BE - from therapeutics to batteries!
When I think of Biological Engineering, I think of using our understanding of biology to create something novel and useful. Before 20.109, I thought of BE in terms of only applications towards the healthcare field like drug discovery, protein engineering etc., but after Module 3, I got to see the power of BE in a whole different field. I really enjoyed Module 3 and learning about using phages to create more environmentally-friendly and sustainable batteries because it opened a whole new avenue of BE for me.
The Module 3 proposals were also a great way to learn more about the field of BE by coming up with our own proposals, which required a lot of reading, and by listening to other groups’ proposals. The proposal was quite challenging, especially with first coming up with a novel idea. I think most of us ran into the problem where we would be reading a paper and from it think of a cool idea, but then we’d go to search more about our idea and find that it had already been done before. This was extremely frustrating because after 10+ hours of reading papers, I just wanted to find a cool idea to present on. Of course, I recognized that this was what professors do for a living, reading papers every day to help them think of novel ideas. While at the time, I found it quite dejecting that all the ideas I was thinking of had already been tested, now, I think it is so cool that there are so many scientists out there working on all these different projects to help engineer solutions to the world’s problems.
This class was definitely one of the most time-intensive courses I have taken so far at MIT, but it was also one of the most rewarding. I feel like I have learned so much, not only in terms of actual lab techniques, but also in terms of reading and writing academic papers. After the first Module 1 Data Summary, I already felt like I had learned so much in crafting an academic piece of writing. After the Module 2 Journal Club and really reading and dissecting my paper, I learned how to approach a dense paper and work to understanding the content. And then after the Module 3 proposals and reading so many papers in order to find a topic for our proposal, I now feel much more confident in picking up a science paper and being able to get the general gist of it (which is super cool to be able to do as only an undergraduate sophomore!).
On a last note, thank you Josephine, Noreen, and Leslie for taking so much time to help us learn with all the extra office hours, individual meetings and snacks! You all really helped makes this class such a great learning experience.
-Julia P.
The Module 3 proposals were also a great way to learn more about the field of BE by coming up with our own proposals, which required a lot of reading, and by listening to other groups’ proposals. The proposal was quite challenging, especially with first coming up with a novel idea. I think most of us ran into the problem where we would be reading a paper and from it think of a cool idea, but then we’d go to search more about our idea and find that it had already been done before. This was extremely frustrating because after 10+ hours of reading papers, I just wanted to find a cool idea to present on. Of course, I recognized that this was what professors do for a living, reading papers every day to help them think of novel ideas. While at the time, I found it quite dejecting that all the ideas I was thinking of had already been tested, now, I think it is so cool that there are so many scientists out there working on all these different projects to help engineer solutions to the world’s problems.
This class was definitely one of the most time-intensive courses I have taken so far at MIT, but it was also one of the most rewarding. I feel like I have learned so much, not only in terms of actual lab techniques, but also in terms of reading and writing academic papers. After the first Module 1 Data Summary, I already felt like I had learned so much in crafting an academic piece of writing. After the Module 2 Journal Club and really reading and dissecting my paper, I learned how to approach a dense paper and work to understanding the content. And then after the Module 3 proposals and reading so many papers in order to find a topic for our proposal, I now feel much more confident in picking up a science paper and being able to get the general gist of it (which is super cool to be able to do as only an undergraduate sophomore!).
On a last note, thank you Josephine, Noreen, and Leslie for taking so much time to help us learn with all the extra office hours, individual meetings and snacks! You all really helped makes this class such a great learning experience.
-Julia P.
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