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Kylie Heering, Why I Chose EXP

(Disclaimer: this is a little random, but I wanted to put some of my thoughts down on paper (or computer I guess)) Dinosaurs. Their mysterious awe, their primordial existence, their electric lure. I was enchanted by them--almost mythical creatures--throughout my early childhood. The Allosaurus and Brachiosaurus replaced my quintessential girl fascination for dolls. The concept of what had existed before man striked me in a manner brushing Barbie’s hair never could. By kindergarten, I had the narration for dinosaur documentaries memorized, and in first grade I proudly presented my ostentatious collection of fossils to my class in “Show and Tell”...each week (my snowglobe collection didn’t draw as much interest). I spent my afternoons sifting through the forest floor for the imprint of an ancient plant on the face of a stone, deer bones, and arrowheads. This was my gateway to science. I wanted evidence of the past, but even more so, I craved discovery. Too naive to comprehend th...
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Charles Chung - Week 5

Summer is over :( This week, after analyzing my conclusions and graphs, I gathered some of the videos, photos and analysis to produce a presentation for my experience. For Wednesday’s lab meeting, along with David, I presented myself, the EXP program as well as what I had worked on and learned over the last four weeks. For the rest of the week, I started on my poster. David showed me some examples of posters he had presented in the past made using Adobe Illustrator and helped me get started with it. I decided to try and do the poster completely on Illustrator than PowerPoint to customize whatever I wanted. The presentation I had done helped to structure my poster and I could pull information from my earlier analysis and other papers I had read. This summer, I worked on analyzing body rotations of the bat as it approaches landing as well as hypothesized and tested for factors that affected impact forces like hovering/non-hovering and distance between approach and landing. ...
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Charles Chung - Week 4

Behind the scenes of the AMNH. This week, I got through digitizing all the trials from 17 to 71 on the shoulders and lumbar for three important frames. In that digitizing, I calibrated two more trials, which took up to Wednesday to finish. I calibrated only three frames for the exact frame of tuck, land and settle to be extracted for other analysis. Wednesday afternoon, I was able to graph boxplots with the new data taken from digitizing to compare Ftot (total impact force) with velocities (distance between xyz points divided by the time in frames – 600 frames per second). On Thursday, Dr. Swartz, David, Melissa (an undergrad) and I went to New York City to visit the American Museum of Natural History. We went to loan for good bat specimens for future experiments. I had a great time even though I had been to the museum numerous times because we went to the secret collections area above the museum itself. I didn’t take too many photos as there were strict social media rul...
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Emma Morin, Goodbye Swarm Lab!

Swarm Lab weeks 9 and 10 This is it. This is the end. My time working for the Swarm Lab has come to an end. I cannot believe 10 weeks have passed by so quickly. Where has the summer gone?! I'm moving straight from the lab on Friday to school on Monday, without so much as a break, so I am reasonably stressed out at the prospect of returning to the rigor of Peddie. At the lab, I work individually and go at my own pace, which is a very nice way to work. However, Peddie is the opposite, which is not a bad thing per se, it will just be a bit of an adjustment when I begin. The past two weeks in the lab have been wonderful, and the 10 vs. 1 experiments have progressed nicely. As I predicted, I will not be able to finish the 10 vs. 1 set, but I have set a good foundation for whoever will complete it. As I mentioned last time, there is a new girl in the lab, Shayna. At first, it took a little bit to get used to having another person in the lab with me. We would always bump into another,...
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Catherine Phillips - Eighth Week

My last week was actually one of my most fun. I had pretty much finished with my research and was working on a presentation that I had to do for the Provost Program. This gave me a lot more free time, and I spent it hanging out with friends and generally enjoying my last days in Newark. I went out to lunch with Jaqueline, one of my friends who was also working at NJIT, pretty much every day, and our cuisine ranged from the food truck right outside the building to a place that served exclusively meatballs. I actually became really fond of Newark in my stay there. It’s definitely not as bad as people make it out to be, and there are a lot of parts about it that are good, or just funny. Since I went on daily walks for pretty much my entire stay, I knew the layout of the city very well, and had explored a lot (but only in the not-sketchy areas). I, of course, had my favorite walking path, which had many of the nicest views in the city. I also really liked some of the quirkier things a...
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Manav - Week 11, The last and final week of the city!

This final week at Columbia University was a week of data collection and interpretation. I was given the data from the two mice with my electrodes implanted in them. In a nutshell – the results were hideous but results nonetheless. My PI will be inserting ore electrodes that I made during my five weeks in the lab. He will be sending the results over. In the end, I made 11 electrodes. My goal was 4. I believe that I made a lasting impression in the lab. I took initiative in my work and taught another person who will be taking over my next for the following two months. In the end, my experience at Columbia was just wonderful, and a completely diverse one than the experience I had in the flora of UC San Diego.
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Wendy Li, Week 7

EXP has finally come to an end. Considering that silicon wafer should be better for dropcasting, I then created PS film embedded with gold nanorod on silicon substrate and measured it with ellipsometer. Besides, I finally got the chance to perform SEM imaging to sample films to see the overall dispersion and out-of–plane orientation of nanorods. As a result, nanorods were mostly evenly distributed all over the film; however, they are distributed in small nanorod clusters, suggesting that I can still dilute the nanorod solution for future adjustment of this research. As my 7-week research came to an end, I would like to thank all my group mates, especially Subarna and Lexi, for supporting my summer research throughout last two months. In addition to broadening my theoretical knowledge, gaining lots of hand on experience with all these fantastic facilities, and gradually growing up towards a real researcher, I am really grateful for being a part of the group. It was a pleasure to wat...
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May Tran - Week 8

The final week of my lab was mostly uneventful because Bing had closed for the summer. The lab had sent out requests for parents to bring their children in voluntarily for research, probably with promises of cash, and the research assistants should only show up during the times that were booked by the parents. Therefore, I had more freedom and better control of the schedule since I could show up for the allotted time rather than staying for three hours waiting for Isabel to recruit children. This week's lab meeting was also the research assistant's turn to present their summer works. The lab meetings are usually done by the graduate students, but since most of the research assistants have programs that link to the lab (such as how I'm at the lab because of EXP) and most of us have to present for our programs, the lab thought it was a good opportunity for us to receive feedbacks and practice for future presentations. The meeting was attended by the whole lab, including the...
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