Emma Collington
[Image Description]: Emma, a woman with brown hair and a shoulder brace, sits next to her service dog. The dog is a black lab wearing a blue harness.
[Image description]: Emma wears a comfy red hoodie and blue sweatpants sits cross legged on a couch with her computer, deeply engrossed in her research. Her black lab service dog is curled up next to her, looking unimpressed.
PhD student in molecular genetics, living with a genetic connective tissue disease
Tell me about your work in STEM:
I’m a Canadian PhD student in molecular genetics. I use a bioinformatics based approach to investigate metabolic processes of peroxisomes and mitochondria in anaerobic eukaryotes, specifically parasitic helminths. My love of science comes from growing up with a mystery illness: I learned that science and medicine do not have the answers to everything, and that there are so many questions just waiting to be answered!
Tell us about what excites you in STEM, accommodations that allow you to thrive, and anything else that comes to mind:
It’s an exciting time to be in the STEM community, with increased data availability and data sharing. Especially from a genomics perspective, new sequence data is becoming available almost daily, and genome databases allow for collaborative approaches to investigating newly sequenced species. Using a computer based methodology allows me to be involved in biology without needing to work in the traditional wet-lab.
The accommodation that has most allowed me to thrive in my field is the ability to work remotely. As someone immunocompromised during a pandemic that continues to pose a threat to those with chronic illnesses, and as a person with limited energy and fewer functional hours in a day, working from home has saved my career and my studies. Being able to participate in meetings and events remotely saves me from expending a significant amount of energy, and allows me to use the energy that I do have more efficiently.
What should people know about being #DisabledAndSTEM?
First and foremost, people with disabilities in STEM exist! Sometimes when I come up against an accessibility barrier, I get push-back as the accommodations I request have ‘never been done before’. For many years I felt isolated and alone in my field. Connecting with others with disabilities in the STEM world has been a validating experience: with accommodations, people with disabilities can make meaningful contributions to their fields of study.
Growing up with a disability, you’re always told to not let your disability limit or define you, and that people with disabilities can accomplish anything an able-bodied person can. Some of my experiences in STEM have therefore come as a shock to me, as I have been outright told on several occasions that there are things I simply cannot do. I have had to change my area of study and how I work to be able to make a space for myself in science, and I feel like I constantly need to justify the accommodations I have been granted. I am working to accept that I am not a burden and my disability is not the problem: science needs to become a more accessible space for everyone.
