A day in the life of a
Research Assistant and Lab Manager
Meet Julianne.
On any given day, Julianne Idlet’s routine might look like this: take a pre-dawn t wenty five-mile bike ride, go to Harvard and feed the baby alligators, drive to the Cape to pick up some live trout, apply for grants for her nonprofit, coach the Harvard cycling club team, go home and collapse into bed.
“I amazed when I think about what I do now,” says Idlet, a research assistant and lab manager in the Organismic and Evolutionary Biology department. “The people I knew in my corporate life would be surprised.”
In 2003, Idlet walked away from that life – marketing for the software industry – to devote herself to Cycle Kids, a nonprofit she founded to get kids off the couch and onto bikes, while teaching them about healthy lifestyles and nutrition.
An avid cycler, Idlet had been coaching the Harvard University Cycling Association (HUCA) when she first hatched the idea of Cycle Kids. While researching nutrition plans for the 2003 HUCA race season, she ran across disturbing facts about childhood obesity. “I felt like I had to do something,” she says.
Idlet launched the pilot after-school program and had instant success. But with most of the program’s funding coming from her own pocket, Idlet needed to go back to work. That’s when she found Harvard Professor George Lauder’s lab.
Idlet has a broad role in the lab, located in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, where Lauder studies the biomechanics of aquatic locomotion in sharks and fishes. She oversees the care of the fish, as well as maintenance of tanks and equipment. She also maintains research data, manages business operations and assists students.
“I love this lab,” says Idlet. “The work is so different from what I used to do, but just as interesting. The people here are very supportive of my work with Cycle Kids.”
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