Besides research, Nancy Bonini teaches Biology 101. Stacey Brauner (formerly Pusin), C'98, took the introductory biology course in the first semester of her sophomore year. During the second semester, she signed on to work in Bonini's lab and continued working there for ten to twenty hours a week, eventually producing a biology honors thesis. When she graduated last spring, Brauner was awarded several prizes for academic achievement and research accomplishment. She is currently a first-year medical student at Penn's Medical School.

"Dr. Bonini's lab is a lot of fun," she says of the experience. "Very exciting but intense at the same time. Everybody's working really hard. I learned a lot about dedication and patience. Many of the experiments don't come out the way you expect. You really have to be diligent. I learned to form hypotheses, and more importantly, I learned how to deal with the data when it doesn't fit what you thought it was going to be. You have to be patient, but at the same time very creative. I think that's going to be really important in my medical career. Sometimes you might make a diagnosis, but when the results don't fit, you have to be able to step back and say, 'Hmmm, what's really going on here?'"