In her own words…

01 What advice would you offer to graduating seniors?
Don’t give up! Be creative! Smile!
02 Who is your hero? Who or what inspires you?
My father is my hero. My parents and family inspire me.
03 What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
“I got a D in physics and I invented a microscope!” This was from my thesis advisor, John White. Just when you think you have failed, remember that grades are not everything. Creativity and the will to succeed are.
04 What’s your favorite quote?
“You are lost the instant you know what the result will be.”
— Juan Gris
Also, “If you love what you do, you will never fail.”
05 What do you see happening or hope will happen in the next five years?
Get tenure, discover new things, write lots of papers, travel more, hope to inspire many more minority students to apply to graduate school.
06 What are you reading now?
Unaccustomed Earth By Jhumpa Lahiri (author of The Namesake)
07 What music do you listen to?
Sigur Ros, The Album Leaf, Wyclef Jean, Radiohead, Moby, The Mission Soundtrack
08 What occupies your free time?
My food blog, foodskop.
09 Are you a cat-person or a dog-person?
Cat (Bonzai and Charlie)
10 What’s your guilty pleasure?
Cookbooks, sushi and Culver’s?

The academic world likes to talk about the conflict between the “two cultures” — the sciences and the humanities — but for Ahna Skop, there’s no real division. There’s only learning. She was raised in a family that explored all areas of knowledge — her father was Michael Skop, an artist and part-time medical illustrator who also taught college-level anatomy. He was a pupil of the Croatian artist Mestrovic, who was a pupil of Rodin.

“My father was a sculptor, painter and welder, but he was also a medical illustrator,” she says. “If there was something he couldn’t do, he’d learn it. And my mother is an art teacher, but she also loved to dissect. She used to make jewelry from the designs she saw from cross-sections of fish she dissected. They are amazingly beautiful!”

As Ahna grew up, her parents encouraged her to pursue a fascination with science ad research. In her UW lab, she uses C. elegans nematode worms to study how early embryos develop right after fertilization.

But she never let go of other interests. At the UW, she helped organize an exhibit that graces the Genetics/Biotechnology addition, featuring art created from microscopic images. She also designs jewelry and has created numerous logos used internationally for meetings of scientists who study C. elegans nematode worms. When out of the lab, she focuses her attention on the kitchen. “Cooking is just another form of chemistry,” she says. She maintains a cooking blog — foodskop.wordpress.com — as well as one related to her jewelry: beadskop.com.

She owes her polymath fascination to her father, who passed away in June 2009 and whom she still describes as her hero and her inspiration. “Like Dad, I’m always looking to try something new,” she says. “Whenever I see something I haven’t done, I want to go out and try it.”