By day, Annika Weber studies serum amyloid A proteins in a UNMC immunology lab. By night, she sews costumes for Opera Omaha.
It’s a satisfying and rewarding balance, she said, noting that research is “never-ending,” but with costumes “it all falls in place by the start of the performance.”
For her consistent, outstanding performance and creativity at UNMC, Weber, a researcher in UNMC’s department of pathology and microbiology, has received the Chancellor’s Gold ‘U’ Award for November.
“Annika has done much more than dedicate herself to faithfully executing her role as a UNMC researcher,” her nominator said. “She has been instrumental in helping other scientists, technicians and graduate students become more productive by contributing to their research, providing technical advice, designing experiments, and performing the bench work for many experiments.”
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Five years ago, she became associate director of the Technology Advancement Group (TAG), which provides resources to add value to UNMC’s intellectual property and increase the technology’s commercialization potential. As a result, Weber becomes familiar with the research of inventors, the intellectual property office procedures and UNeMed’s commercialization strategies. She then applies her experience and skills to help scientists provide data to enhance the marketing of their technology.
“Annika has exceeded expectations in this role and essentially runs the operation of TAG, now a UNMC core facility,” her nominator said.
Weber, who maintains a “Do whatever it takes to get the job done” philosophy, steps into her Wittson Hall research lab at 6:45 a.m. each weekday, where she often logs a 10-hour day. It’s also not uncommon to find her in the laboratory on weekends.
“Research is like putting pieces of a puzzle together,” she said. “Some things are very obvious and some are very hidden. You just keep looking at it from different angles.”
Her research on serum amyloid A, an acute phase protein that is produced by the liver as a result of an infection or injury, has brought surprises. Weber, who works alongside Thomas McDonald, Ph.D., found that a variant of serum amyloid was produced by mammary glands.
“This was totally unexpected,” she said. “There are lots of dead ends in research, but when experiments do work it erases everything that didn’t. There are always challenges, always 10 more things that can be done.”
After receiving her master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin, Weber briefly worked part-time at the UNMC Eppley Cancer Center. She joined the UNMC department of pathology and microbiology on a fulltime basis nearly 25 years ago.
Outside the laboratory, Weber has spent more than 10 years sewing, altering, fitting and adjusting costumes for Opera Omaha. Several weeks prior to a performance, she spends her evenings at the Orpheum Theatre trying to meet the specifications of the show’s directors. She is “on hand” during productions to repair or alter costumes and then, following a production, helps dismantle and pack the garments for shipment to the next destination.
Weber, whose father was in the textile business, began her experience in the wardrobe department years ago with Lucia di Lammermoor, which will be performed again this summer.
Weber also enjoys bicycling, camping, photography and traveling. Her husband, Tom, is a professor in the biology department at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. The soon-to-be-grandparents have two grown children living on the East Coast.