the link between high blood pressure and vascular smooth muscle, as well as the way that diabetes causes bladder muscle dysfunction.

For students who are interested in a career in science, she says it's very important to find a way to spend time in a real laboratory. There are plenty of programs that can help students get into labs during summer vacations, but she says that emailing a scientist who is working on a project they're interested in is also a good idea. "Scientists are very approachable, and a great way to gain a real lab experience is to contact a scientist directly," she says. "A student who takes the initiative is likely to be invited by a scientist to tour the lab, and it could lead to a lab internship."

Packer still loves animals—she has 11 horses on her farm, and she runs a youth equestrian educational program every weekend. But she says she couldn't be happier with the choice she made to pursue a career as a research scientist. "I enjoy the freedom to pose questions of interest to me, and the excitement of discovery that comes when the final analysis of data is completed," she says.