A Day in the Life


Biofuels Project (Nazli and Jordan)

8:30 – Arrive, measure Chlamydomonas reinhardtii growth, form task lists for the day

9:00 – Make media, put reactors into autoclave

10:00 – Work on experiments for bioengineering curriculum and create student examples

12:00 – Lunch with the other interns

12:30 – Work with mentor on electroporation experiments 

2:00 – Meeting with teachers about Bioengineering Curriculum

3:00 – Finish lab duties, pour plates, streak if needed 

4:30 – Measure Chlamydomonas reinhardtii 

5:00 – Leave ISB


Transcriptomics (Brooke and Myles)

8:30 am: arrive

8:45 am: measure OD values of bulch tubes in the lab

9:00 am: answer learning objective questions, read papers

9:30 am: start working on the computer project where we left off yesterday

10:30 am: meet with our mentor about problems with our program

11:00 am: after getting instruction, continue computer work with newfound confidence

12:30 pm: lunch with the other interns

1:00 pm: revise Allee effect protocol

2:00 pm: collect OD values for the 96-well plates in the lab

2:30 pm: continue work on the computer

4:00 pm: intern website planning meeting

5:00 pm: leave ISB


Systems Medicine (Chhy Chhy and Arwa)

8:30 am: Arrive, set up before Ambassadors come in

9:00 am: Greet ambassadors and begin activities

10:00 am: Listen to guest speakers, do some hands-on activities

12:00 pm: Lunch with other interns

12:30 pm: Continue working with Ambassadors

3:00 pm: Have a debrief meeting with our mentor and teachers about the day, clean up 

4:00 pm: Work on assigned tasks like preps to lead activities for the Ambassadors


Proteomics (Elisa and Iman)

8:30 am: arrive, grab a cup of fruit tea in our cool ISB mugs, check the calendar for any new events throughout the day, and meet with mentor to discuss tasks

9:00 am: lab work with sample preparation of obesity samples using s-trap digestion, gel electrophoresis, etc. (one method usually requires the entire day); every other week we had a website planning meeting at 9:00, so we would start lab work around 10. 

10:00 am: continue lab work; go to Hood-Price Lab Meeting; or go to a guest speaker’s talk 

11:00 am: continue lab work; usually waiting for incubation or speed vac, so we researched proteomics/read papers 

12:00 pm: make sure next steps of protocol are understood and the solutions needed are made 

12:30 pm: lunch break with interns (many places nearby! Plus, the ritual app is amazing for dollar food fest).

1:00 pm: complete S-trap digestion, in solution digestion, gel electrophoresis. During waiting periods, start next steps of protocol or read papers (or scientific news!) 

3:00 pm: once mass spec results started coming in, we booked conference rooms to discuss the results. Sometimes this took more than one hour depending on the topic of discussion. 

4:00 pm : website planning meeting or planning ahead for the coming days

5:00/5:30 pm: leave ISB


Data Analysis (Sanjay)

8:45 am: Come into the office, get some tea, check-in with my mentor

9:00 am: Do some research on current algorithms used for clustering

10:00 am: Continue research on Adolescent Brain Cognitive Disorder(ABCD) datasets

11:00 am: Run fingerprint analysis on the fingerprints from ABCD data

12:00 pm: Let program run, go out for lunch with interns

1:00 pm: Try percent-variant sampling of fingerprint analysis to understand how my project can be scaled to larger datasets

2:00 pm: Take a ping pong break

2:10 pm: Run the percent sampling through R to visualize results

3:00 pm: Meet with my mentor, analyze the graphs and make decisions about how to move forward

4:00 pm: Website planning meeting with the other interns

5:00 pm: Skrrt