03/05/2012
Angela Wrigglesworth

What do you picture when you hear someone talk about a research lab? Perhaps a bit narrow-minded in my thought processes, but I visualize a bunch of doctors in lab coats hovering over microscopes recording their data in black-and-white composition notebooks. OK … maybe not quite like that, but I truly had somewhat of that scene going on in my mind. Until today …

We watched a video of a lab test at the NIH (National Institutes of Health — don’t worry, I didn’t know NIH either prior to this very beneficial Google-search moment). It was like something out of a sci-fi movie, of which I’ve only watched a couple, but I’m sure that the robots I saw manipulating DNA were straight out of some futuristic blockbuster. An enormous room was filled with robotic arms meticulously manipulating genetic material in hopes of discovering … well, I can only imagine the things that will be discovered!

Really, really cool processes are happening in research, and the costs of these types of technologies are nothing short of astronomical, I’m sure. Luckily, research projects are being funded by MDA. In fact Dr. Rodney Howell, Chairman of MDA’s Board of Directors, reported this morning that there are currently 292 research grants totaling $98 million in 14 different countries around the world. That’s big money and big research, and they’re producing big results.