Science is awesome!

Working in the Public Health Laboratory

[Transcript of video]

My name is Misty Lang, and I’m the lead microbiologist for the virology laboratory at the Washington State Public Health Labs.

We test a variety of specimens for either rabies, influenza, herpes, measles, mumps, rubella, West Nile, St. Louis encephalitis. We get a variety of specimens in for rabies testing. We test animals, so if human has been exposed to that animal, then we’re going check to see if the animal is rabid to know if we need to treat the patient. We test blood specimens for measles, mumps, rubella, if we go into an outbreak situation, we can ramp up or we can test high volumes of specimens.

One thing that I really like is that it’s very different in here day to day, you don’t know if it’s going be rabies or measles or flu, so there’s a variety of specimens that come in.

[text on screen] Favorite part of your job?

Definitely the team that I work with. We work really well together, and the epi-lab collaboration for all of the work that we do, so having that variety of testing always makes it nice to not have, you know, of “every day is the same thing.” So I like the variety, but it’s a great team to be working with, and I feel like what I do matters. Especially for public health and managing outbreaks and things like that.

[text on screen] Your one food on a desert island …

I’m definitely feeling like beef jerky.

[text on screen] Chose a superpower…

I think I would like the ability to fly. I’m kind of afraid of heights so I feel like that would help me out a bit

[off-camera voice] You could save yourself.

I could save myself, I could fly with the bats.

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