Work hard, play hard

I think it was the wise Wiz Khalifa who said "work hard, play hard," a phrase that comes to mind when I think about my summer in Leuven so far. My weekdays are filled with many hours at imec, constantly going back and forth between my cozy office desk and the convergence lab where I conduct my experiments. On the weekends I find myself traveling all over - from little towns in Belgium to bigger, more touristy cities like Rome (where I went this weekend with Gwen and Victoria). Between these two, I haven't been able to sleep in past 9AM. Yet, I find this summer to be really interesting, rewarding, and fun.

I've been able to finish the first part of my project!! It dealt with optimizing PCR efficiency by testing different hydrophobic coatings and seeing which gave high fidelity while still producing the similar results to what we had originally. So while I'm processing data for that part, I'm starting a new, but similar project: a digital droplet PCR that takes approximately 10 minutes rather than 1 hour.

 Rodrigo said that I'll be using the best coating (chosen by the data I got from the first part of my project) and testing different assay and surfactant combinations to find the best one for this process. While I will still be using the same equipment and devices for running the experiment and analyzing the data, I think this will definitely show me other aspects of on-chip PCR that I didn't have time to look at previously. And honestly, the best part is that it only takes a fraction of the time from the regular ddPCR so I'll be able to do more experiments within a day.

Let's talk about my travels: I went to Rome this weekend! I've never been to Italy before and let me just say, every part of it was amazing. The food, the sights, the people - all perfect. I think the weather was a little too hot for me (I got my first sunburn ever) but I just ignored that and cooled down by eating a lot of gelato.

What I liked most about Rome was all the fountains spread across the town. This seems like such an insignificant thing when you compare it to Palatine Hill or the Coliseum. But after spending hours in 34C degree heat, these little spouts seemed like gold to me. I'm being dramatic, yet I do think having these potable drinking fountains were nice especially since it let me avoid spending mucho dinero on the water bottles from tourist traps.

Overall, the past weeks have been wonderful, both work and play wise. I'll definitely keep updating as my new project goes along and as I continue my adventures to Germany this weekend.

---Rachel Bang

PCR, programming and Dublin

Since my last blog post, my research project has moved from doing some preliminary testing using a commercially available PCR cycler to a droplet-in-oil PCR setup. The setup is challenging because it involves lots of tiny microfluidic elements, but the process has started to become easier as I gain experience with it.

St Michan's Church

We are using ImageJ and Matlab to analyze our data, so I’ve had to familiarize myself with ImageJ and refresh my memory slightly on Matlab programming. As a computer science minor, I have been enjoying putting some of those skills to practical use! At Imec I think we have settled into our work and have a better understanding of what to expect.

This past weekend, I returned to the English-speaking world by making a trip to Dublin, Ireland. It was my first time traveling alone, but it went smoothly and I’m glad I made the trip! My favorite part of the trip was visiting Bray, a seaside town not far from Dublin. There I was able to hike up a large hill called Bray’s Head to some incredible views of the surrounding sea, town, and mountains. 

Another highlight was a tour of the crypts at St. Michan’s church. There, the constant temperature, the release of methane gas from the ground, and moisture absorbing limestone walls caused the bodies in the crypts to become mummified. The tour was extremely interesting and engaging in large part because the excellent tour guide. Overall I found Dublin to be friendly and enjoyable!

---Gwen Hoffmann

After climbing Bray's Head

The Comfort Zone

While planning this blog, I had a really great idea to do a “Top Five Things I Learned From Leuven” post, with cute little anecdotes illustrating how I’ve changed and what challenges I’ve faced working in this environment. But as I started brainstorming ideas, I realised that everything I was thinking of all fell under the same umbrella, and could be summed up nicely in one sentence:

It’s okay to feel like you have no idea what you’re doing.
From the moment I stepped off the plane and had to search for my luggage, find which train headed to Leuven from signs in a new language, and make my way to our dorm, I was bewildered, confused, and unsure every step of the way - all before even getting to work! Perhaps where I felt it most poignantly was in my second week of work, when I analysed waveguides on my own for the first time. Though I’d used the system several times before, I was still second-guessing myself the entire time getting the laser aligned and the microscope ready. The whole time I wondered to myself, why are they letting me be in charge of this (very expensive) equipment all by myself, when I haven’t even been working for a full week?

Moments like this were a common occurrence: finding the right train to get to Brussels, buying food without understanding what was in it, trying to navigate a completely new city, working on projects at IMEC that were completely new from what I’ve done at Hopkins. I was completely, totally out of my comfort zone.

But from this, I learned. I learned that you have to trust yourself, and trust the skills you didn’t know you had. Though I had never worked with waveguides or optical fibres, within a couple weeks I could analyse entire sets in an hour or two, more efficiently than anyone expected. Though I’d never worked with cardiac cells or micropatterned chips, I worked entirely independently for two weeks while my supervisor was at a conference in the States, and was able to get a lot of good data and refine our protocol along the way. In high school and at Hopkins I’d learned the basics - how to use a microscope, how to culture cells, how the cells actually work, how to analyse and present data. And for the first time, it was up to me to use these skills without anyone looking over my shoulder, and make something meaningful using them. “What am I doing?” turned into “Yeah, I got this,” and I’ve come out of it much more confident in my skills, both in what I’ve been used to doing, and my ability to adapt to new situations and use what I know to solve the problems I’m given.

I’ve also learned how important a supportive team can be. My first time using the fancy confocal microscope, I wasn’t very confident that I would do it right. But two of my team members were there, who offered to answer every question I had and help if I didn’t know how to use the system or something wasn’t working. My supervisor himself, if we were struggling getting something to work, would suggest that we take a water break and just have a few minutes to chat before returning to our work with clearer heads. Even though they’d only known me for a day or two, my team welcomed me with the proverbial open arms, and I never felt like I wasn’t part of the team for a single second. Something as simple as having lunch together every day made the experience much more meaningful than just getting the work done and collecting data - I made new friendships, heard the suggestions of others, and gained practical knowledge pertaining to both the lab and life in Leuven.

So, I learned it was okay to feel like I didn’t know what I was doing. Because I could trust myself and what I know to solve the problems in front of me. Where I stumbled, I could trust my supervisor and my team to be there to help and guide me, or even just make me laugh in a day full of hour upon hour of imaging cells.

Being out of your comfort zone isn’t a bad thing in the least - it’s when you find out how much you can really do and how much you can really grow. Because of that, I’ve learned to trust my own abilities, and how important having a diverse group of people to work with can be. More than anything I’ve learned about heart cells or lens-free imaging, these are the lessons that will stick with me.

--- Rebecca Black