Our Journey has just begun.



This week has been a lot. Between the proposal, 7.03 exam, DanceTroupe (other dancers understand me), and the Mod 3 report, I think it's too much to pack into a week, yet we still got through it. I am so glad that I got through (almost) all of the assignments for this class, even thought they were a struggle.

I've grown so much as a scientist and engineer, and I want to thank the faculty for pushing us is much in our writing and presenting. Between spending way more than 8 hours in lab, offering a million office hours right before an assignment, or just being an email away, our faculty have always been willing to help us learn and grow and guide through these tough assignments.

This class is the first one where I am starting to feel like an bioengineer and I am so proud to be Course 20. I will continue to use the skill we have learned throughout the rest of my time here at MIT and throughout my career. I can't believe I am already halfway done with MIT. But our Course 20 journey has just begun and I can't wait for what the next classes bring!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Power of Statistics

Image
“Aaaaaah…..” “Oh, no!” (returning off the aspirator) “I’m sorry.” “What do we do?” (squeezing the aspirator tube) “Can we break the vacuum?” “Let’s pull together.” (pulling on the aspirator tube in two opposite directions unsuccessfully…) On the third day of Mod 1, my partner and I aspirated our +IPTG induced pellet. I was so convinced that we should aspirate the left over supernatant with an aspirator because it worked well for the –IPTG control pellet. Why did an n=1 experiment convince me that aspirating would be safe?  Consider a hypothetical situation where before any experimentation, I think there’s a 1/2 probability that the aspirator cannot aspirate a pellet, and 1/2 probability that aspirator can aspirate a pellet and does it half of the time. One successful aspiration should only increase the probability that the aspirator cannot aspirate a pellet to P conditional = 0.5/(0.5+0.25) = 2/3. So a successful aspiration should increase my confidence in aspiration
Read more

Seeing the finish line!

The research proposal assignment start out as fairly intimidating.  Since 20.109 is my first introduction to biological engineering, I've appreciated being told exactly what to do.  To be tasked with crafting a research project that solves a biological problem, is original, and creative sounded like a lofty goal.  However, the more papers I read, the more I realized the real challenge was not having to come up with one idea, is was having too many ideas/options.  Even after Masrur and I had decided upon a pathway to target, there are so many diseases that the pathway is involved in that we then had to choose the most compelling disease to focus on.  Since we spent so much time deciding upon what exactly we were studying, we left little time for ourselves to define the research aim and detail the methods.  Overall, though, the project was really interesting and engaging.  I even found myself disappointed that the proposal wasn't real and that I wouldn't actually be able to o
Read more

Don’t judge a module by first sight!

Different from Module 1 and Module 2, Module 3 is less molecular biology focused and not directly related to medicine. At the beginning of Module 3, I thought that I would enjoy this module less as it seemed less relevant to my primary interest in medicine and cancer research. However, I was wrong. I truly enjoyed this module, from TEM to making batteries, from brainstorming research ideas to presenting our research proposal. It was my second time seeing TEM samples, but it was just as fascinating as the first time. The phage nanowires were intertwined with evenly distributed gold nanoparticles, and the gold atomic planes were so regular and amazingly beautiful. On the last day of Module 3, it was so exciting to see batteries being made, and to light up LEDs using batteries with the cathodes we made! The unimaginable beauty in the order, simplicity, and complexity of nature, from atoms to nanoparticles, from proteins to cells to organisms, is what drew me to biology in the
Read more