On President’s Day weekend, Ribana Milas awoke to a cascade of missed calls from her boss.
By 7:00 am, she was on her way to the Wintrobe Research Building, where emergency responders had found that a broken sprinkler line had eroded the building where the electrical paneling was stored.
“Deep freezers were floating in six feet of water,” Ribana remembers.
Live electricity ran through the black, rising water, where dozens of 10-foot-tall, below-80º freezers bobbed. Inside them, nearly $25 million worth of chemically dangerous samples were at risk of ruin. The environmental health and safety team was on their way to assess the risk of accessing the freezers, but until then, Ribana kept people at a safe distance.
For most people, this scene would be a nightmare. For Ribana, a senior research space manager, acting fast to save as much of the research as possible and supporting colleagues came naturally.
As team members rushed to the site, she reassured them: “I will stay as long as needed.”
And she did. She stayed for nearly 12 hours on a holiday, leveraging her expertise of the building layout and equipment to help her team retrieve the freezers. She stayed to comfort the scientists who arrived, devastated by the possibility that years of priceless work would be ruined. She stayed to collaborate with lab managers on an alternative space for the salvaged samples. And she stayed on the phone through a flurry of calls, keeping people away from dangerous areas of the building and saving nearly all of the research.
“I love my job,” Ribana says. Smiling, as if in on a secret joke, she adds, “Although a lot of what I do isn’t really taught in school.”
Most people haven’t heard of a research space manager. On paper, Ribana’s job is described as facilitating lab moves across campus. When she initially applied six years ago, she was warned it would be challenging.
“People don’t like moving their spaces,” she explains. “People get attached, and we can’t always meet everyone’s needs.”
When a building becomes outdated or at risk of environmental crisis, Ribana is ready. She oversees the procurement of lab amenities, like fume hoods and wet benches, as well as dry labs with office spaces. It’s a unique research niche, one that involves understanding the value of a sea of test tubes and hazmat suits.
“Her knowledge of the ins and outs of every building and all of the people on the health sciences campus makes our jobs easier,” says her supervisor, Richard Dorsky.
Occasionally, you’ll find Ribana using scrapers to clean ice off freezers so cold they burn to the touch. When someone’s lab space has been moved, she fills her car with personal office plants and fragile equipment, transferring it herself to ensure nothing gets damaged. Without complaint, she fights paperwork battles for the tenured professor who worked in the same place for the past 30 years and doesn’t want to relocate. None of this exactly falls within her jurisdiction, but she does it anyway.
“She cares,” Dorsky says. “She cares about the people she works with.”
For Ribana, the job is less about moving spaces and more about understanding how to hold space for someone going through a difficult transition. She understands the emotions tied to relocation. As a 13-year-old girl, she fled from conflict in Croatia with her parents and two younger sisters. When they arrived in the U.S. as refugees, she was handed a small, yellow dictionary and asked to help translate for her parents. She didn’t know any English, but her family needed help with conversations about housing, groceries, and employment.
“It made me more comfortable talking to others,” she explains. “Even though I had no idea what people were saying, I still tried my best to understand and translate. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
She learned to be a stronghold for others from a very young age. Saying yes to challenges grew from necessity, but it also taught her the value of creating support systems. When she’s not at work, Ribana’s an active part of the vibrant Serbian community in Salt Lake. She travels with her sons, who perform nationally with a Serbian KUD Rastko traditional folk dancing group. She also cheers them on at basketball games and enjoys cooking for the family.
She points to a picture taken when she first arrived in the U.S., a young girl staring at the camera, a daughter who wanted a safe place to sleep, a sister whose face lit up when surrounded by family.
For those Ribana works with, the relationships continue long after the labs are relocated and the paperwork is turned in. It’s common to find her driving to labs across campus to check in with the researchers she’s helped move in the past.
“Hey, stranger,” she’ll say, knocking lightly on the door.
Sometimes, people spring from their desks to give her a hug. She’ll ask about their family members and how the new space is holding up. Other times, she nods patiently and listens to long strings of complaints. Never treating anyone like a burden, Ribana assures the researchers she works with that she will do everything in her power to help while setting realistic expectations.
“I enjoy listening and letting them pour it all out on me,” Ribana says with a butterscotch smile. “I think it really helps people. We’re all busy and our hours are limited in the day. But letting people know that we are there to help them, that’s where we connect.”
By Lauren McKinnon; Photos by Niki Chan Wylie
