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oh no! the fish didn't work!

[Machine learning for Infection detection] A year ago, my mother took me to the hospital. I had no idea that I would not leave that building until two weeks later. In advance, I’d like to warn readers that this post may stray a bit from my usual posts that give tidbits of my days at the museum and silly childhood memories. But, after all, it is the one year anniversary, so I feel like my two truths and a lie “no way” piece of information deserves a bit of attention.  Last Ja

Turns out, research isn’t a streamlined process. There are setbacks, and those setbacks can be annoying, especially after you’ve sat for forty minutes on a stool waiting for DNA molecules to run through a gel and getting excited to see a visual product of months of hard laboratory work. As mentioned in the last post, we were testing two primers and seeing which one would work better for this DNA. As I sat there, listening to the low hum of the lab’s air conditioner, I prayed

To nerds like me who find any part of the DNA barcoding process worthy of being labeled “cool,” I think it can go without saying that running gels is the coolest part. You probably have some questions - gel? Like for nail polish? And where are they running? I don’t blame you, it’s a little confusing. The scientific process is called Gel Electrophoresis, which, in simpler terms, means running an electric current through a gel made of agarose in order to move DNA molecules (whi

It’s finally my favorite time of the year, the holidays! It finally snowed last weekend and I got the chance to play in the snow with my family, which made me feel a little bit like a kid again. I still regularly attend the museum every Tuesday and Thursday, and I can feel a little bit of that holiday spirit in the air. People are wearing red sweaters and I’ve attended two parties, a museum-wide holiday party and a vertebrae christmas party—words you’ll only hear in an instit

If there’s one thing about me that you should know, it’s that I love taking photos and videos. From a young age, I’ve been giving tours around my house, recording videos on how to toast bread, attempting to do karaoke, putting on puppet shows, and taking hundreds and hundreds of selfies in the mirror. I like going back to photos to re-experience the moment whenever I’m feeling nostalgic. Last week, I was feeling especially proud of myself in the lab. My mentor, Pedro, was ver

Before we moved to our new house ten blocks north, my family used to live in a two-bedroom apartment on 79th and Amsterdam. Although the move was a few years ago, I still find myself reminiscing about that home, where I spent the majority of my childhood. One particular memory is eating weekend dinners at the Indian restaurant Saravana Bhavan under our building. What my brother and I looked forward to most were the little seeds coated in sugar, called saunf ,   that were mean

At first glance , the above tubes look similar to popsicle molds, and I wouldn’t blame you for thinking so either. When I saw these tubes I was immediately reminded of the popsicles my mom used to make for me and my brother over long, hot New York City summers while we were growing up. I used to stand by her in the kitchen and watch her make a yummy purple smoothie, pour it into little ice-cream-cone shaped molds in a blue tray, and then put it in the freezer and tell me that

In the spirit of Halloween, I felt inclined to revisit something a little bit spooky—little glow-in-the-dark stars in petri dishes. To the average human, it is apparent that these little “stars” only seem to be glowing in the top petri dish and not the bottom. Was this a mistake? Wouldn’t it be cooler if the stars in the other dish were glowing as well? Turns out the stars are actually Escherichia coli bacteria—one genetically modified to glow just like jellyfish do. Yeah, yo