Kyle Sikkema - The End

My last week was bittersweet. After scavenging the physics department library for primary literature
relating to my projects, I consulted with Grace on the important information that I should include in my
poster for EXP Night. She gave me some great advice on some topics to focus on during my presentation.
With Grace’s suggestions, I began digging into the primary literature with laser-focused precision.

To celebrate my final day in the lab, Hayden, Brad, Cesar, Grace, and Diogo took me out to lunch.
I’ve discovered that Ann Arbor’s food selections are diverse and board. My favorite places are Blue Tractor
for BBQ and Zingerman’s Deli for sandwiches. However, being from the east coast and NY style pizza,
Ann Arbor doesn’t hold a candle to our pizza.

To chronicle my progression at the lab, it was important to take lots of pictures of the mentors and colleagues
who poured their time and knowledge into making my experience amazing. I took some last pics just before
embarking on a ten-hour long drive home with my dad.

Left: Diogo and me; Right: Grace and me

I cannot believe my time in Ann Arbor with Dr. Cundiff’s and his research lab has concluded.
I am grateful to the University of Michigan, Dr. Cundiff, Dr. Chris Smallwood, Grace Kerber, and
all who have generously mentored me this summer. The experience at Randall Lab working in partnership
with The Cundiff Research Group has fueled my thirst to continue chasing the physics and engineering
challenges that need solutions, and I will truly never forget these past six weeks.

Comments

Kylie Heering, Week 2 at the Goldstein Lab

We started off our week with a congratulatory acai bowl trip to celebrate Preston’s acceptance into a training grant program. Acai bowls in California top Playa Bowls (no question about it). From what I can tell, its a pretty huge honor to be recognized by this grant, but he’s really humble about it. On Monday, Preston and I decided that testing antibodies that have never been tested on prostate epithelial cells before would be a good objective for my first Western blot on my own. We needed to probe for ASCT2, a glutamine transporter, and GLS in order to determine if their corresponding antibodies are functional. Antibodies are crucial for Western blots because they bind to the protein of interest (POI), allowing for us to qualify its expression after imaging. As such, Preston wanted to make sure they worked by probing for ASCT2 and GLS on three different cell lines. Cell lines are commercially purchased human cells that have been immortalized (modified to grow indefinitely) by telome...

Alan - First Week at UCSF

Hi Everyone! After arriving in San Francisco last Sunday, I spent this past week settling into the downtown Berkeley apartment that I’ll be sharing with Rohit for the next couple of months, as well as learning my way around the Roy lab at UCSF. First day at the lab was really exciting. Here are a couple pictures of the Mission Bay campus, which was completed just a few years ago. Everything is super new and modern, and there’s still construction for other buildings going on around the campus. Most of the people who work at the Mission Bay campus are either professional researchers or doctors/nurses for the nearby hospital. The graduate students take most of their classes at the original Parnassus campus (where Maya is). I work in Byers Hall, which is connected to Genentech Hall and a short walk down the block from the shuttle stop. There are three other volunteers working for the Roy lab this summer – Kimmai, David, and Pujita, who are all undergrad college students...

Jaewon Oh - Week 7 and 8

Finally done here with my experience and I wish I had more time keep researching so that I have something a little more "finalised" to present. But I guess that's what past EXP kids meant when they said that 8 weeks of research is not enough and I'll have to work with what I've got. To solve the problem of not having enough data points, we used the online TCGA database for raw data that would be used to calculate mutation rates. Mutation rates were calculated through an R coding script that Dr. Cannataro had made. Because the mutation rates were tumor specific, we had to change the proportions that were obtained from the IARC database using data from another database called cBioPortal. Basically we had to multiply the number of times a certain variant was seen in the IARC database by the percentage of tumors that have a tp53 mutation, because our mutation rates are calculated across all tumors in specific cancers (confusing, I know). After graphing the mutatio...

Peddie EXP Summer 2018

Search This Blog