Hidden Worlds: How one Student pursues Discovery beneath the Surface

Ever since she received a microscope as a child, Natalie Rawlings has been fascinated by the hidden mechanisms that shape human health and disease. That curiosity led her to the University of Arizona’s MCB program, which is honoring her as the Spring 2026 Outstanding Senior. 

Natalie’s journey – in her own words: “My journey started out with an interest in the way things worked. I was a really curious kid. My parents bought me a microscope when I was about 10 years old, and I was obsessed with it. You could look into the microscope and there's a hidden world out there! I was also given a collection of textbooks with incredibly detailed anatomy drawings. They got me really interested in medicine from an anatomical standpoint.

I was born in New York, grew up all over the Midwest and came to Arizona in 2010. I went to Basis Phoenix for grades 5-12, which was supportive of STEM and academically rigorous.

My biology teacher in high school was phenomenal; it was my favorite subject. Due to my longstanding interest in medicine, I became a medical assistant for an orthopedic surgery clinic. It was there that I witnessed many interesting pathologies and became deeply curious about the molecular mechanisms driving disease. The clinic got me interested in going beyond simply diagnosing and treating patients to actually developing an understanding of what’s going on beneath surface. 

At the U of A, I chose MCB because it was well-aligned with my career interests, and the name also sounded really cool. A large emphasis within the MCB major is research. I had never been exposed to real wet lab research before, so I decided to just jump in and try it. This led me to join the lab of Dr. Andrew Capaldi; I remember in our first meeting I felt completely sold on the cell signaling pathway he was studying. What drew me to the lab the most was the realization that even the slightest changes in the delicate balance of cellular processes can create massive perturbations, which may ultimately lead to significant changes in the human body overall, thus leading to disease. Since that initial meeting, I have continued to be enthralled by cell signaling and more recently, cellular metabolism. 

It has been a wild ride in the Capaldi Lab. When I first joined, I worked on a microscopy project, watching changes happen in cells in real-time. After spending about a year on that project, I decided to switch gears and pick up a new technique called the “Western blot,” which is another form of studying protein activity. The protein we study in the lab is called the Target of Rapamycin Complex 1 (TORC1), which exists in all of our cells, from yeast, which we study in the lab, to humans, and is essentially our metabolic supercomputer. The ultimate value of studying TORC1 and related proteins is that they give us fundamental answers about how cells work, along with being potential drug targets for the treatment of fungal infections, cancer, neurodegeneration, aging and many other human ailments. 

The Capaldi Lab is a basic science lab, which means that we study the fundamentals of all biological science, which is a very broad and massive undertaking. What is special about basic science is that discoveries made in the field have extremely broad implications, particularly to human disease. Many discoveries in basic science represent significant paradigm shifts in how we see science in general, and, after all, basic science is behind every single important discovery in science, from DNA structure to CAR-T cell immunotherapies. Sometimes it is difficult to see how a complicated experiment with so many mutant strains of yeast and seemingly random environmental/stress conditions will ever impact anyone, but I have always felt like my work was purposeful. Beyond its eventual implications for human health and disease, I learned to enjoy the process of actually doing science, relentlessly troubleshooting, and creatively designing experiments. In the future, I am looking forward to taking all of the lessons I’ve learned in basic science to more of a translational approach; for example, studying mechanisms of cellular metabolism in cancer and how we can target them to develop new treatments. 

Another crucial moment in my journey has been founding the Undergraduate Journal Club (UJC). In this club, we work to make science more accessible and challenge our members with dissecting the latest and greatest scientific publications. In the upcoming year, we will be spicing things up a bit with a new plan to invite faculty to talk about their research while simultaneously discussing their research publications beforehand. UJC has been my way of giving back to the scientific community. I have found so much joy and value and research, and this is a way that I’ve found I can bring the wonderful world of science to others. 

With graduation on the imminent horizon, I will be pursuing my dream of becoming a physician-scientist at Harvard Medical School. I am really excited to build a career at the intersection of science and medicine, where I hope to use my knowledge to develop more treatment options for patients who desperately need them.”

Natalie Rawlings was also featured by the College of Science.

Other recent awards
January 2026: Legacy and leadership: One Wildcat's journey from mini grants to medical school
November 2025: U of A Goldwater Scholar Natalie Rawlings Selected as 2025-26 Astronaut Scholar
May 2025: 2025-2026 Goldwater Scholar: Natalie Rawlings