The Person the Lab Runs On

ABIGAIL WALLACE BEGINS Monday mornings with a task that underpins nearly every experiment in a lab studying neurodegenerative disease: keeping a colony of 2,000 mice healthy.

Her path is routine but deliberate. An elevator ride to the basement of the Medical Education and Research Building. A three-minute walk through a tunnel to the Live Animal Research Center beneath the Neuroscience Research Building. Through a set of double doors and past a large cage-washing room, she turns into a smaller, noisier space.

Inside, a narrow aisle of silver shelving units greets her. Each shelf can accommodate eight plastic containers, which are supplied water and filtered air from lines on the ceiling above. The plastic units are unassuming, about the size of a Tupperware box. Inside, five mice, genetically engineered to mirror the memory-robbing pathology of Alzheimer’s disease, live in a controlled environment.

The colony represents a six-figure annual line item in the lab budget for Donna Wilcock, PhD, whose team studies how immune responses interact with the brain’s small blood vessels to drive dementia.

Taking care of it all falls to the lab manager, Wallace. At a vent hood, she sorts mouse pups by sex and moves them to clean cages. She schedules breeding cycles and aging timelines, aligning pairings, weaning and cohorts, so experiments meet strict biological windows. She also handles regulatory compliance. It’s quiet, methodical work that she repeats week after week for animals whose two-year lifespan exceeds their peers in the wild.

“I like being the person that handles them because I know I’m going to treat them the way they should be treated,” said Wallace, who joined Wilcock’s lab a year ago. “And you’re growing something that somebody will use later on to fulfill science.”

Upstairs, in Wilcock’s tidy lab on the 10th floor of the new building, Wallace manages the operation’s other moving parts: training new graduates and undergraduates, ordering reagents and tracking how grants are spent. She’s part of an essential network of lab managers at the Indiana University School of Medicine that keeps groundbreaking science moving forward.

“If someone’s been trained by Abigail, they’re fine,” said Erica M. Weekman, PhD, an assistant research professor of neurology who helps oversee day-to-day operations. “That’s the level of trust we have in her. If there’s a problem, we know Abigail will sort it out.”

Wilcock is just as direct. “These days, Erica’s my right arm, and Abigail’s my left,” said Wilcock, who is also director of the Center for Neurodegenerative Disorders.

 

For Erica Weekman, PhD, left, recruiting Abigail Wallace wasn't subtle. "Like, at all," she recalled. It turned out to be one of the better decisions the lab made.

 

Like many in her role, Wallace didn’t set out to become a lab manager. Growing up in Franklin, Indiana, an Advanced Placement psychology course sparked her interest in how the brain works. She studied psychology at IU, where she worked in labs using MRI to study brain activity and animal models to explore memory.

Her first job after graduation put her on a three-person team providing centralized animal and imaging services at the Stark Neurosciences Research Institute. Within a year, the work began to feel repetitive. “You get an MRI image, and you make a map around it,” Wallace said. “You’re basically highlighting pictures eight hours a day.”

Wanting a change, Wallace applied to be a lab manager for Alzheimer’s researcher Gary Landreth, PhD. She had never managed a lab, but he took a chance on her. She had help learning the job. Lab managers at academic medical centers form an unofficial but vital network, and IU’s team of managers provided institutional memory Wallace could draw on.
Over lunches and quick check-ins, Wallace learned from others how to navigate purchase orders, reconcile grant spending and update animal protocols.

“I would not trade those resources for anything,” she said. “They’ve all been here longer than I have. Their knowledge was invaluable.”

The job called for precision — managing budgets, ordering supplies and supporting researchers whose interests sometimes made the operation feel like “two completely different labs.” Over time, Wallace gained not only technical capabilities but the ability to run systems that keep experiments on track.

Landreth provided mentorship that was warm and expansive. Conversations with him stretched beyond daily tasks, pushing Wallace to think more broadly about science and the people behind it. He introduced her to leading researchers and, seeing her potential, nudged her to consider a doctoral degree.

Grateful as Wallace was for Landreth’s faith, she knew he was nearing retirement. Staying at IU meant finding another lab. Again, an informal network made the difference. A friend in Wilcock’s lab passed her name to Weekman, as the lab had just relocated from the University of Kentucky and needed a lab manager.

Wilcock’s lab uses mouse models to study how immune cells interact with the brain’s vasculature. It’s work that hinges on exact timing, tissue collection and imaging. It aligned perfectly with Wallace’s experience. After an initial conversation, Weekman followed up with a poke: an email telling Wallace the job would soon be posted.

“I wasn’t subtle,” Weekman recalled. “Like, at all.”

Wallace got the hint. “I knew it was too good to pass up,” she said.

 

Wallace is now building a research project of her own, mapping vascular changes in a newer Alzheimer's mouse model that better mimics the human disease. "I spend a lot of time puzzling together stains," she said, "to make sure we're getting what we want."

 

Mondays are the most regimented days of the week. After the morning’s colony work, Wallace handles supply orders, inventories and budgets. But the work Wilcock and Weekman value most happens at the bench, where Wallace extends their oversight into day-to-day science, training the staff and overseeing their work.

When a new postdoc or graduate student arrives, Wallace demonstrates each technique — mounting tissue on slides, applying stains and evaluating images — then works alongside them before stepping back as they perform independently. The process is crucial. There’s little room for variation. Consistency ensures the data can be trusted and compared and makes troubleshooting faster when something goes wrong.

The work demands long-range planning. Experiments are built months in advance, aligning breeding, aging and data collection. “A lot of it is looking a year or two ahead,” Weekman said. “But it’s also a balance, planning that far without getting overwhelmed.”

As Weekman’s responsibilities have shifted toward grants, manuscripts and project design, her time at the bench has narrowed. That’s where Wallace steps in.

She is the lab’s first point of contact, the person trainees turn to with technical questions or problems. She also serves as a steady presence, spotting small frictions and routing them upward, keeping leadership connected to the lab’s day-to-day reality.

“They trust Abigail,” said Wilcock, the Barbara and Larry Sharpf Professor of Alzheimer’s Disease Research. “They see her in the lab doing the work.”

It’s a dynamic that reflects Wilcock’s approach: a lab without rigid hierarchy, where responsibility follows skill. In practice, much of that responsibility runs through Wallace.
Wallace is now building a project of her own, one that reflects the same precision she brings to everything else.

Her focus is on a newer Alzheimer’s mouse model that better mimics the human disease. In it, plaques form earlier, and inflammation rises steadily, offering a clearer picture of how the disease begins and progresses. One piece remains unpredictable: changes in the brain’s small blood vessels.

Those vascular shifts vary widely, complicating when to intervene or measure outcomes. Wallace is mapping that uncertainty, creating a timeline of when changes appear and how they unfold.

She began the project last spring. Now, she logs long hours in a dark microscopy room, capturing and analyzing images. Piece by piece, she is building a clearer picture for dementia researchers.

“I spend a lot of time puzzling together stains to make sure we’re getting what we want,” she said.

It’s the same kind of work she does across the lab, imposing order on complex systems so others can move forward with confidence.