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Austin is the first researcher in his family. His father is an electrician, and his mother works in finance.

Austin may have chosen a different career path than his parents, but they still gave him the tools to be successful. He was very inspired by his mother’s relentless work ethic and her very “type A” way of crucially analyzing everything she does. His father instilled a “think outside of the box” mentality, and like an electrician, Austin enjoys working with his hands in the lab.

Then there was his grandma. She wholeheartedly believed in Austin’s potential, and during his first two years of training, she made sure he knew it with her frequent words of encouragement.

“She may not have known what I was doing in research, but she never stopped showing interest,” Austin says.

Before becoming a graduate student, Austin worked as a personal trainer at a gym. He loved working closely with people and helping them feel more comfortable in their bodies. “My only issue with it was that my clients had to pay for it,” he says.

One might think there’s little correlation between personal training, a highly social job, and research, which involves a lot of data analysis and lab work. But there’s a lot of similarity, Austin says.

From being a personal trainer, he developed patience, which is now a central skill that pushes him to work through discoveries taking a lot of time and attention to detail.

He also still gets to teach, only this time with undergraduate students and PhD candidates who are following his lead.

Austin enjoys networking opportunities and research experience through the UK College of Medicine’s Alliance Research Initiative.

He is part of the Myocardial Recovery Alliance (MYRA), an interdisciplinary team working to better understand heart failure and develop new therapies. Austin joins the monthly meeting and talks with at least one physician every week.

Those connections are crucial in developing skills for translational research.

One of the projects Austin took on was studying patients with cardiac amyloidosis, a form of heart failure. Confirming the diagnosis can sometimes require a biopsy, which can be invasive and sometimes dangerous, so he worked with Dr. Campbell’s lab – including principal investigators Gaurang Vaidya, MD, and Andrew Kolodziej, MD – to find a diagnostic measure.

“We know amyloid comes in a protein that has four subunits to it. When you have cardiac amyloidosis, the protein breaks down into monomers then forms these fibrils in the heart,” Austin says. “So we’re trying to determine if there is a way to test the relative amount of monomers as a potential non-invasive way to diagnose patients.”

After expanding the number of patients in the trial from six to 40, Austin and team discovered the monomers may not be indicators of cardiac amyloidosis.

Sometimes, research involves finding out what doesn’t work just as much as it is finding out what does work.

But the work still merits publication.

“It’s still a good thing to try and publish negative results,” Austin says. “That way it can build the foundation for something moving forward.”

Rarely is Austin working on one project at a time, especially training in a well-funded lab like Dr. Campbell’s.

Austin is a co-author on a publication this year. The manuscript was written on GelBox, an open-source software developed within the lab that advances data analysis through gels and immunoblots. The motivation for the publication was to describe his team’s approach and, hopefully, help other researchers searching for a better solution to analyzing data.

This year, Austin was excited to receive an F31 fellowship from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Through the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), Austin will study a common form of heart failure, dilated cardiomyopathy, where the heart cannot pump effectively. This triggers compensatory dilation to maintain circulatory demands. “This project tests the hypothesis that the contractile dysfunction results from the myosin motors being shifted towards a super-relaxed state where they cannot contribute to force-generation,” according to the NIH reporter database.

Austin says he was “ecstatic” when he received the email notifying him of the award. Becoming an NIH-funded researcher is a big deal for a graduate student.

While he has always felt like part of Dr. Campbell’s lab, this accomplishment made everything feel more real.

Austin was able to present another project at a national conference in Philadelphia, Pa.

With this project, he examined different regulators of “passive stiffness” in the heart. He and his team investigated three main components, including titin, in almost 200 patients, comparing the biochemical data generated in the lab with the data generated from echocardiograms done in the clinic.

“This paper is one of the first that is bridging the gap of bedside (echocardiograms) and bench work (our biochemical data),” Austin says. “Allowing us to further ask our clinicians; how can we help each other? Where do our paths cross?”

All trainees in Dr. Campbell’s lab have projects they are driving, but together, they share their skills to lift everyone. “Someone’s weakness is another person’s strength,” Austin says.

Austin connects with Dr. Campbell and his lab manager every Tuesday. This is a regular chance to ensure data is uploaded and organized and that his supervisor recognizes the hard work done by the lab.

Austin is also on rotation with his other lab mates to give a “deep dive” into the data he is generating, making it understandable to someone who may not know how to use it.

“It is a passive way to feel valued,” Austin says. “You could feel replaceable if it wasn’t that way. I’ve never felt replaceable in this lab. I have always felt valued.”

Austin says the lab balances seriousness and playfulness. Trainees and faculty send gifs to each other. They poke at each other. They joke around.

“Science is serious, and we have serious moments, but we definitely are preserving the lab dynamic as being welcoming and comfortable,” Austin says.

On occasion, Curious George joins the lab. George is a stuffed monkey belonging to former lab manager Mindy Thompson’s daughter. When she goes to work, her daughter wants George to keep her company, and he does so throughout the lab.

George reminds the lab that great things come from the unrelenting pursuit of discovery – and that a little fun should be mixed in with all the hard work.

Austin is thankful to be part of a team helping him grow as a researcher so he can honor those he loves most, his family.

In the fall, when Austin and his family were sorting through mementos after his grandmother passed away, he found a card she had saved for when he finishes his PhD next year.

Once again, his grandma showed that her support of her grandson would not waver.

“She was always prepared,” Austin says. “If I were to credit anyone during my dissertation, it’ll definitely be her. She believed in me from day one, even when I didn’t believe in myself.”

Austin has never been one to post about the big research moments on his social media accounts. Instead, his mindset is what he can do to have his parents think proudly, “that’s my son.” And for his grandma, it’s thinking what she would be proud of.

For those entering a research training program at UK, he offers some sound advice: maintain a clear, guiding light for why you do what you do.

“Every year, integrated biomedical science students come into the gateway of our PhD program and ask, ‘How did you know what you wanted to do?’” Austin says. “And I always say, if you went back home and got to tell your family your work, would you be proud to tell them?”

Austin’s answer is always yes.