Course 20 Pride

I am a member of the Biological Engineering Undergraduate Board, and a topic of discussion one day was Course 20 pride. Do Course 20 students have Course 20 pride? I can say that a lot of people who are not in Course 20 do not know the Course 20 class numbers. I will refer to 109 or 310, and receive a blank stare back at me. :/

Some other courses have obvious course pride. I would say that people in Course 16 have an extremely high level of commitment and dedication to their major. I think this is because sophomore year they are all forced to take the same classes through the Unified program. Therefore, they all know each other, and struggle through the same hard classes together which builds a strong culture in the major. On a smaller scale, I think that 20.109 positively adds to Course 20 culture. Because the class size is relatively small, and the workload is considerable, people bond.

My favorite 20.109 bonding day was the day of Ring Delivery. (This was actually during the week following the Mod 2 report being 2, and we didn't have class) Krystal, Katherine (aka K Whang), Tara and I went to a nail salon on Newbury street during the typical 109 1-5pm time period. I really enjoyed this spa day. If it wasn't for 109, we wouldn't have all gone together to get our nails done because we all wouldn't have been so close :)

Katherine getting here manicure. Krystal not pictured idk why :(

                                                 Tara and I starting off with our pedicure :)

Overall, I think that 20.109 strengthens the major by bringing people together for the first time. Other Course 20 classes have a variety of people from different majors and years in them. Because 109 is mostly sophomores, and completely Course 20's (I think it is at least), it allows people to meet each other and talk about shared academic interests. 20.109 is the first class that I have taken without Course 7's, 2's, 9's, 10's etc. (besides the last module in 20.110). It isn't that I don't like people in other majors haha, but the atmosphere of a class definitely changes when it is primarily people of the same grade and major. All in all, I like the Course 20 pride that 20.109 fosters and I like the great friends I made through this class.

How 109 helped with 310

20.310, one of the required Course 20 classes, teaches us about biomechanics on a molecular scale. We learn about molecular models of polymers, how to measure the stress and strain of a sponge, and how cells move around in our bodies. It’s a lecture-based class with tests (“quizzes”) and psets, and so you wouldn’t normally imagine that a class like 20.109 would be relevant to a class like 20.310. But, at the end of 20.310, in addition to another “quiz,” we have a term presentation and paper about a biomechanics topic of our choosing in teams of three. My team consisted of my two close Course 20 friends (who haven’t taken 20.109 yet) and we chose to present on the biomechanics of metastasis.

We had to write an abstract about our proposed topic, and it seemed so much easier after writing all the abstracts for 20.109. As we sifted through scientific literature for more information about our topic, I was not terrified of all the big words and fancy experiments like I was before. Writing concisely about science also did not seem as daunting, making my life a little less stressful while writing that term paper.

The presentations for the class were broken up into two days, and we were slated to go on the second day. After we listened to the first day of presentations, my friend who has already taken 20.109 said to me, "You know, you can really tell who’s taken 109 and who hasn’t by the way they present.” And looking back on that first day of presentations, that could not have been truer. Some of the groups seemed slightly disheveled when presenting—going over time, or not having strong organization. Other groups seemed to have reread their notes on giving presentations, because they had an overview slide, a summary slide, and supplemental slides that actually applied to questions they received.

When it came time for my group to present, I made sure that all of the slides were appropriately titled, and that we rehearsed our transitions. Having gone through journal club presentations made me less nervous about presenting in front of my 310 class, and I’m thankful that I’ve learned so much about scientific presentations. It’s nice to see 109 being applied to my other classes already, and I’m sure that I’ll continue to see it being applied again in the future. 

Personal Reflection on my Improvement in communicating orally and in writing

 20.109 was a lot of work this semester, and it was by far my hardest class in terms of difficulty and time.  But through all the time and effort I put into the class, I definitely learned a lot.  Only looking back, I’m glad that all the large oral and written assignments were mandatory because if they were optional, I’m sure I would have opted not to do them.  It’s kind of like how I view my childhood experience with taking piano lessons.  As a child, my parents made me take piano lessons, no matter how much I rebelled, threw tantrums, or tried to convince them why I should discontinue piano lessons.  The routine of practicing the same songs became really frustrating and I remember how I always wished I could have been playing video games instead of sitting on the piano bench.  However after taking lessons for over ten years, I am so thankful that they made me stick with it because if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be able to read music or play the piano.  So connecting this experience with my 20.109 experience, I’m thankful for the assignments that required a lot of time and effort and for the continual guidance of the instructors.  It’s always easy to look back in hindsight with 20/20 vision and realize what was good or bad for me.

