Behind every piece of replacement glassware, custom-machined electrode, neatly chilled reagent in a microfuge tube, and well-acclimated rat, there is a team of people who put in the hours to make experiential science learning possible at Reed. They lurk in rooms crowded with cabinets, in remote corners, in basements, and even in sub-basements, working hard to keep all kinds of lab classes and research projects well-equipped and running smoothly.

They are the stockroom staff.

From Biology, Physics, Psychology, and Chemistry, The Grail brings you the inside scoop on the lesser known corners of Reed’s science departments.

On the second floor of the biology building, massive confocal microscopes and tanks of sleek, stripy zebrafish inhabit the developmental biology lab. This is the domain of biology professor Kara Cerveny and her student researchers, who work to tease apart one of biology’s most stunning and complex phenomena: the transformation of a single fertilized egg into a fully functioning, multicellular creature. “Developmental biology is the context in which we study all of biology,” Cerveny said. “Ecology, molecular biology, cell signaling, they’re all crucial in development. It’s a really wide umbrella; it encompasses all sorts of things.”