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00:08:16.940I then did my master's also at San Francisco State, but in collaboration with the California Academy of Sciences, again, using their scientific research collections for, you know, my master's thesis.
00:08:27.900I then went away to Harvard and I was using the collections at the Museum of Comparative Zoology on a daily basis.
00:08:34.580And so I've always had this connection with natural history museums and the cool science you can do by using them.
00:08:41.340So when I finally, you know, finished all my schooling and did a postdoc at Berkeley, I started a position at the Field Museum in Chicago.
00:08:50.660And and although most people think of natural history museums as places to sort of go and, you know, have educational and entertainment,
00:08:59.600what most people don't realize is that almost all natural history collections have scientists working behind the scenes using the vast collections to ask scientific questions.
00:09:08.920It was during this time, playing with bugs and answering questions behind the scenes at the Field Museum, that Corey met Lanika.
00:09:19.860So is that the first time that you met Lanika?
00:09:22.900That's absolutely true. So I met Lanika in 2011.
00:09:26.860She had done an internship with a colleague and was looking for another internship.
00:09:31.820And he knew that I was looking to hire someone.
00:09:34.860And so he introduced us and Lanika and I hit it off right away.
00:09:38.920What was it about her that made you hit it off?
00:09:43.380I think it was her openness, her honesty, and her tenacity.
00:09:48.080Like she really just had this fire in her that she always wanted to succeed.
00:09:55.500And I don't just mean be a successful scientist, but like even with an experiment, if she couldn't get it to work, it would really like kind of gnaw away at her.
00:10:03.540And she had to figure out not just how to make it work, but why it wasn't working.
00:10:07.160And that is something as a scientist, you can't teach that sort of drive or that creativity to someone.
00:10:16.100Yeah. In reading about her life, it seems like that kind of drive was a defining, I think that really defined her.
00:10:21.600You know, she was someone who faced a lot of limitations growing up and still managed to get to where she was at the end of her life.
00:10:28.900Absolutely. I mean, she was really a very thoughtful person.
00:10:33.160She was incredibly hardworking and she was such a loving person.
00:10:37.160And she, you know, anyone she came across in her life, she really wanted to connect with them.
00:10:43.640And I mean, I think one of the things I always respected the most about her is her, her openness and honesty about both the things she's experienced in the past.
00:10:54.020But, you know, you know, some people would have shame over things that they can't control.
00:11:01.540But the flip side of it was she also loved to share her successes.
00:11:05.700And so I think when you have someone who is willing to let you see when they're down, but also let you see when they're succeeding, they're an inspiration.
00:11:14.560Can you tell us a little bit more about her research?
00:11:16.900Yeah. So, you know, when she was at the Field Museum, she did lots of different projects because we have, you know, dozens of scientists working on pretty much every kind of organism you can imagine.
00:11:27.620So I know she did a bunch of work on early land plants and on fungi.
00:11:31.200And for me, she, of course, was sequencing DNA of ants.
00:11:34.520And in that project, essentially what we were trying to understand is the diversity, both
00:11:39.540genetic diversity, but also the host associated microbiome or the microbes living in ants
00:15:21.680Women being in community with one another is a powerful force.1.00
00:15:25.960Not only did their shared interest in science unite Cori and Lanika,0.61
00:15:30.100but it also created the conditions to bring more underrepresented women into the field.0.99
00:15:35.160And the more Lanika came into her own as a scientist,1.00
00:15:38.060the more focused she became on bringing others with her as a teacher and a mentor.0.98
00:15:43.200Lanika didn't have the picture-perfect A student story.
00:15:47.120Her openness around her background and her struggles allowed others to see science as something they could do, too.
00:15:54.220I just can't get over how interesting this body of work is.
00:15:58.240You don't even, like, I'm not a scientist, but you don't, you never think of, like, someone studying birds and ants and, you know, these very specific types of organisms.
00:16:06.860It's so interesting how, I mean, I guess I can imagine you finding another woman who is captivated by all of these things that you're captivated by and really just sort of clicking.