Through all the written assignments, I was definitely challenged to write in a type of scientific prose that I was not used to.  It was good practice, because I ever get a chance to help write a paper, I’ll be ready.  The oral assignments such as the journal club and the final presentations were really helpful because I haven’t had much practice giving presentations in the classes I’ve taken so far.  I also really liked how journal club presentation was a single person assignment while the final research proposal presentation was team assignment.  I think through both of the oral assignments, I received good practice in being able to present alone and in a team.  I really liked how we got to view ourselves in the video that Atissa recorded for the journal club because I was able to pick up on some things I did that I didn’t realize I was doing.

Looking back, although 20.109 was a lot of work, I think that it did a lot to improve my writing and oral-presentation skills.  It was also really helpful to receive constant feedback on our homework assignments that we turned in regularly.  So now, I have one CI-M down and 20.309 to go.  Even though I know that I’m going to struggle during 20.309, I know I’ll come out of the class learning a lot just like how I came out of 20.109.

Joseph Han

We tried to cure wrinkles

When it came time to decide on a project proposal, Krystal and I decided that we needed to choose an interesting topic. We looked into using the microbiome to solve crime, and scrolled through a variety of other random recent science topics. Then, I found an article about the skin microbiome. It was a review paper on the different microbiomes associated with different skin diseases, and at the bottom, it encouraged future research to delve into the association between wrinkles/aging skin and its microbiome. Perfect.

We joked about it for a little bit, and came up with our grand plan to cure wrinkles. The next day in lab, Noreen said something along the lines of, “Make sure that you and your partner choose a topic that will interest you, because you will be spending a lot of time researching this.” Krystal and I started giggling in our corner—wrinkles would certainly sustain us.

We kept thinking that we might switch topics, because, really, were we actually going to let 20% of our final grade be about wrinkly skin? But homework assignments forced us to write things up about our proposal, and before we knew it, we reached a no-turning-back point. In lecture, one day, we were all allowed to give a 5 minute pitch about our proposal. Before we went, groups talked about curing HIV, cancer, and everything in between. And then we went, and talked about wrinkles.

The feedback we received from that day was quite helpful, however. It encouraged us to use twins in our study, and we were given some information about current skin products that utilize the microbiome for treating acne. It made us slightly more confident that our study about wrinkles might be interesting enough for a final project proposal.

Before we knew it, we were only a week away from the presentation, and we started seriously talking about how we would design our study to investigate the wrinkle microbiome. To be honest, it wasn’t very serious at all, since we were cracking up half of the time looking at pictures of wrinkly twins. Eventually, we decided that making a microbiome replacement anti-wrinkle lotion was slightly out of the scope of our project, and decided to only present on the preliminary steps to developing a wrinkle probiotic. It’s okay, though, because we still managed to insert an aspect of bioengineering into our presentation, and now Krystal and I know a ridiculous amount of information regarding wrinkly twins and the skin microbiome.  

Bringing my 109 skills across the pond

This summer I will be traveling to Imperial College in London to work in the Molly Stevens Lab. Molly Stevens was a Post-doc in the Lager Lab, and her lab at Imperial now has over 80 people in it. I will be directly working under a Post-doc on a cartilage mechanobiology project. hmmm. sounds like my current UROP. However, I think I will actually be looking at cartilage/osteoarthritis from more of a Course 3 perspective, so that will be interesting. I am not completely sure what exactly I will be doing in terms of specific experiments. I hypothesize that some of my 109 skills will be useful.

What 109 skills will I bring across the pond?

Most importantly, I will bring an open mind. For me, 109 required an open mind, ready to learn new methods/techniques/processes every class. I am guessing that I will not know the lab specific procedures, however as an experienced 109 student I will keep an open mind, not get easily frustrated, and learn new things! yippee learning is fun.

I will bring the ability to work with a lab parter/lab mate. I think that I will be working very closely to the Post-doc I have been assigned to for the Imperial Exchange. I will need to be in constant communication with him about who is doing what, when and how. In my UROP I pretty much work by myself, so the whole lab partner concept was new to me in 109. I am used to working with teammates through athletics, however this does not directly translate to science. 109 definitely taught me how to successfully work with a lab partner to optimize the time and effort of each person in the partnership.

I will bring my newly acquired presentation skills! I am guessing that at some point over the summer I will be expected to give a presentation on the research I have conducted. In 109 we spent a lot of time learning how to give effective presentations and how to make clear slides. I think that I have learned a lot about presenting through 109, and I will take this knowledge with me to London.

Lastly, I will bring the skill of keeping an updated lab notebook. When 109 began, I was a little hesitant on using Evernote. I am not sure if I like Evernote now, however I will say that it is a useful tool to organize notes and have them all in one location. Because I will be learning lots of new things in London, I will need to keep a detailed lab notebook, or I will forget things. The act of keeping an updated lab notebook may seem annoying, but it is critical.

