As someone who becomes particularly nervous and faint-hearted at the idea of public speaking, the chalk talks last week seemed like a daunting task. Nevertheless, my talk came and passed, and I was blown away by the variety of topics that everyone’s research concerned. Basically this was me:
Last week’s chalk talks were all really incredible, but one that I was particularly interested in was Nina Sun’s. She is designing a protein in order to improve on the design of carbon nanotube electrodIes that can sense what is happening inside of a cell. The protein is meant to create a protective seal between the cell membrane and the electrode by taking advantage of the propeties of the phospilipid bilayer so that the probe doesn’t damage the cell and cause it to rupture upon insertion. To do this she works with protein modeling programs and algorithms such as PyMole and OSPREY in order to visualize and modify taproteins on her computer.
I think what really interested me about Nina’s research was the fact that she doesn’t work in a traditional biology lab, but rather works with computer simulations. Her work is extremely interdisciplinary, an amalgamation of computer science, mathematics, biology, and chemistry. The ability to combine so many fields is really cool to me, and I’m eager to see how Nina and everyone else’s projects turns out at the end of the program.