00:16:17.640Absolutely. And that's the thing is, I mean, what I loved about Lanika is not just that she had this general awe of the natural world and wanted to learn everything she could about it, but one of her other passions was she loved sharing it.
00:16:31.620So, you know, if I ever needed people to be trained in the lab, she was my go-to person.
00:16:36.620And not that other people didn't have the skills, it's that Lanika had joy in showing
00:16:40.580people how to do science and helping them succeed and overcome hurdles.
00:16:44.940And, you know, she was just spectacular.
00:16:48.040And, you know, there's not a lot of people like her in the sense that, you know, she
00:16:52.720could pursue a scientific question, but she could also talk about it to the public and
00:16:56.980she could share her enthusiasm and get other people to to essentially want to do the same
00:17:02.420things she's doing. Was she did she have a role like a position as a role model for other students0.96
00:17:09.120other students from marginalized backgrounds? Absolutely and that was one thing she was very
00:17:12.900vocal about and I absolutely loved about her is that she wanted to make sure that we had
00:17:17.260opportunities to engage other underrepresented you know students in research and so she was
00:17:24.060instrumental in making sure that we always kept that as on the forefronts of our minds as we were
00:17:28.780thinking about, you know, what programming we were creating or which positions we were hiring.
00:17:34.180You know, she was heavily involved in the Field Museum's Women in Science program.0.62
00:17:39.560You know, she often was the sort of point person that was training the interns we brought in for
00:17:45.140the summer. And, you know, she was a role model to many people across the museum.
00:17:49.400um what is your maybe you don't have one particular one but if you had to think of
00:17:54.640one of your favorite memories of her or the most vivid memory of her does anything come to mind
00:17:59.120I think of course I have many um I think that the thing I remember most about Lanika is that
00:18:08.740even after she had you know not worked for me for a while she had gone on and done all these0.81
00:18:14.000you know amazing things gotten these two master's degrees she would always pop in my office
00:18:18.860just come by to talk to me, either to share some success she had, or if she was struggling with
00:18:24.300something, she would often want to come and like bounce it off of me just to sort of, you know,
00:18:29.020have another perspective. And most of the time she didn't need advice. It was like she needed
00:18:33.500a sounding board. She would say it out loud and she would reach a conclusion that she probably
00:18:38.060already knew herself, but she felt like having someone else hear it, you know, gave her the
00:18:43.780courage to come to the right decision. And I liked watching her go through that, you know,
00:18:50.020essentially this vocal thought experiment just right in my office. And it was kind of,
00:18:56.280you know, every time she came in, I would kind of get a small smile because I knew I was going to
00:19:01.120get to sort of see her, you know, think through a problem and reach a conclusion and that she
00:19:06.560didn't need me. It was just, she needed a space to do it. And I just really loved that about her.
00:19:12.620Lanika's friends and family raised almost $85,000 on GoFundMe for funeral costs and to establish a scholarship fund to help support young Black women with internship opportunities at science and technology institutions in Chicago.
00:19:25.640Because Lanika was so passionate about both science, but also in including marginalized communities in science, it only seemed absolutely the right decision to do is to sort of create a scholarship.
00:19:37.340And, you know, we're able to do that because we had a very successful GoFundMe campaign and the, you know, museums and the institutions she's been involved with are all on board.
00:19:49.180And so we're going to make sure that the next generation not only knows about Lanika, but they actually continue to, you know, benefit from her impact in the world.
00:23:14.620In this time of COVID, it's been kind of heartbreaking to see the amount of people who have lost their lives to COVID.
00:23:22.120And yet we have not had any kind of official, you know, large scale memorial for these people.
00:23:30.420And sometimes it can sort of feel like these people weren't people.
00:23:35.160They were sort of, you know, numbers or, you know, data points.
00:23:38.780How can we get to a place where we remember that these were people, they were friends, colleagues, daughters, sisters, loved ones, and not just, you know, another number on the news?
00:23:51.220I, you know, I wish I knew the answer to that.
