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In 2013, Julie Decker walked through the doors of the Bevill Biomedical Research Building, not as a researcher but as a program manager. She spent more than 20 years honing her skills researching HIV before making a job change beyond her expectation.

After earning her undergraduate degree in molecular biology and mathematics at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, Decker moved to Alabama to do HIV research at Southern Research Institute. In 1993, she moved across the street to UAB and the labs of George Shaw, Ph.D., and Beatrice Hahn, Ph.D., both former professors of medicine.

When Shaw and Hahn moved to Pennsylvania, Decker remained in Alabama, swapping benchwork for deskwork. The microbiology department was searching for an employee who knew the needs of researchers and who could also coordinate the intricate details of building renovation. Decker had the qualifications for both. Not only does she have extensive research experience, she also has a master’s degree in Business Administration, which she received here at UAB.

Frances Lund, chair of the microbiology department, explains Decker’s job. “She coordinates every element of the building renovation, working closely with building employees, the dean’s office, the Animal Resource Program and the contractors who are carrying out the renovations. She set up temporary lab facilities so the faculty and staff can continue their work while their labs are being renovated or when various utilities are temporarily shut down in parts of the building.”

Decker’s colleagues appreciate her exceptional capabilities as program manager for the department. “What I value most is her willingness to take on difficult projects and see them to successful completion. I feel very fortunate to have her as a part of our team,” says Kristina Sinclair, administrator for the department.

Then, Decker has another trait that endears her to everyone she contacts. According to Dr. Michael Saag, Infectious Diseases, “She makes every visitor feel special and pays extraordinary attention to detail.” And microbiology professor Chuck Turnbough says, “She has been one of the most agreeable, pleasant, and cooperative colleagues I have ever worked with.”

Clearly, Decker enjoys her work, although it is different from what she had been doing for 20+ years. “I’m on the other side of the bench as a program manager, and I have a whole lot more appreciation for what goes on this side to make the research happen,” Decker said. “It was quite a switch at first, and I felt like a fish out of water, but everyone was really encouraging and helped show me the ropes. The best part of my job is getting to interact with a variety of people. The people distinguish the department and it is a real pleasure to be a part of the microbiology department.”

Away from UAB, Decker is a busy wife and mother of two teenagers, Trent—a freshman at Thompson High School, and Kristen—who will be attending UAB in the fall. Both children are avid musicians, active in the high school band.

What are postdoctoral fellows and graduate students to do when they see opportunities for academic research positions continue to shrink?

UAB has begun a series of networking events—New Careers for Today’s Scientists—to help UAB trainees and students explore career opportunities in areas other than academics.

Microbiology postdoc Theresa Ramos, Ph.D. was one of the panelists for the networking event in January 2015. As UAB’s first corporate postdoctoral fellow, she is uniquely qualified to speak on the event’s topic, the business of science. She advised event attendees ent to identify their passion and then ask how they can get there. Ramos credits this approach for her first corporate position of Postdoctoral Entrepreneur at the St. Louis-based startup company Kypha Inc. “I was able to write my own contract with Kypha because I knew what I wanted to do.”

Ramos and her mentor, Scott Barnum, Ph.D., has partnered with Kypha to develop a rapid diagnostic device for meningitis and other conditions.

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The retreat began on Friday afternoon with scientific talks by students and postdocs. Roughly organized into themes, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, gene expression, host defense and immunity, and virology, the talks were varied and interesting and were followed by lively question and answer sessions. Friday evening was reserved for a poster session with 26 trainees presenting their research. Student and postdoc presentations continued on Saturday morning. Faculty judges of the oral and poster presentations uniformly agreed that this was a very difficult assignment due to the overall high quality of both talks and posters.

Before breaking for lunch on Saturday, the department’s own Dr. Peter Prevelige swapped his structural virology hat for that of photographer extraordinaire and took the retreat group photo. After lunch, faculty and trainees joined in a roundtable discussion about advanced courses in the department of microbiology. Many positive suggestions for possible courses, including an advanced virology course and a new course on the microbiome, came from the discussion.

The highlight of the retreat was the Saturday evening talk by keynote speaker Dr. William R. Jacobs, Jr. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, located in the Bronx borough of New York City. Bill is an alumnus of the UAB Department of Microbiology, having received his Ph.D. in molecular cell biology in 1985. He studied Mycobacterium leprae, the causative agent of leprosy, while in the laboratories of Drs. Roy Curtiss III and Josephine Clark-Curtiss. After receiving his Ph.D., he accepted a postdoctoral position in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine with Dr. Barry Bloom, studying Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Bill established his own laboratory at Einstein in 1987. His contributions to this field have been enormous and well recognized. He has been a Howard Hughes Investigator since 1990, and in 2013 he was elected to the US National Academy of Science. In his talk at the retreat, Bill delighted the audience with highlights of his scientific discoveries, including the “Bronx bomber,” a highly virulent bacteriophage, lytic for certain mycobacteria, which he isolated from soil in his backyard in the Bronx and which has been instrumental for genetic analysis of these organisms. His talk was insightful, entertaining and even had an audience participation component. It was in the true sense of an overused word, awesome.

The retreat concluded on Sunday morning with three interesting talks by departmental faculty members, Drs. Dave Bedwell, Hui Hu (a new recruit to the department) and Jan Novak. This was followed by the awards ceremony with closing remarks by department chair, Dr. Fran Lund, during which she announced that our department had received the UAB Dean’s Award for Excellence.