The Vanderbilt and Nashville communities continue to remember the late alumna Alyssa Lokits, who earned her Ph.D. in neuroscience in 2017. Lokits was killed on October 14 during an afternoon run in Nashville, sparking global awareness and advocacy for women’s safety.

After her death, Lokits’ family created the Instagram account @runforalyssa to honor her memory and organize runs around the world in solidarity. At the time of publication, the account has over 12,500 followers. Nearly 500 Nashvillians ran on October 21st in Lokit’s memory and people around the world have been running and running under the tag #runforalyssa for the past two months. Abby Lokits, Alyssa’s sister-in-law, said plans are underway to hold a women’s safety event at Vanderbilt in the spring.

“Alyssa’s loss leaves a hole not only for her closest family and friends, but for every community that had the opportunity to witness her brilliance and kindness,” the Lokits family wrote in a statement to The Hustler. “She will be greatly missed by all who had the privilege of knowing and working with her.”

Scientific work

When Lokits arrived at Vanderbilt in 2012 after earning her bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas, she rotated into the labs of Dr. Heidi Hamm – Professor of Pharmacology – and Dr. Jens Meiler – Distinguished Research Professor of Chemistry. Although graduate students typically select one lab for the topic of their dissertation, Lokits’ interests included both, according to Hamm.

According to Hamm, Lokits decided to combine the experimental and computational work in the two laboratories, using techniques he learned from Meiler and Dr. Peter Stadler, director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioinformatics at the University of Leipzig, to research the evolution of G proteins. Hamm, Meiler and colleagues revealed the activation mechanism for G proteins in 2011.

“Her main work was a collaboration with (Meiler’s) lab, my lab and Stadler’s lab, basically using state-of-the-art methods to assemble genomes (of G proteins),” Hamm said. “They were sitting there, but no one was looking. She has done the tedious work – and you have to reassemble the genome from tiny pieces – and (done) that work. She really learned all these methods.”

Hamm praised Lokits’ “very original” work for the interdisciplinary use of a variety of methods. Lokits was co-author five research manuscripts with Hamm, Meiler and Stadler from 2014–18, including publications in Biochemistry and the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

According to Hamm and Meiler, Lokits was valued for her character beyond her intellectual potential.

“She was always optimistic, always smiling and always willing to help anyone in the lab,” Hamm said. “People loved them.”

Meiler described her as “an absolute joy to work with” and someone who encourages others.

“She was one of those people who not only did great science, but was also the glue of the group,” Meiler said. “She kept the team together.”

Hamm also praised Lokits’ ambition and self-confidence.

“She knew what she wanted. That was the really good thing about her. She knew exactly where she was going to end up and she did everything she could to make it happen,” Hamm said. “She got exactly the job she wanted after defending her dissertation, and she did that job happily – and successfully – in Nashville.”

As evidence of this ambition, Meiler fondly recalled how Lokits and two colleagues “banded together” to request permission to apply for and attend a protein science conference in Barcelona, ​​even though they had just attended a similar conference.

“They insisted, ‘We absolutely have to go to this conference, there are so many outstanding speakers.’ I said, ‘No, you only want to go there because it’s in Barcelona,'” Meiler said. “Eventually they raised enough money to go and I helped them pay some of the costs and they made it happen. This is Alyssa: “I want to go and I will make it happen.”

On campus and beyond

Lokits worked as a SyBBURE Searle Graduate Fellow from 2016 to 2017 while simultaneously completing her Ph.D. completed. SyBBURE Director Jon Ehrman, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, praised Lokits’ work ethic, compassion and reliability.

“Working with Alyssa was rewarding because she was willing to put her full potential into everything she did,” said Ehrman. “Through her willingness to engage with people of all personalities and backgrounds, she showed that she cared about the students, her fellow students and everyone around her.”

Jad El Harake (BS ’18) came to SyBBURE as a student shortly before Lokits defended her dissertation, but said that even in the short time he knew her, he found her to embody the “spirit of SyBBURE.”

“She was so energetic and excited about science and also about silly, cool, random things. “In general, she was a total hitter – when she found something she was excited about, she threw herself into it,” El Harake said. “When I met her, she was learning Arabic, and I think she taught herself a number of other languages ​​in addition to her doctorate and other hobbies.”

Her family shared this sentiment, calling her “a lifelong learner” whose hobbies included “countless projects and entrepreneurial pursuits.”

“From home renovations to art to cooking to curriculum development, she was remarkable in every way and lived her life full of curiosity and adventure,” her statement to The Hustler said.

El Harake said Lokits’ energy left the strongest lasting impression on him.

“She was at the forefront of the (SyBBURE summer) house competition and beat everyone else along because she was so excited. I remember she was really insightful and a great listener, and she was just a ray of hope,” El Harake said. “It was hard to get upset about anything after talking to her.”

Former SyBBURE director Chrissy Marasco described Lokits as an integral part of the program community.

“She has dedicated her time and energy to training and mentoring the next generation of scientists. She introduced ideas that shaped the program as a whole. She stood up for students in the face of challenges, shared her own hurdles, and modeled what an effective community in and around research should look like,” Marasco said.

The current SyBBURE cohort took part in a walk in her honor on November 12 from Featheringill Hall to the Robinson Research Building, where Lokits conducted her research.