One week into the RET.....
When I left college I thought I was going to be a research scientist. I had worked in a lab throughout college and had signed on to continue full-time. Two years of pipetting very small amounts of liquid later, I accidentally ended up teaching HS science instead.
Teaching is incredible - but I've always missed the laboratory atmosphere and the intellectual acuity of everyone working so hard to discover things that never been explored before.
The Research Experience for Teachers program has given me a chance to go back to the lab - and boy has it been a strange experience this week.
First of all the acronyms are overwhelming - and I knew some of them coming in! I am in the RET (Research Experience for Teachers) program at BU (Boston University) in the OCN (Optical Characterization and Nanophotonics) lab working with the IRIS (Interferometric Reflectance Imaging System) to image the hopeful capture of the N1N1 virus. Thankfully, I seem to be accessing a part of my brain that has been dormant for years and I recognize a lot of the acutal reagents we are using during the wet work.
The labs we are working in are a little small and crowded but loaded with awesome exciting equipment. The IRIS which the lab is busy developing is the main piece of equipment I've used. There are 3 different iterations of the machine in the lab right now (a high mag, low mag, and new more portable version). All three of these use LEDs which are much safer and more inexpensive than earlier versions which used lasers. But don't worry - there are still lasers and laser curtains throughout the entire lab.
We have not been invited into the lab workspace very often so have only really spoken with the two people we are working with, a post-grad Carlos, and a grad student, George. They have been very helpful and I have been peppering them with questions about their academic and career backgrounds and how they like being research scientists.
The project I am working on mainly involves finding an antibody we can attach to our chip which will most effectively capture the flu virus (A/PR/8/34) we want to detect. We are learning lab protocol involved in spotting the Ab on the plate, blocking, washing, and imaging the plates using the IRIS, incubating with virus, and then imaging again. Finally I hope to learn how to analyze the data as well.
Overall - a good first week. I really hope I get to spend more and more time in the lab as the summer progresses!
The labs we are working in are a little small and crowded but loaded with awesome exciting equipment. The IRIS which the lab is busy developing is the main piece of equipment I've used. There are 3 different iterations of the machine in the lab right now (a high mag, low mag, and new more portable version). All three of these use LEDs which are much safer and more inexpensive than earlier versions which used lasers. But don't worry - there are still lasers and laser curtains throughout the entire lab.
We have not been invited into the lab workspace very often so have only really spoken with the two people we are working with, a post-grad Carlos, and a grad student, George. They have been very helpful and I have been peppering them with questions about their academic and career backgrounds and how they like being research scientists.
The project I am working on mainly involves finding an antibody we can attach to our chip which will most effectively capture the flu virus (A/PR/8/34) we want to detect. We are learning lab protocol involved in spotting the Ab on the plate, blocking, washing, and imaging the plates using the IRIS, incubating with virus, and then imaging again. Finally I hope to learn how to analyze the data as well.
Overall - a good first week. I really hope I get to spend more and more time in the lab as the summer progresses!
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