Hi y’all! My name is Cristina Velasquez I am a rising junior and will be transferring here to CSUSM this Fall from Palomar Community College! I’ll be majoring in Biological Sciences with an emphasis in Physiology. I live in northern San Diego County in a little town called Pauma Valley (orange and avocado tree central). I am very grateful to have been accepted into this program! It has been nothing but fun so far! I joined Dr. Jameson’s lab in January through a program offered at my old college. I was observing and learning the basics of the lab and did some experiments with my lab mates and once this program started I began to do A LOT more hands on work. I am now on the alopecia areata project. Here I am on a team of 3 and we are looking at the effect gamma delta t-cells have on the hair follicle. So far I have done a couple ear peels which is a procedure where we peel apart the epidermis from the dermis of mouse ears. We then stain the peels with our antibodies of interest and look at our slides through the immunofluorescent microscope in the IF room which is a room with a dim red light to lower the light exposure since our antibodies are light sensitive. After spending hours in that room I can definitely say my eyes take a couple minutes to adjust to natural light! I have also been using the microscope on my own when doing cut staining which is a task you’d think would be easy…it’s just a microscope…nope! There’s lots of little details that need to be accounted for and it’s pretty delicate. I’ve learned how to use the crysostat which is a machine that allows us to cut our frozen skin sections and see what they look like under the microscope. It’s a “glorified deli slicer”! We mainly use this machine for cut stainings. I can’t wait to learn more skills that will make me a better researcher and eventually complete experiments all on my own by the end of the summer! Outside of the lab our REU cohort attends seminars on Wednesdays, and this week was an introductory lecture on Next Generation Sequencing given by Dr. Becket. We then had some guest speakers come in from the San Diego Safari Park Research Center and they talked about Sequencing the Genome of the Northern White Rhino. It was a very interesting talk! The Jameson lab has journal clubs each week so we all meet at a local business for a snack, coffee, or lunch and talk about the research paper for that week in a round table like discussion. This week we went to Copa Vida and talked about a paper on how dysfunctional gamma delta t-cells contribute to impaired keratinocyte homeostasis in mouse models. The day before journal club Chloe (who is a fellow REU student and is also in the Jameson lab) and I went to Tamarack Beach in Carlsbad to read the paper. It was a fun afternoon of snacks and scientific reading! Friday night after going out for dinner all the REU students hung out in our dorm and we had a mini dance party and ate my left over sushi and edamame! Saturday came and we went to Ponto Beach in Carlsbad for half the day. It was the first good beach day in a long time so it was insanely packed but it was still very fun! I went home for Fathers Day on Sunday and had some yummy food with my family! On a side note…I bought a surfboard this week lol! I am really looking forward to using it soon! Week 2 was amazing! I can’t wait for the next 8 weeks! Time is already flying by but I am enjoying and soaking up every minute of it!
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Hello! I am Christian Ihenyen, a rising senior at Howard University majoring in Biology. I am originally from Durham , NC but I'm in love with this Southern California weather. Coming into the program I was excited and curious because I had never been to the west coast before. After meeting other participants, I knew this was the program for me. My counterparts were very welcoming and willing to socialize. The first week was nothing like I would have expected. My lab made me feel very welcomed. Sometimes when you come to a space that you are not familiar with it can be really nerve wracking when it comes to not wanting to make mistakes. One thing I can say is that I'm learning something new everyday. Thanks to Dr. Read, she has a good way of setting things clear and being patient with the students. In the lab, I'm investigating the effects of salinity on anatoxin production. Right now I'm preparing my RNA extractions and I've learned so much already, for example, extraction is a bit different from DNA extraction, you have to be very fast and clean because RNA molecules degrade easily. On Tuesday we went to a delicious taco spot and I ordered almost everything on the menu. Our first day, we visited a big scientific corporation called Thermo fisher. Thermo Fisher is a very big building right in the beautiful city of Carlsbad. I was really excited to listen the panel because most of them weren't STEM majors but they had careers in science. Hearing that made me more comfortable with not having to follow a certain path because of my major. I even got the chance to introduce myself to one of the panelists who has a career in data analyst therefore I made sure to get his contact information. The fun didn't stop there though. On Saturday we went to Torrey Pines to hike and explore the beaches well. Then we went to pacific beach to celebrate fellow REU intern, Jenna's 21st birthday and this taco spot called The Taco Stand. It was definitely a success, there was some random man who even offered to pay for our McDonalds . That Sunday I took time to myself to whine down and prepare for the lab the next day. So far, the first week has been filled with great memories and the beginnings in my research career. I can’t wait for what lies ahead! |
Watch this space for weekly updates!Every week, one of our CSUSM NSF REU students will post their blurb, summarizing their week, and chronicling our program. AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
August 2023
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