Seventeen years ago, Rob Edwards noticed an ad for a radio frequency engineer in the HIV-focused laboratory of HHMI investigator Michael Summers. On paper, Edwards may have seemed an odd fit for the lab: no academic experience, just lots of work for defense contractors. “I don’t want to say this, but my old job depended on war—and sometimes, on destroying people’s lives,” he says. Today, after nearly two decades working alongside Summers, Edwards’ career has been recast. “What we do here saves people’s lives. It has a purpose.”

At the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Summers and his team are studying the architecture of HIV to understand how it and other retroviruses assemble, and how the viruses package their genetic material to infect other cells. This scientific pursuit hinges on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy—which is where Edwards enters the picture. He is responsible for two 600-megahertz NMR machines and a mammoth 800-megahertz instrument with a cryogenic probe. “There are so many things that can go wrong,” he says. “The magnet, the probe, the platform, the software, the console, the amplifiers.”

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But NMR machines are just part of Edwards’ job. He designs the electrical and mechanical components of laboratory upgrades and ensures the continuous operation of centrifuges, water purification systems, electrical generators, and other critical research tools. “I keep everything up and running, because you never know when a grad student or a postdoc will have that sample—the protein they’ve been working on for a year,” Edwards says. “When they’re ready to roll, there can’t be any obstacles on the instrument side.”

Edwards also mentors young scientists in Summers’ lab—including a large number of minority grad students and postdocs, who may not have received ample encouragement in the past. “He has served as a positive force for about 50 high-achieving minority students who have worked in my laboratory,” says Summers, “often privately enforcing his own interventions to challenge the students and support them during times of academic struggles.”

As Edwards explains, “I’m a minority also; I know you can get down on yourself. So I always say, ‘I believe in you.’ That’s what Mike said to me when I first started here: ‘You can do it, I hired you for a reason, just be confident.’ Now that I have that confidence, when I see someone without it, I try to instill it.”

Edwards brings this sense of purpose to every facet of his job. “My phone is never off. My vacation time is maxed,” he says with a laugh.

Illustration: Chris King

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