Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology

As a PhD student in mechanical engineering, Umnia Doha spent hours imaging 3D tissue scaffolds on the confocal microscopes in the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology’s Core Facilities. Since graduating, she now finds herself back in the Core, but instead as a research scientist.

Whether training people to use the Core’s numerous microscopes, helping to design challenging imaging experiments, or troubleshooting problems, Doha enjoys supporting the biological imaging needs of researchers across the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus.

“I think helping fellow researchers is the biggest plus of the job,” said Doha, who started the position after obtaining her doctoral degree from Illinois in 2023. “When I meet a grad student who is under huge pressure with a deadline and struggling to take the data, I can just go in and press a switch and it works. Then the gratitude I see on their face makes my day.”

While Doha now has the magic touch with microscopes, it was not always as intuitive to her. During graduate school, she mainly used two different confocal microscopes which is only a small subset of the instrumentation available. But Doha credits the Core Facilities team, led by Director Glenn Fried, for training her and creating a supportive atmosphere for constant learning.

“I feel like I learned quite a lot in the past two years. Learning these different techniques which I didn’t use in my previous research is amazing because the growth is quite deep,” Doha said. “The job environment is fantastic. I knew most of my coworkers as my instructors before, and now I'm working alongside them, training other people on using different microscopes.”

Looking back, Doha wouldn’t have expected to land in her current job. In fact, she hadn’t taken a biology class since high school or really used a confocal microscope before graduate school. 

But all the pieces were there when Doha was growing up Bangladesh; in middle school, physics, chemistry, and biology were always her favorite subjects. This general excitement for science, paired with inspiration from her family, led her to pursue mechanical engineering in college. 

Doha said, “My family is full of engineers, even my extended family. My brother, my dad, and I do mechanical engineering, and my mom is a civil engineer.” After sitting for the country-wide admissions exam during high school, Doha was accepted to Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, the same university her parents attended. “That was a huge milestone for me because this engineering school is among the best in the country.”

During her freshman year, Doha’s interest in cellular biomechanics was sparked when she learned of Illinois Professor Taher Saif’s (M-CELS/RBTE) research on cancer mechanobiology and neuron and muscle-cell-driven biobots. “I thought it was a very niche and cool paradigm where mechanical engineering meets biology,” Doha said.

Doha’s excitement for the research field only grew as she continued her undergraduate degree. Upon graduation, she made the big decision to move across the world to Central Illinois to start a PhD program in mechanical engineering and work in Saif’s research lab. 

“I was pretty scared at the beginning because before that I never even left home,” she said. “I was very much appreciative of Bangladeshi student community that was here at that time. It was quite small, but they were like a close-knit family." 

Though it was a big transition, over time Doha has found her footing through building community, both within and outside of her lab. Together with her friends, she takes advantage of the many things Champaign-Urbana has to offer, whether it's beating escape rooms or checking out local restaurants like Seven Saints and Mia Za’s. The year also wouldn’t be complete without a summer visit to Jarling’s for ice cream or apple picking at Curtis Orchard in the fall.

Now, almost eight years after arriving in Illinois, Doha looks forward to continuing to learn every day. She said, “I'm still learning—but not in a negative way. I welcome the challenge to keep up with different techniques because the field of microscopy is very rapidly advancing.”

And her advice for anyone considering a big change, “If you're trying to make a huge life decision or transition, I think you need to be excited about it.”