As the dust settles...

At the beginning of the semester when a research proposal was mentioned, I immediately panicked. I saw no way for me to undertake that even after the course of a semester. In fact, A few weeks ago I still couldn't see it as possible.

Was actually more painless than I thought it would be. I think I, and everyone else, learned a lot from Journal Club or at least got more comfortable with the experience of presenting. It went by quite quickly. Almost too quickly. I could have spent another week at least practicing and working on the slides. But alas,

In then end, I ended up with a super cool battery and a mind full of knowledge. I feel more like the quintessential scientist than ever before. I have held a beaker, cooked a battery, and put on a lab coat. And I feel more secure in my choice to be course 20 than before.

Getting Ready for Mod 4 ... oh wait

Wow... that was quick. It seems like just yesterday we were all sitting through a biosafety lecture from EHS. Next thing you know it's May 12th, and we only have one assignment left for 20.109. Time flies (shout out to the 2017 SpringFest headliners I did not go see). Anyways, we have accomplished so much in one semester, it is almost hard to believe. I keep wondering "what's next?" but then I remember our 20.10time is almost over. Truly, it was a good run.

There was a host of reasons why I enjoyed Module 3, but I would like to highlight a few.

1. Tangibility

Module 3 was extremely tangible. We each made our own battery, something that we can physically keep and hold on to. It was really interesting to see how our cancer cell lines responded to different DNA damaging agents, but I was not too eager to keep a slurry of cells.  Physically making the batter was also quite exciting. Ok, Nora and I did slightly struggle with rolling out the cathode. Major shoutout and thank you to Dr. Jifa Qi! Without him, our battery would have been a major bust. Assembling our battery was really fun as well. I kind of felt like I was back in my middle school science class trying to make a battery light up a light bulb, oh the nostalgia... I am looking forward to making battery holder either this summer or next fall.

2. The Belcher Lab

Even though I am fond of 56-322, working in the Belcher Lab was a great change of scenery. Working in the Belcher Lab added excitement to Module. Visiting/Using the TEM and "working" in the glovebox are some of my favorite Belcher Lab experiences.

3.  Personality

The Module 3 Research Proposals were a great way to see what people are interested in. It was also reassuring (not sure if that was the best word) how plausible everyone's proposals were. There were many ideas that were completely new to me as well. Microbubbles am I right?! I really hope that someday we all pursue these research proposals because we all had great ideas. I truly believe we are the future.

Looking Forward and Looking Back

Before I get into summarizing the 20.109 experience, congratulations to everyone who presented today!

20.109 more so than any other class so far has really made me feel like a legitimate MIT student. From the small molecule microarray to the virus battery (that I will keep forever and ever), this has been the first real time I’ve been able to participate in the wide variety of applications and techniques used in biological engineering.  Every single module was a whole new adventure and, even though it was a lot of work, I really enjoyed learning about all these different research areas and doing all the different modules.  This all culminated today with our research proposal presentations.

Looking at the range of projects and research areas everyone chose made me even more excited than I already was about biological engineering.  It was also extremely rewarding to share the results of mine and Kerrie’s hard work on the research proposal with the class and also see the incredible amount of time and effort other groups invested in their presentations.  I found myself learning so much with each new presentation, a common theme in 20.109.

Though the class could be stressful and was a lot of work at times, it has probably been my favorite class here at MIT so far.  I really enjoyed all the new experiences and techniques we had the opportunity to try, like TEM.  Even the most stressful parts of the class (yes I’m talking about the research article) taught me valuable lessons.  Thank you so much to all the instructors who invested so much time and energy into making this a great experience for all of us taking the class.  I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say that we all appreciate the support and encouragement.

Looking back on the class shows me how much I’ve learned and how far we all have come. I’m looking forward to the rest of my time in Course 20!

Yeah, Science!

Even more than the prior two modules, Mod3 really made me excited to be a biological engineer. I’m not saying that the first modules were uninteresting, but they were composed of procedures and methods that are sort of common, whereas nothing about Mod3 was normal. I hadn’t seen anything like it before. So basically from the second the module started, when I figured out what we were going to be doing, I was amazed. I kinda looked a bit like this dude.

I  stayed that way for a while, especially when Professor Belcher was describing everything that she had done. It seemed like she wouldn’t have enough time to sleep or eat, let alone help out a bunch of random undergraduates with some cool science stuff. But I slowly became skeptical about whether we could actually make batteries from viruses. I just couldn’t get myself to not think that all the professors were just in on some long con to prank us. So, I slowly became Fry from futurama.

But at the end when the LED finally lit up, I transformed into Jesse Pinkman.

Generally though, the mod really helped open my eyes to what could be done in biological engineering. Before this mod I had a somewhat limited idea about what BE was, but after I realized that it encompases a lot more than what I had previously thought. I never would have guessed that making batteries could become biology, and half the things that Prof. Belcher worked on seemed out of the range of BE as well. Now I know thought that there are still huge areas of BE that I have yet to discover.

