People, Plants, Presentations, and Plans - Sharada Narayanan

My research at imec is going along well and is a good mix of meaningful results and new challenges to tackle. After moving from on-chip blood DNA extraction to bacterial DNA extraction, I noticed a lot of additional clogging in the chip and perplexing trends (and lack thereof) in the resulting extracted DNA output. I was able to eliminate the clogging issues by using chips with larger distances between the silicon micropillars inside the chip cavity and I am currently looking at other DNA quantification methods, such as qPCR, that are less sensitive to contaminants. 

Me at my lab bench

entering data into Excel.

This Tuesday I presented on my data at the MolBio group meeting. Everybody in my group gives presentations sitting down which made it feel a lot less like a formal presentation and more like a casual discussion of my data and results. A lot of unanswered questions have popped up during my research and my team members gave me helpful advice and suggestions for future experiments. My team feels distinctly non-hierarchical, which is different from the university lab structure I am used to. This has allowed me to simultaneously feel more confident in my ideas and work, and also more willing to approach people and ask questions.  

Something else I’ve noticed at imec that I don’t see at a university is the blurred distinction between academic research and becoming a career scientist/engineer. Many people I have met did their PhD or master’s work at imec and then became a payroll scientist at imec, continuing the same work that they had done for their thesis. My mentor, Rodrigo, has strongly encouraged me to get my master’s degree next year to help me decide whether I would enjoy a career in academia or industry. My conversations with my colleagues about higher education and post-bac decisions has made me strongly consider the JHU INBT’s Co-Op Master’s degree program because it helps to connect the often vague ties between academia and industry that I’ve been searching for.

Beyond work, I’ve stayed local in Leuven the past couple weeks. Last weekend I emptied my wallet and filled my stomach at the weekly Saturday Market in Leuven, burned off some of those calories at the quirky art museum nearby, wandered through the lush botanical garden, and spent many hours reading in the parks in Leuven, before coming back to Wisteria to watch the US Women’s soccer team trounce the Netherlands and win their fourth world cup.

 

The Winding Road of Progress - Thomas DiSorbo

Since my last blog, I have made substantial progress to my research project. Ironically, the progress did not come steadily, but rather appeared almost all at once, only a few days ago. 

I am attempting to use electrical signals to partially lyse a single cell and the past two weeks have centered mostly around searching for a suitable electrode configuration for the lysis. Working with a set of pre-designed electrodes, I have been testing designs for their ability to both electrically “capture” cells, which occurs via an electric force called dielectrophoresis, and “lyse” them, or destroy their outer membranes. Because I am working with electrode arrays designed for other purposes and attempting to adapt them to my project, there has been a lot of experimentation over suitable designs -- the electrodes should be small enough to target a single cell yet strong enough to destroy the cell. I finally found a design that allows for both targeted cell capture and cell lysis. This electrode allows me to begin investigation into partial cell lysis, where I will attempt to rupture the outer cell membrane while preserving the inner nuclear membrane. 

Soldering station where I make connections for the electrodes

Though there is still much work to be done, but it is a refreshing to have meaningful, impactful data to parse through and analyze, where I am challenged to ask reaching questions with future implications instead of simply trying to understand what went wrong. This process is the ebb and flow of scientific investigation that I have found pervades every research position I have held. Progress has a choppy flow, but failures are often necessary to find solutions.

LabView program I wrote to control a waveform generator

The past few weeks I have had more time to reflect on the community at imec as a whole. In contrast to my experiences in America, many of my team members here make a point of eating lunch together. This time at lunch seems to be the most frequent time they are all together as a group, as they have a relatively strict cap on the time limit for their biweekly team meetings. This is something I have not experienced in America, where the meetings have often run much longer. It is interesting and endearing to see how in either environment, there remains an emphasis team interaction and community.