Today I spent the day in the communications department, the last leg of my eight day journey through SAS. I spent the morning with internal communications and the afternoon with external communications, which I came to realize had alot of overlap. I spent the afternoon with Kim in the executive support branch of external communications department. Kim and her team’s job was to support the C level executives within SAS, this includes Dr. Goodnight. The support they provide consists of everything from writing their speeches and blogs to instructing the chief officers on how they should speak in order to stay in line with the SAS image. It was funny to me to learn that most of the social media account that are said to belong to these executives are maintained by others without much consideration from the person the account belongs to. Kim also told me that she works on newsletters and awards within the sales department. When I asked Kim why this wasn’t considered internal communications, she told me that it was but that sometimes external will work on some internal stuff too. Kim was busy with lots of interesting work at the moment as their had just been a very substantial change in leadership within sales, the department Kim works very closely with. She was busy working on a presentation and other materials to be given to the new officer in order for him to conduct his work in a manner that would fit SAS’s image.
All in all SAS was a great experience. I was able to meet many different people and get a true feel of the corporate world. I had a great experience and would highly recommend it to all future juniors.
The last day at SAS was a sad moment. I will miss all the free food and all the interesting people I have met. One of the most interesting thing I did was from 1-3 I was with Elliot Inman who is a manager of the software development branch. I got to play with some SAS software to analyze and visualize data. It was cool that by hand working with this data will take you hours but with the software it took seconds. It was very insightful because now I know I never want to be a data scientist.
IMG_1468-vavajyI’m very excited to announce that I finally got a picture of me wearing the Annie mascot costume! It took three days of climbing into the costume, three days of racing against two other characters, three days of entertaining fans, but it was all worth it because I finally got my picture. I had just finished up a race (which I won by the way) and I was making my way through the stands to take pictures with fans. All of a sudden, I see two very unexpected people asking for a picture with “Annie”: my mom and sister. Of course my sister recognized my shoes and knew that the person behind the Annie costume was indeed her sister. I noticed their giggles as they each posed with me individually and then had a stranger take a picture of us three and then ordered me to “twirl” for a video that later got sent out to all of my grandparents. While the Annie costume is not exactly flattering or comfortable, it makes for some really funny pictures.
Today was the last day of my work experience. I can honestly say that I learned so much like how I think I’d like to go into orthopedics, but definitely nothing to do with feet. I have seen so many feet of all sorts of odors. It was a fragrant experience to say the least. Moreover, today was day like any other full of clinic patients. An interesting case was one dealing with the consequences of having diabetes particularly the aspect connected to neuropathy. The patient had stepped on a pin and didn’t realize and proceeded to place their feet in shoes and areas with lots of bacteria. Needless to say, they got an extremely bad infection. Dr. Logel had suggested surgery for this patient 2 years ago, but they couldn’t undergo surgery because of heart conditions they were experiencing stemming from diabetes. It’s now 2 years later and the patient decides to have the surgery except now it has spread and Dr. Logel had to basically amputate the distal bone of their 3rd metatarsal. I just thought that that case was particularly interesting. It just comes to show that keeping yourself healthy but also being completely aware of your body is extremely pivotal.
All good journeys come full circle. After a week of preparation and cell harvesting, Dr. Masoudi and I moved on to setting up column chromatography with nickel resin – the first task we undertook together when I came into the lab last Tuesday. We made some slight modifications to the overall procedure, but it began just as it had before when we transferred incubated flasks with E. Coli cells to smaller centrifuge containers. After we spun our 12 liters of cell/media mix, Dr. Masoudi and I poured out the unnecessary liquid remains, combined the leftover cells, and added in a buffer solution to both maintain pH and limit biological activity. What’s interesting about E. Coli cells, and something I had not registered when we first did this two weeks ago, is that these “gram negative” bacterial cells have two layers of membrane. The first, outermost layer contains a periplasmic interior that carries our precious protein, Nb6B9, in addition to thousands of minuscule nutrients. The second, interior layer more closely mirrors the cell membranes of eukaryotes, outlining a cytoplasm which has a DNA-filled nucleus. In order to break the periplasmic layer (and not disrupt the cytoplasmic layer), we initiated an “osmotic shock” that fills the periplasm of each cell with enough water to burst the outermost membrane, expose the protein while keeping the cytoplasmic layer intact (… theoretically). The violent rupturing of the cells was followed by another centrifuge session, where bottles of the broken cells were spun at 14,000 rpm for about twenty minutes. The intense pressure delivered by the high speeds was able to segregate the intact cytoplasmic layers from the disrupted periplasmic contents, meaning we had to take the soluble fraction (the liquid fraction) of the bottles to properly retrieve Nb6B9. Unfortunately, our soluble fractions were viscous. The only macro-molecule capable of making the solution viscous, according to Dr. Masoudi, is DNA, indicating that we had ruptured the cytoplasmic layers of some of the cells and made the extraction process a whole lot harder.
