Dr. Selena Gell: From Scientific Research to Teaching
During her time at Choate, Dr. Gell has taught Honors Biology and Molecular and Cell Biology. Dr. Gell has an extremely strong research background with five years of work as a PhD student and five more as a postdoctoral researcher. This knowledge and experience allows her to teach a variety of classes and successfully train Choate students in true scientific research while leading the biology section of Choate’s Scientific Research Program.
Dr. Gell was captivated by the scientific world from a young age. As a child, Dr. Gell was surrounded by family friends who were scientists and lead lives full of interesting people, ceaseless learning, and careers that improved the world through scientific advancement. On top of this, Dr. Gell possessed an innate interest in the natural world, often catching frogs and insects while spending most of her time outdoors. By the time she entered high school, she knew she wanted to become a scientist and eagerly took all of the science classes that were available to her. Beyond taking the normal sciences in high school, Dr. Gell also participated in an internship at an animal forensic laboratory.
For college, Dr. Gell attended Brandeis University where she considered majoring in either chemistry or biology. Eventually, Dr. Gell’s interest in the work of some of her biology professors led her to choose biology and work in the Fulton Lab at Brandeis. While working in the lab, Dr. Gell studied a form of programmed cell death known as apoptosis, which has applications in developmental processes and cancer. This initial exposure to scientific research strengthened Dr. Gell’s goal to pursue a PhD in science. However, Dr. Gell knew that she wanted to take a break from her traditional education for a couple of years in order to participate in something new that benefited the world.
After graduation, Dr. Gell worked with Teach for America for two years while teaching chemistry, biology, and physical science at a low-income high school in Phoenix, Arizona. Although this wasn’t the experience that initially revealed a passion for teaching within Dr. Gell, it most definitely helped shape the idea of incorporating more teaching in her future career. To combine her interests in both teaching and research, Dr. Gell decided to pursue a PhD at Brown with the goal of working at a small liberal arts college with a lab of her own in the future. For her PhD in molecular and cell biology, Dr. Gell studied selfish genetic elements using fruit flies in the Rob Reenan lab.
Once finished with her formal education, Dr. Gell became a post-doctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical school. During her time at Harvard, Dr. Gell studied protein complexes involved in gene regulation, using the same yeast found in beer and bread. After five years of dedicated research work at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Gell stumbled across a job opportunity at Choate. Dr. Gell felt that the career opportunity offered by Choate would allow her to return to the teaching aspect she loved about science.
One life lesson that Dr. Gell learned from her experience as a scientific researcher is persistence: “In science, most of the things you do fail. You try to experiment, it doesn’t work the first five times you do it, it doesn’t work the first ten times you do it. Every time you do it slightly differently, changing a variable until suddenly, one day, you actually get a result.” She also notes the importance of time management as a key component to a successful life and career, “being in science taught me a lot about balance in my life and having to make time for things that are important to me outside of work. Being a researcher is the kind of job that can expand to fill all available time and I had to learn how to set aside time for me so that I came back to my work exited, refreshed, and ready to take on challenges.”
One of the things Dr. Gell set aside time for apart from her work life, was competitive rugby. In fact, Dr. Gell played competitive rugby for twelve years after starting in college at Brandeis. She also played for The Lady Blues while living in Arizona and Providence women’s rugby while at Brown, before retiring in 2012. Ultimately, competitive rugby provided Dr. Gell with an extremely useful outlet to refresh her mind from the demanding workload of college and laboratory research.
With such an impressive background in both the academic and the athletic world, Dr. Gell serves as a perfect example of why being a Choate student is such an invaluable opportunity and experience. Faculty members like Dr. Gell allows us to not only receive an amazing education, but also learn important life lessons from their experiences. Together, this knowledge and wisdom are truly the reasons why so many Choate alumni have regarded their time here as priceless.