Let the Adventure Begin!

Hello! I am Laura Scarpelli excited to blog for the next 8 weeks about my summer research experience at Duke!

As a rising sophomore interested in the field of Biomedical Engineering, I need to explore this broad major I have chosen for myself. Which brings me back to Durham, NC for a wonderful and optimistic summer of biological research (yay)! I first knew I wanted to study BME when I couldn’t decide between the creative aspect of engineering and molecular biology, so I said let’s put those two together and pursue biomedical engineering! When I was younger, I was am a very avid LEGO builder. I would follow the handbook piece by piece, but once I would finish, I would take it all apart and build it differently, just the way I liked. As I grew older and started taking more interesting classes I fell in love with biology and cells and genetics that all make up and support us. So that is my little romantic background with BME.

Although I have chosen the path of BME, as I find it intriguing and full of opportunities, I do not have as much knowledge about it as I would like, bringing me to the main reason I expect from my research experience this summer: to learn. And as generic as that sounds, it is the plain truth. I want to feel the adrenaline of having a test work perfectly, or the hurtful pain I’ll sense after multiple failures. I want to conduct experiments on cells I have never heard of yet are so imperative to our system. I expect to also be able to read and interpret tissue maps – identifying certain markers in these images and understanding their roles. I expect to learn more than just the project I am working on and understand the connections between all the projects in the lab. Most importantly, I want to figure out if this is what I see myself doing for the rest of my life, and it sounds kind of scary, but I am extremely eager and motivated to uncover this part of me.

But…. I also want to have a lot of fun and make a summer at Duke just as memorable as my first year here!

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