The list of things I absolutely despise is quite short: spiders, Sauron, Dreamworks’ Minions. But the one thing that always tops the list, the one thing that punctures my soul and leaves me dangling on a mountain of turmoil, the thing that casts an infinite shadow over everything that’s good and innocent in this world, is bleach. The lab had run out of clean spin-bottles for the centrifuge, and Dr. Masoudi assigned me the task of washing out some used bottles under a specific protocol. As you may imagine, the risk of bio-hazards in the lab is really high, and therefore the risk of contamination between experiments is also pretty high. Cleaning ordinary, 250mL spin bottles is no “scrub-a-dub-dub” and your done. It requires determination, perseverance, and grit. You really have to grab the bottle by its sides and scrub it with the force of a thousand pounds of pressure. In other words, I rinsed the bottle three times, soaked the bottles and their caps in a bleach bath, and used deionized water to eliminate any chance of cross-contamination. However, the bleach’s horrible stench made my five-minute job seem like an infinitely long ordeal, but in hindsight, it wasn’t all that bad.
Just like yesterday, I helped Dr. Li Yin out by washing some of her flasks and pipetting exact amounts of protein into a gel electrophoresis machine – the plastic contraption that divides proteins based on their molecular mass. It’s been a pleasure working with Dr. Li Yin so far, and I’m honored to have witnessed the phenomenal research that she and Dr. Masoudi are conducing to obtain the crystal structure of the beta-2 adrenergic receptor bound to our infamous protein, Nb6B9. I am looking forward to what the rest of summer has to offer!
The lab is a peculiar place. There are professors, doctors, graduate students, undergrads, and high schoolers that speed through the halls, joke around, and take the time to get to know one another. It took me two weeks to realize that it wasn’t only the chemistry in our compounds that made the science interesting – it was the chemistry between people too. The lab is a living, breathing place that depends on scientists and interns who are willing to make sacrifices for each other, who are willing to go extra lengths to not only be good researchers, but good humans as well. These past two weeks have been a formative experience for me, and although the research is overwhelming and engaging, I can’t wait to spend more time with the people that make it all possible.
Excited! (With my mom)
Pipetting solutions with varying amounts of protein to run an electrophoresis
Keeping E. Coli cells cold before we break their cell membranes with osmotic shocks
Like our initial project, we used a nickel-resin column for chromatography
Pouring bacteria into a container with buffer solution
The hourglass-like contraption to the left is a vacuum filter that pulls solutions through based on viscosity
Today was Day 8 of the Cary Academy Work Experience Program at SAS, and I spent the day in Building U with the Web Development team. I was able to see an overview of how the Web Development team actually formulated the content that goes into the webpage. Although it was an interesting endeavour, not much happened. I was able to fit in one last lunch from Building C, indulging upon the finest sushi and burgers. Later on that day, at 3:15, the entire Cary Academy Work Experience Program Members convened at Building Q to tuck into hot pieces of pizza and fill out a survey (what did I expect, it’s SAS, they love data). All in all, it was a wonderfully uneventful day; however, it served as a calming and reflective day – an ideal mood for my closing hours on the SAS campus with this program.
Today was my 8th and unfortunately last day at SAS 🙁 ! I was located in the legal department, where I was greeted by two managers who told me all about their experience at SAS. They had both been working at SAS for over 15 years so it was really interesting to hear about how the company has changed over time, and how their positions have changed as well! For example, one lady told us about how she initially majored in interior design, but then later ended up getting a job at SAS in the legal department as a contract administrator! I thought it was really neat to see how peoples career paths all varied, and she was just one of many people I met today who had big career switches! The legal department overall was much different than expected, and I initially went in thinking it was only going to be about law and what SAS can/cannot do. I ended up being way off, because although the legal department dictates that, there are also many other factions in it! There is also a finance component to the legal department as well as an IT team! Although I was sad that this was my last day, it was a great day and ending to the whole work experience program!
