Andrew Mah, Entry #5, The Final Stretch

My six weeks at the Khalizov lab has ended. While my hopes of the mass spectrometry working were shattered, I gained an invaluable experience by doing research in numerous side-projects that would help out this experiment in the future. Six weeks really flew by.

In terms of the work I did this week, I mostly worked to learn a program named SIMION, which is an ion optics simulation program. Dr. Khalizov gave me the thick manual to learn the basics of the program, and he hoped that I would be able to model the mass spectrometry using the program. Unfortunately, a week to master the program was not enough. Nevertheless, using this program would have showed me how the mass spectrometry in the lab would work if it was properly working.

Dr. Peretz just showed up in time before my time in the lab ended, and I had the opportunity to introduce her to the lab. Afterwards, we went out for lunch in a Mexican deli near NJIT. It was great to catch up on how others are doing in their labs.

Once again, I had another seminar with many other high school students, and the seminar was about environmental safety. While not as interesting as the previous seminars, it was definitely exciting to learn something new in the seminar. Afterwards, the networking session allowed high school students to share our lab experiences.

Overall, while my six weeks here did not go out as I planned, one thing I learned is that nothing in a science research lab is definite. Things might not go out as planned, and patience is required.

I would like to thank everyone who made this experience a memorable one for me. In particular, I would like to thank Matt, John, and Dr. Khalizov for allowing me to work in this lab.

Best of luck to my fellow peers in their labs!