The Closer

NCI’s Technical Laboratory Manager Anna Trivett on Closing Labs and Rolling with the Changes

BY ANNELIESE NORRIS, NCI

Anna Trivett, an NCI technical laboratory manager (TLM), has seen a lot of changes.

Currently, she works in the Cancer Innovation Laboratory (CIL) with Daniel McVicar, principal investigator and NCI-CCR deputy director. And she was among the CCR’s TLM recipients of a group 2021 NCI Award for their “instrumental role in identifying, communicating, and solving emerging challenges related to NIH efforts to safely reopen intramural research facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to the citation.

Yet perhaps ironically, Trivett is better known for something opposite of that—closing labs due to retirements, reassignments, or reorganizations.

Trivett is a longtime Frederick native and a graduate of the University of Maryland at College Park and Hood College (Frederick, Maryland). She has worked at the Frederick NCI campus more than 20 years, having first arrived as a summer college student trainee in the Mouse Cancer Genetic Program (MCGP). “It was a wonderful experience, and I really loved the people there,” Trivett reminisced.

After graduation, Trivett worked at the company MedImmune in the vaccine production plant. That is, until one fateful phone call came informing her that a technician was needed at the MCGP. She happily returned to NCI, but the thrill was short-lived. Soon after her return, Neal Copeland and Nancy Jenkins, the PIs with whom she was to work, moved to Singapore. Trivett became a displaced federal employee, a time in her career she recounts as “exciting and a little terrifying.”

From “jumping genes” to cellular immunology

Trivett ended up in David Symer’s program, which focused on “jumping genes,” or transposons, in mammals. She quickly became fluent in sequencing repetitive elements, and her contribution to the Symer laboratory led Trivett to coauthoring papers on retrotransposition. After two years in Symer’s lab, she once again became a displaced federal employee when Symer moved to Ohio.

Joost “Joe” Oppenheim, a senior investigator and head of the Cellular Immunology Section, was conducting interviews for a new technician. Trivett was one of the youngest to be interviewed and landed the job, which lasted over 10 years. “It worked out wonderfully and was a great position,” she said. When Trivett transitioned to CIL as a TLM, Oppenheim was the first to congratulate her, and they remained working together until his passing in 2022.

Rolling with change

While Trivett no longer works in the laboratory, she characterizes the role of a TLM as quite dynamic. Recently, she has become the key contact for closing labs, tapping into her experience of being twice displaced.

Her new mantra is highlighting the need to “clearly label” anything that is not to be thrown away. “That’s my nightmare: That I am going to discard something that is really important,” explained Trivett.

After cleaning out several laboratories, Trivett suggests the following:

1. You should never reach into a drawer without looking. “There is always something sharp, and usually at the bottom,” she warned.
2. Do not tape down bench coats and layer them, as she is the person who must peel layer upon layer off!

Occasionally Trivett finds mystery objects. In a recent lab close-out, she found a mystery item (see Trove of Treasures photo). It was a device that sharpens the tool used to cut a hole in stoppers. “No one knew what it was,” said Trivett. And when Howard Young retired, he made sure that Trivett saved part of the original window frame from Building 560. All these objects Trivett fondly keeps labeled in her office as “Building History.”

When she’s not working, you might find Trivett in her garden. She serves on NCI Frederick’s Green Team, she is involved in a plant swap at the Fort Detrick Spring Research Festival, and she serves on the Birdhouse Committee, which recently built and hung birdhouses around the NCI Frederick campus.

Some of Trivett’s roles as CIL TLM include coordinating the service maintenance agreements for all laboratories, being a key contact for the Animal Care and Use Committee, and serving as a radiation room safety officer. She is a server owner, the key contact for property, and a safety expert and is coordinator for moving laboratories, ordering supplies, managing staff, budgeting, and providing general support to principal investigators.

Trivett does it all—all in a day’s work!

Anneliese Norris, a scientist at NCI, is working on HIV dynamics and replication. In her spare time, she enjoys reading and building with LEGO blocks.