Peddie EXP 2017

As the first days of August emerged, my days at the lab were also coming to an end. Because my lab has a lot of undergraduates who work there for the summer, my PI held a meeting where all the interns could present their experience and their time there. I had a rather short notification on the schedule of the meeting so I only managed to scrap together a short presentation on the jobs I did at the lab. I presented the materials I grew (mainly MoS2) and the experience with the AFM and the annealing that I did in the clean room. I also had some data compiled in the probe station. The data showed that the devices work very consistently, with 80% device working rate. The data yielded is very promising for the future scalable production of these devices. While I was working on my presentation, Ram also showed me some designing of chip and the basic rules that were very interesting. He successfully developed a new model of chip for his paper which would be published in November before hi...

As my week came to an end so did a lot of the summer students. Because so many students were ending and the PI had come back from paternity leave we had a lab presentation where all the summer students presented their experiments and findings from their time there. Having finally finished analyzing and recording all the pup calls I was assigned to do, I could graph the information and make some conclusions. Jenn was at a conference in Brazil for my last week so I was stuck trying to use the graphing program by myself. I use Graphpad prism on windows 98 which I had honestly never seen before. I had no idea what to do or how to even start and the wifi in Brazil was basically useless. But after a few frustrating hours, I was able to input the data and make some helpful graphs.  I made two each for frequency, interval duration, and motif duration (one separated by age and one covering all pup calls). I was looking for any kind of variation either between the ages or ...

One of Ben's Plates I realized for some reason my final blog did not save when I tried uploading it before so here it is now. This was my final week in lab and it came by so fast. I was not ready to leave at all as it had become part of my daily life. The schedule had become so routine and I enjoyed working in a university lab. Ben had been away for two weeks at a conference in England so he had 6 plates of DNA that he needed for genotyping. I planned on finishing most of them this week so that he would not have too much to finish up the rest of the summer. He was trying to work on two projects simultaneously so by completing some of the plates I would make his life a little bit easier.  Loading dye for gel electrophoresis  I ran two plates each day.For each plate I did a pcr which took roughly 2 hours. While the pcr was finishing up, I would make a 1-1.5% gel to run the DNA. After adding the ethidium bromide to the gel, I would let it mix for 10 minutes ...

This past week was my final week at the Seale Lab. It started quite slowly, but the last two days were perhaps the busiest days I had during my time at the lab. So what happened? Monday was quite a slow day. I arrived at the lab at 8:30 AM as usual, and began working on my poster. I continued working until 10:30, when I realized my supervisor still wasn't at the lab. In fact, almost no one was at the lab except me and two undergraduates. I was a bit confused, but I continued working on my poster. Finally, at 1:00, I left the lab. I later got an email from my supervisor saying that I didn't need to be there that day.  On Tuesday, I had a good amount of work to do. I transfected the virus-infected HCT116 cells with p53 and empty pcDNA plasmids. Besides that, I genotyped 20 more mice, and worked on my poster. Wednesday was much like Monday, in that it was a slow day. I worked on my poster once again, and genotyped another 15 or so mice. Additionally, I spent about an hour pre...

Hey guys! I have decided to combine these three weeks in one blog post because I really only go into the lab space two or three times per week, with the rest of my work being done at home. So the reporting on actual lab events is a little scarce. These past three weeks have definitely been interesting. After the big grant was completed, there has definitely been a major shift in the lab’s environment, a lot less tense and overall a better energy. Week 4 started off with a lab meeting involving me, my post-doc Kayla, another student Nick G, and our lab’s PI Nick T, all had a meeting about this metabolomics project. I have been preparing for this meeting essentially for the past three weeks and was ready to discuss. Yet within the first 5 minutes of the meeting, it was clear that the goal of this project was actually changing, which sort of threw me for a loop. But in our project, which is still in its conceptual phase, things are ever-changing. I found out about this document for a pro...

My last week in the lab was all kinds of bitter sweet. I spent most of this week typing data into excel and creating a power point to present my findings to the other lab members in lab meeting. My graduate student helped me make a power point and gave me tips on the type of graphs to use when presenting my findings. Furthermore, I learned how to use excel skillfully to make graphs to plug in data and make graphs. It was very nice seeing all my lab work and research come full circle into a congruent project that I was able to present to very successful individuals. My presentation was Thursday morning and I was extremely nervous. I prepared for many hours the night before in regards to questions that might be asked and making sure I knew all the information and data well. Overall, my presentation went extremely well, as I was able to answer the various questions asked and learned a lot from the other lab members who had tips on how my research could be expanded. My graduate student...

And just like that, my seven and a half weeks at Temasek Polytechnic are over! While my EXP summer internship wasn’t exactly what I expected it to be, it was through this experience that I learned many valuable lessons and that I will be sure to bring back to Peddie. I also got to meet some amazing people, whom I can now hang out with when I come back here in future. I still have some work cut out for me during the rest of the time I have in Singapore, and for that matter, the rest of the summer, as I am still awaiting some results from the lab to come through. However, looking back, I am in a much better position now than I was in a couple weeks ago. I would like to thank Dr. Wuang for allowing me to join her research group for the past summer, as well as Mr. Sham and Dr. Peretz for their support in the months leading up to the internship. Thank you to my supervisor Pok Siang for his guidance, and Kit Lun for giving me a hand when I needed it. Shout out to all the folks back...

I am very grateful to be able to have the opportunity to do EXP.   I came across so many people along the way, such as other people in my lab, strangers on the train, and people I met while shopping or eating lunch that truly made me realize how great EXP is.   Everybody was always so shocked that I was in high school, commuting every day to Penn and interning at a lab.   Their first response was either “wait, you’re in high school?” or “wow you must be really smart”.   At Peddie, EXP is just so normal to apply to and look forward to for junior year, but once you really go out in the real world, meet people, and tell them about your experience, it opens your eyes to the real opportunity that we have.   I will forever be grateful for EXP.   Sure, there were some challenges, such as my PI being absent a lot and always getting lost in the building and delays on the train (Septa was such a struggle sometimes), but overall these difficulties were not nearly...

This past week was my last week of EXP! I did a lot in the last week, though.   Kate and I worked with Gloria, continuing helping her research on epilepsy.   She let us do DNA extraction, PCR, and electrophoresis all on our own, but she did check in from time to time.   Dr. Vite was out for three days of my last week, but there was still plenty to do. Gloria showed us how our real time PCR worked out on the graph, and we were then able to easily categorize the genotypes of the dogs.   On the last day of lab, Kate and I ate lunch in the café in the building for the first time (which we didn’t realize until then served actual food), and I had to say all my goodbyes to everyone.   It was such an amazing experience, and keep reading for my final blog post to hear about my ultimate recap of my whole experience at Penn!.... Below are pictures of the PCR, gel electrophoresis, Kate and I on my last day, and a cute dog I saw in the elevator.  ...