00:23:53.840I mean, I remember early on in the pandemic, you know, I didn't say it out loud to anyone,
00:24:00.700but to myself, I had said, I really hope that I get through this, not knowing anyone who's
00:24:09.120And that was like this weird internal wish I had for myself.
00:24:12.940and then when when lanika passed away i was absolutely devastated for days i mean i couldn't
00:24:21.820stop crying and even now thinking about it it's tremendously sad and to think that we have
00:24:30.580hundreds of thousands of people who are dying and we just sort of chalk it up to like well at least
00:24:36.680the infection rate's low and the death rate's low but it if it's even one it's too many i mean
00:24:42.140these are people and they're, they're important and they have contributions to give to the world.
00:24:47.620And so I just hope that we can control this soon and that we don't have to lose any more
00:24:54.560beautiful, inspiring people like Lanika. Yeah. I mean, that was one of the reasons I was so
00:25:01.100moved by her story because I thought, you know, and obviously one life is too many to lose, but
00:25:08.080when you look at people and you think all the lives this person could have continued to touch,
00:25:13.980all of the sort of, you know, generations of people who are missing out on knowing this person,
00:25:20.440getting mentorship from this person, being inspired by this person, and really taking a
00:25:25.720bird's eye look at that scale of loss that we can't even calculate. Like, if you can't even
00:25:31.520really fathom it, to say how many people are going to, you know, could have benefited from
00:25:36.920knowing her or working with her, learning from her, seeing her. It's just sort of, we'll never
00:25:42.600know the loss. That's absolutely true. And I think that's why we were all so moved to make sure that
00:25:49.860there's going to be opportunities for other people to still have some of those experiences, at least
00:25:55.900to have access to learning what science is and getting hands-on experience through these
00:26:01.720internships that we're creating, because her legacy is just so impactful. And we want to
00:26:07.180make sure that even though she can't be there to inspire them, they'll still know about what an
00:26:12.100amazing woman she was. I'm so grateful that you all are doing this work.
00:26:18.160Alenika touched so many people's lives that it's such a loss to have her not here anymore.
00:26:24.500i'm so sorry it's it's it's you know i think that's another thing that really moved me about
00:26:34.920her story is i was reading an article that said that she always wanted to have this classroom of
00:26:40.240her own and that she was finally on track to to make that goal a reality and then this happens
00:26:47.300and it's just so yeah yeah yeah yeah it's somebody who had so many hurdles and none of them stopped
00:26:58.820her and that is remarkable and every thing she wanted to come true in her life despite the fact
00:27:06.600that when she first started dreaming of them that was such a far like reach she reached every one
00:27:13.200of them. And that, to me, just shows the kind of amazing person she was. And she got there
00:27:17.440not by, like, stepping on others or, you know, throwing other people under the bus. She did it by
00:27:23.140being a loving, caring, compassionate, dedicated person. Through this scholarship,
00:27:29.760Lanika's colleagues are using the tragedy of her death to inspire the next generation of girls
00:27:34.560to fall in love with science, just like Lanika did. What do you hope the scholarship achieves,
00:27:41.640Like when the scholarship is up and running, what kind of impact do you hope that it has in her name?
00:27:49.840I know that the young women who will receive this scholarship will benefit immensely, mostly because they'll have an opportunity to continue in her footsteps, right?
00:28:05.100They'll essentially be the first in their family to do research or to learn how to educate and mentor others.
00:28:13.240And the most important thing, I think, for us is that we want to make sure that the work Lanika was doing continues, and it continues to impact the next generation of scientists.
00:28:31.340Already, I think so many people are moved by her story and her legacy and the work that you and your colleagues and her family are doing to keep that alive.
00:28:39.720So I'm so grateful that you all are doing that work.
00:28:43.640lanika isn't really gone not really she'll live on in classrooms wherever little black girls are
00:29:01.020getting excited about science or bugs or any other subject that she's realizing could be hers to
00:29:06.820master people like lanika mattered we won't forget about them or the way they shaped our lives