Madeleine Sutherland Email & Phone Number

My favorite kind of result is the unexpected.To me, being a scientist means remaining open to learning something new from my systems. Thinking on my feet has led to delightful insights in my scientific career, including:1. As a solid-state NMR spectroscopist at MIT, I showed that contrary to expectation, HIV's gp41 fusion protein draws MORE water to the membrane as it carries out fusion, and cholesterol dampens gp41's effects. 2. As an MIT-trained computational chemistry hobbyist, I generated solvated geometry-optimized conformers for O'Hagan and Kell's small-diverse chemical library (https://doi.org/10.1002/biot.201700503), and my friends discovered they could get screening hits on larger molecules with my library - just by using a flexible N(conformers) cutoff!3. At Smith College, I stumbled upon a novel target for the E. coli small regulatory RNA OmrA, and discovered that OmrA's impact on target proteins can't be explained by expression levels alone.I am also a leader who succeeds by recognizing the humanity and celebrating the talents of all whom I'm privileged to work with:Project Management: As President of the MIT Graduate Student Council 2020-21, leading an organization of >100 volunteers + 4 staff successfully through the pandemic crises and several new projects. For example: -> I led the creation of a new historian position and the hiring process -> I coordinated a survey on COVID-19's impact on research, analyzed the 590 responses and with a team of writers, generated a 50-page report -> I helped negotiate 3 researcher funding deals, helping 100s of SM/PhD students advance their research in this trying time -> I supported the work of our 12 committees, helping members maximize the impact of their workNegotiation: I advocated for 7,000 grad students to their administration, integrating diverse forms of input into insight -> I synthesized this knowledge and put it to work on 4 high-impact MIT committees/boardsPublic speaking: I have delivered 2 addresses to audiences in the 1000s. Aside from working on my Chemistry PhD, which will be conferred May 2022, I like to ride my bike around Boston, attend street festivals, do at-home yoga, and contribute cool new functions to Mathematica.