I'm ready to cross the pond now.

Designing an Experiment

I think that I learned the most useful and practical knowledge in 109 through the final project. As undergraduates-- in classes and UROPs, we are always presented with a research question and most often the methods to investigate/answer that question. I think that there is a large jump between doing research that is given to you, and research that you design. In the 109 final project in which we had to develop a research proposal, I learned how to go about designing a thorough and well thought out experiment.

#1: I learned a lot about literature searching.
A large part of creating our novel research proposal was searching for applicable literature. When developing a new idea, it is very, very important to do a literature search and learn what else is going on in the field. I guess I have done some small literature searches for my UROP; however, typically the graduate students in the lab take on the responsibility to find current research, and then they summarize the findings to me. It was not necessarily easy for Joseph and I to find applicable literature for our project. We had to find many different papers for each step in our methods-- because nobody has ever enforced porous bone repair scaffolds with M13 phage. I gained valuable practice searching for scholarly articles while developing the research proposal.

# 2: I learned the importance of collaborators.
Since Joseph and I chose to investigate a very interdisciplinary topic, we looked to some experts in the respective disciplines for help. One of Professor Belcher's PhD students Po-Yen Chen, helped us a lot in the development of our methods section. We basically came to Professor Belcher and Po-Yen with a rough idea: we wanted to incorporate M13 phage nucleated with hydroxyapatite crystals in a bone repair strategy. However, we did not understand how to take page that are on a nanoscale and make these phage into a 3D macrostructure able to mimic bone. Also, I was a bit uncertain on the appropriate tests that we should perform on our scaffold. So, I turned to a Course 2 Post-doc in my lab, and my PI for some advice on mechanical testing. I went to Professor Grodzinsky and asked him what type of machine could test the shear strength and compressive strength of bone. He then walked me to a custom sterile machine in the room I typically work in at my UROP. I never noticed this machine before...oops. He was more than happy to explain to me how the machine could calculate the shear and compressive moduli (so much 20.310!). With the guidance of Po-Yen Chen, Professor Belcher and Professor Grodzinsky, Joseph and I were able to complete our proposal.

#3: I learned the importance of keeping things simple.
So, when Joseph and I first began throwing the idea around about using M13 phage for bone repair, we had some lofty aspirations and goals. We were thinking about in vivo studies and growing bone and creating a sterile model of bone repair in vitro. We then realized that we should really simplify our experiment and focus on one clear goal. We decided to focus on improving the mechanical strength of acellular porous scaffolds. I think that we ended up with a clear, simple and achievable goal.

Overall conclusion: Designing an experiment is much harder than it seems.

Lesson learned: Label Your Tubes

I remember sitting in 109 lecture on the first day of class when Professor Belcher presented an outline of the solar cell experiment which we would be doing in Module Three. Not only did Module Three seem like something in the distant future, but it seemed very complex. I remember turning to Joseph and saying something along the lines of, "This class sounds hard." Little did I know that Module Three would become my favorite module.

I really liked the solar cell project because it was very interdisciplinary. After doing a lot of DNA/protein work in previous modules I was ready to think about something different. The TEM imaging was something I had never seen/experienced before, so I enjoyed learning about a new piece of equipment in this module. Because this module was very different/complex, I felt as though most of the class was on an "even playing field" per say. Because I did not have experience with basic biology lab techniques like PCR/gel electrophoresis/western blot/sequencing, I felt behind the rest of the class in Modules 1 and 2. However, I think that the material we learned in Module 3 was relatively new to most people. Therefore, I felt more comfortable with the pace of Module 3 and the experiment as a whole.

I think that the competition of who could create the most efficient solar cell came down to partner teamwork and patience-- because nobody seemed to be particularly experienced in doctor blading or solar cell assembly. I guess Joseph and I made a good team then, because our solar cell recorded an efficiency of 2.88%. :) I think it is important to note that in the preliminary stages of Mod 3, our phage solution found its way into the large red biohazard waste bin. We ended up pulling out a clear unlabeled tube that seemed to be our phage solution, however this was a guess. Who knows what we pulled out of the trash, but it did its job. Maybe the mysterious clear liquid we took from the waste bin was not actually phage, and that was the key to our success. However, our TEM image showed a high level of nucleation-- so I think that proves we are good fishermen as well as engineers. In the future I will label every tube I ever use.

Overall, I enjoyed how Module 3 combined Course 20 and Course 3 into one experiment. The M13 phage interested Joseph and I so much that we investigated its other applications for our Grant Proposal Project!