Katie McClure ’21 Volunteers in the Fight Against COVID-19

After wrapping up remote learning last spring, Fifth Former Katie McClure turned her attention to helping with the COVID-19 pandemic. McClure and her brother volunteered to help their father at his biomedical manufacturing company, PACON. They would drive from their home in Mammoth Lakes almost six hours west to Livermore, Calif. to help with all aspects of the business and be part of a process that would supply materials for diagnostic PCR tests used to detect the presence of COVID-19 antigens.

“Our jobs depended on what they needed that day -- running a machine, helping clean off the metal after it came out of the machine or packaged and put everything in a box to be ready to be shipped off,” McClure said.

Interested in the field of biomedical engineering, McClure has done summer programs studying genetics and DNA, and had experience using PCR tests in her own research.

“It was interesting to see this real life connection between something I learned in a summer program and relate it to COVID,” she says. “Having that opportunity to help and be a part of getting COVID tests out there was something that I was happy to have the chance to do.”

This fall back at Lawrenceville, McClure took part in molecular genetics research for the Stanford University School of Medicine’s Seung Kim Laboratory.

“It’s inspiring to know that I can help and have an influence,” McClure says. “If I can do it now while I’m in high school and a teenager, it makes me think about all I can do after this.”

For additional information, please contact Lisa M. Gillard Hanson, director of Public Relations, at lgillard@lawrenceville.org.