Week 7 - Sara

This week was not exactly as how I planned it due to an unexpected hospital survey. As summer immersion students, we were given proper hospital procedure training, so we were not allowed to be in the hospital during the week since the survey team could question anyone with a badge on. That was unfortunate, but understandable. We were advised to stay in the medical school and complete our research project.

I have pretty much finished my research project last week and planned to go to ER and MICU this week, and perhaps a plastic surgery. Due to the hospital survey, I decided to spend more time to analyze my data. I spent a day in the library analyzing my flow cytometry data further (learning a new software took a long time!). I also prepared graphs to use for my poster.

The following day, I had a final meeting with Dr. Nanus to wrap up the project. He proposed to look at the expression in circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from patients as these would be different from cancer cell line. His post-doc is preparing samples from different patients and will look at expression of different markers soon. I talked to Gunjan (the post-doc) and she agreed to look at the expression of the CTCs with the antibodies I left behind.

The rest of the week I cleaned up my work space and got a head start on my poster and report.

Overall, the summer immersion term was AMAZING! I am very glad to have the opportunity to undertake this experience. At first, I only came as it was required, but after a few weeks, I finally realize why it was necessary. This experience allowed me to understand clinical applications of biomedical engineering as well as to observe different clinical aspects in which biomedical engineering can be used to enhance and improve current process. The past 7 weeks allowed me to appreciate what biomedical engineering truly is and changed how i perceived my graduate education. All in all, I am truly glad to have completed all this!