I can’t believe my time to FHI 360 has come to an end! To say these two weeks flew by would be an understatement, and I am so sad to leave.
Our morning began with a monthly CTID team meeting, a meeting where nearly all of the team members attend (whether in person or via the phone). There was an agenda, and we were able to learn a lot about the diverse projects they were currently working on. There was a round robin, where every member shared one of their projects as well as an obstacle they were dealing with. It was neat hearing about the various clinical trials taking place across the globe, in addition to acceptability work and projects being held with women in the field. Dr. Dorflinger led the meeting, but it was a very laid back environment, where each person got to contribute in some way. The hour and a half flew by, and I found myself immensely interested throughout the entire duration.
Our day ended with a surprise goodbye party, where all of our mentors attended and brought treats. Hope, Maddie, Caroline and I were extremely grateful, and it was really nice being able to talk to all of the wonderful people we met for one last time. Relationships were made that will definitely remain in the future, and I for one can assure our work with them has not ended – we even talked about ways we could remain in touch.
To sum, my two weeks at FHI 360 were indescribable, and truly an experience I will never forget.
Today was an awesome and fun day! We got to meet with Rob, a character artist, and Shoddy who specializes in getting models ready for animation, but can also do animation if necessary. We got to meet with Rob and he showed us some really cool stuff. He does the character models in a 3d art program called Zbrush. He claims that “anything is possible” in Zbrush and we got to see many of the features it has to offer, like textures, sculpting tools, UV maps. UV Maps are a 2d representation of a 3d object, and they can be made using MODO, and then edited in Photoshop for fine tuning details. For implementation into game engines such as Unity or Unreal Engine, he imports the character model into Maya so that Shoddy can prepare it for animation. “How?” you may ask? He takes the character model and adds joints to all the places that the animator will move. Then he can edit the joints to make sure that everything is moving naturally. For animation, he sets a few key poses that he’s wants the character to be in in the animation, and Maya blends the motion between the points to make the animation look smooth and natural. Shoddy also has the cutest but one of the most energetic pugs. He likes to sit in your lap, so as soon I sat down he jumped into my lap, and then Chandler’s. He also liked licking my fingers, but he really liked just attacking them; he was crazy and jumping to try and bite them sometimes. But because he was so cute and small, it was so funny! To conclude our visit at Mighty Rabbit Studios, they gave 5 PS4 GAMES as well as a bunch of stickers and an Octodad tie!
Today I was out on air on rock 92 which was so much fun! This morning I had to get to the station early to hand out vouchers again with Hugs, and I got back to the station to listen in on the morning show at 1075kzl with Jared and Katie. At around 925 David, a guy from rock 92 who is on their morning show, two guys named Chris, walked into the 1075kzl studio and asked if I would like to play a game with them on the air. Of course I said yes! Man Kisser Matt, a DJ on 1075 asked me if I was nervous and I told him I’m not. I was so excited that they even wanted me on the air! He explained to me what the game was and it’s called the birthday game. Basically Chris gives the name of a celebrity who’s birthday is either on that day or the day after and everyone else has to guess the age of the star. For every number off of the age you guessed compared to the actual age is how many points you get. The person with the lowest points wins. So I got to play this game on air with the other DJs, the other Chris, David and Biggie. The celebrities that were named were Johnny Depp, some basketball player that I have never heard of, Michael J Fox, and Kenny G. The DJs were surprised that I knew any of them at all because I was so young. On the show I was called the Job Shadowing Teen and playing the game was really fun. I came in second which all of them were surprised at, they thought I would lose. After I got a free t shirt from rock 92 which is awesome, I love free stuff. Everyone in the office said I did a really good job on the radio being as I had never been on the radio before. They said they were surprised I did really well as were the DJs. Overall I had such a great time at both stations and I am so thankful to have to opportunities that I experienced. I had so much fun and did so many different things. I am happy that I did the work experience program because it was a really good learning experience.
