Originally published February 10, 2013
Rebekah James remembers being a little put off by the sight of workers in what looked like spacesuits when she first visited the U.S. Army Research Institute of Infectious Diseases as an Urbana High School senior.
Fast forward a few years and James, now a senior studying biology at McDaniel College in Westminster, is accustomed to the sight.
While she is not yet qualified to work in a biohazard containment lab, James could be on her way. At 22, she is working 20 hours a week this semester as an intern with a team that studies the Ebola virus, which causes hemorrhagic fever and is fatal in up to 90 percent of cases.
"I deal hands-on with Ebola, but it's irradiated so I can't get infected at the level that I'm at," James said.
With the help of her adviser, James started interning at USAMRIID at Fort Detrick in high school because, she said, "I wanted to do something different."
The research institute at Fort Detrick has gained notoriety as the setting of the 1995 movie "Outbreak" and the workplace of Amerithrax suspect Bruce Ivins, a scientist who committed suicide in 2008.
"It's fun to be working at a place that's pretty infamous, either for good or bad," James said.
She liked the work so much that she continued the summer before college and each subsequent year with the exception of the summer before her sophomore year.
"I'm very interested in how things work in our body, especially immunology," James said. "I really like talking about the molecules and how they interact and how we get sick and how our body fights it off."
Dr. John Dye, principal investigator and immunologist in USAMRIID's virology division, directs the lab where James works. She receives college credit for her work there, but she has gone "above and beyond the normal expectation of a college student," Dye wrote in an email.
"Ms. James is a hard working, enthusiastic employee with a wonderful positive attitude," Dye wrote.
James' most recent work has included investigating how host proteins within a cell may allow someone to become infected with Ebola. She has also worked with antibodies as part of a team trying to develop a treatment for those infected with Ebola.
"If we better understand the human proteins that allow susceptibility to Ebola virus infection, we can attempt to generate countermeasures using that information," Dye wrote.
James, who enjoys reading and hiking, has learned much about lab work in her time at USAMRIID, including the use of several different techniques to develop treatment options. She hopes to eventually earn a master's degree in immunology or virology, she said.
She takes a lot of pride in her lab group.
"We're making vaccines and helping people, and I really like that," she said. http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?StoryID=146729#.URdyLaXpe5I
