Alumni Spotlight – Dominique Smith

Headshot of Dom SmithName: Dominique Smith

Job Title and Current Employer: Biophysics PhD Student at UW – Madison

Home Town: Oak Creek, WI

Current Location: Madison, WI

Short Description of your time in the Bacteriology MS Program:

My 2022-24 Bacteriology M.S. was a deep dive into molecular genetics and microbial physiology in Dr. Briana Burton’s lab. Conducting an independent research project gave me the technical rigor and interdisciplinary mindset that now drive my Ph.D. work in mechanobiology.

MS Degree Received in: 2024

Describe your career path from graduate school to your current position.

I earned a B.S. in Microbiology from UW–La Crosse and the M.S. in Bacteriology from UW–Madison, where I received the department’s Master’s Student High Achievement Award under the guidance of Dr. Briana Burton. The rigorous training during my master’s program greatly expanded my scientific skill set. Now, as a Ph.D. candidate in Biophysics in Dr. Joshua Brockman’s Lab at UW–Madison, I integrate microbiology, molecular genetics, synthetic biology, and biophysics to develop cutting-edge technologies. My doctoral research centers on the creation of synthetic mechanoreceptors—modular, force-sensing receptors that couple precise extracellular-matrix binding to intracellular signaling—with the aim of creating programmable therapeutic tools. I am passionate about transforming novel ideas into tangible advances and expect the expertise I gain during my Ph.D. to translate directly into an industry career focused on innovation and discovery.

What challenges did you face in your graduate degree, or in launching your career?

My foundational training is in prokaryotic biology, so there was a learning curve when I initially started tackling mammalian-cell questions through the lens of biophysical techniques during my PhD. I believe that starting from cloning in E. coli and being capable of ending with phenotypic readouts in various mammalian cell lines has made me a more complete scientist. Additionally, mechanobiology is a highly interdisciplinary field that has required me to sharpen my skills in applying complex chemistries and quantitative imaging.

What do you like best and what do you find challenging about your current job?

What I like best is working at the cutting edge of a classic idea: mechanobiology as a field has been around for decades, but the ability to measure and manipulate forces at the single-piconewton level is genuinely new—and that’s exactly the scale my projects probe. Because the parameter space is still wide-open, many well-designed experiments can unveil a fresh principle. The flip side is that this novelty demands extra-rigorous controls and multiple orthogonal validations before a result is publication ready.

What is the most important lesson you have learned throughout your career?

Persist with curiosity—and keep sharpening questions. Every apparent failure is simply data that didn’t fit the original model. Pause, extract the one solid fact the experiment did reveal, and let that fact pose a better question. Over time this habit turns frustration into forward momentum and keeps research playful even during the grind.

What are some skills that have served you well through your career?

Two skills that I developed during the master’s program have served me well in my PhD. Firstly, coding and data analysis: bioinformatic courses and peer mentoring took me from basic Python to now building image-analysis pipelines that yield publishable figures. Secondly, scientific communication: the experience of publishing my MS paper made it clear that polished language matters as much as pristine datasets.