"HUMBLE." -Kendrick Lamar

As I sat listening to the proposal presentations today, I was enamored with a feeling that I am constantly reminded of here: overwhelming humbleness. I was again reminded that I am surrounded by absolutely brilliant people with incredible ideas. Specifically, for those few hours today, I could see everything we learned not only in 20.109, but also many other classes I have taken at MIT culminated into one afternoon. 

It is hard to believe that we only had a couple weeks to come up with a novel biological engineering idea and detailed methods about how we were going to implement the experiments to further knowledge in a field. Regardless, at least from where I was sitting, my peers had done an insane amount of research to develop a plausible-sounding idea and steps to make a conclusion. While I was impressed by the novel ideas people had come up with, I was also reminded that there are endless problems in biological engineering that need minds like my peers to solve them! 

Of course, focusing on our presentation specifically, I was very proud of what Jessica and I had come up with. At first, I was insanely overwhelmed by the tons of topics we could choose from. However, we were able to settle on HIV therapeutics, something both of us were very interested in once we started our research. The hardest part wasn’t where we wanted to take our project, but more the little details of what exact experiment to measure what considering our limited knowledge background in the field. Doing basic research about specific assays and techniques and then talking to the 20.109 staff allowed us to gain the insight we needed to put all the pieces together. I am excited about what Jessica and I put together, and it will be interesting to see where other researchers take similar ideas. All in all, it was so cool to see what other people came up with, stimulating my interest in a number of other areas of biological engineering!

20.109 was 20.10fine

It was more than fine, actually, but I enjoy the pun. Someone had to make it! Also, it's hard to convey vocal delivery through text--imagine saying "twenty-one-oh-fine" where the fine is drawn out (i.e. fiiinnnne) and you're kicked back in a chair with cool shades on as you wait for your experiments to finish (okay, tangent over). What I really want to say is that 20.109, though a lot of work, solidified my appreciation for bioengineering and my certainty that course 20 is for me.

This last module was especially exciting in that I'd not done (or learned of) anything like it before. From looking at crystalline gold and phage with the TEM to rolling out the cathodes to watching JiFa assemble batteries, I was in constant amazement at all the cool science we had the opportunity to do. When our batteries finally lit up LED's, I was internally flipping out:

Of course, we all actually know how the batteries work, but this meme still has emotional relevance.

I promptly showed the battery off to everyone I knew when I was back in my dorm ("You're such a bio nerd," my roommate told me in the middle of my wild gesticulations/rant about M13 bacteriophage). 

One of my favorite things about this module was listening to Prof Belcher talk about her impressive life/vicariously doing middle school projects/experiences in research/amazing accomplishments. One of the lessons about doing your own research that I will take away from this module, and from this class as a whole, is her motto: "I'd rather be crazy than boring." She also emphasized that what we learn and the ideas we have now will be directly relevant to our futures careers in BioE, and that's a difficult thing to remember when the end of the semester feels like an endless parade of deadlines.

The research proposal was another source of endless excitement (and also stress). Though it was a lot of work to research topics and methods my partner and I were unfamiliar with, and though it was difficult to piece together the minute details of why and how we could do specific experiments, it was a lot of fun to talk through the research with my partner. We spent hours and hours brainstorming for the proposal, mainly because it was interesting to think about all the potential projects one could take up in BioE.

20.109 has definitely been one of the coolest classes I've taken here. It gave me a taste for the "real world" of bioengineering, and it's one of those classes that feels like a major stepping stone towards becoming a better scientist and engineer. It has been great getting to know our awesome 20.109 staff and my real chill classmates. Thank you to everyone who helped make this class as awesome as it is--it's been 20.10fiiiiiine!

Almost done!!!!!!

While writing this barely three hours after finishing our Mod 3 proposal presentation, it's finally sinking in how exhausting that process for the proposal assignment was. But, being done is super invigorating (and the mini-report feels like such a small hurdle after the presentations).

I think the proposal presentations, above all, showed me how hard real science is. We do experiments and are exposed to a lot of techniques in lab throughout the semester, but we don't see what goes on behind the scenes to design these experiments and build up the process, and building up an original project from scratch is so much harder than it sounds. You have to browse the almost literally infinite source of literature and research on the web to find pieces to build up an original idea. You have to figure out what goals you want to accomplish and what steps you want to take to accomplish them. You have to find validated methods and assays and experiments that go toward your goals. You have to consider every possible little thing that could go wrong. You have to be familiar with other research relevant to your idea. And frankly, it's a lot to organize in your head! Professors make it look so easy.

The hardest part for me was actually the small details -- how exactly would we execute our methods in the lab? Finding ideas of how to investigate certain problems was manageable, but the bottleneck was definitely being biologically literate enough to know how to test and prove things in the lab. And that's definitely something that comes with time and experience in the field, but an overwhelming amount of research went into making sure we could justify how to do everything we were proposing.

Now that it's over, I can properly appreciate the amount of effort that went into the project and how beneficial the experience will be in future project-based classes. Hearing everyone else's ideas was really cool and eye-opening to see the different ideas floating in the literature and how our classmates chose to combine them into new ideas!!!!

Thank you so much to the teaching staff for a great semester :)