Goodbye IMEC! - Ariel Slepyan

Wow, I cannot believe my internship at IMEC is over! In two days, I return to the US and back to my normal life. My time in Leuven was incredible and I am extremely grateful for this opportunity. Not only did I learn a lot about science research, I also matured as an individual and learned a lot about myself.

This past Friday I gave my final presentation to the Life Sciences department, and I think the presentation went really well; once my turn came to present I wasn’t nervous and everyone seemed to follow and I got some positive responses after I finished. My presentation was very visual and I think this helped keep the audience engaged and interested. While I wish I had more time to continue working on my project, I am confident my work has laid a solid foundation for others to build from. I am excited to see how the project progresses in a few years.

One of my favorite experiences about doing research at IMEC was being respected as an undergraduate researcher. This allowed me to ask my own questions and propose new ideas or suggestions for the project. My supervisors listened and took my opinions seriously.

Looking back on my work this summer, I now realize that I have accomplished a vast amount of work. I liked working in the summer because I had so much time, and in general the summer atmosphere is less stressful and there is less pressure to get concrete results. Because of this, I was able to spend time on optimizing our device, and able to do a lot computer simulation in COMSOL.

When I return to my lab at Hopkins in the fall, I plan to use some of the skills I learned here to better my research project from back home. For example, I think running COMSOL simulations on certain aspects of my microfluidic project will bring a lot of insight and could potentially save lots of time in the future. Although I am not sure if I want to do a PhD, I am considering doing one, and maybe I will even come back to IMEC to do so.

During my time here I made a lot of friends, both professional and personal. While saying goodbye is tough, I am happy to have met so many people and I’m grateful to have had this amazing opportunity.

Goodbye for now Belgium!