Laura Borecki Zgleszewski describes her work in the fisheries and microbiology groups at Stroud Water Research Center.
Transcript
My name is Laura Borecki. I’m a research technician and I manage the fisheries lab and the microbiology lab.
For the fisheries lab, we’re looking at the communities of fish and how they change, before and after a section of river has been restored. For the microbiology side, the project that we’re working on right now is, we’re looking at E. coli in the streams and where that E. coli might come from. If your drinking water is downstream of a cow farm or a wastewater treatment plant, we’re interested in what effect that has.
The thing I like best about being a scientist is getting to work with my hands with equipment. I’m either in the lab pipetting samples or I’m out netting fish. It’s that kind of active work that’s really interesting to me.
I have a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree. Education is really important when you want to get into the field of science. Not just the degree – it’s nice to have the piece of paper – but if you can get hands-on experience doing an internship or something like that, that helps a lot and it will take you really far.
