July 20, 2014
By: Victoria Green
A couple weeks back, the HHRFs were able to hear about Dr. Susan Alberts' research with baboons. As someone who is super interested in spending a semester in South Africa(which is only 2,000-3,000 miles from Kenya), it was exciting to learn about...
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By: Aitana Zermeno
Every week we have been fortunate enough to have a few different Duke faculty members speak to us about their research, and more importantly, how they got into their research. Researchers are definitely busy people, so I feel lucky to have...
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By: Becky Li
Part of what I love about the faculty talks, is that we're not just learning "facts" you can get out of a science textbook. We're seeing how science is actually being applied to the real world. We're not hearing about the...
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July 19, 2014
By: Nina Sun
Between biweekly faculty talks with the Howard Hughes program and the weekly talks in the Computer Science department, this summer has been truly a plunge into academia. While I enjoyed listening to all the research, what I liked most about the...
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By: Erin Brooks
So what happens if I continue on in research? How does that work? Listening to the weekly seminars given by Duke faculty has given me a better understanding of how the career of a scientist pans out. Through the seminars,...
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July 16, 2014
By: Wilson Brace
If this summer has taught me one thing, it's that a lot the work you put into research is invisible. Looking at my project now in the data collection phase, the method is very different from how we thought we'd...
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July 15, 2014
By: Victoria Green
My mentor, Ben, likes to joke about providing us with an "authentic research experience;" which includes many highs and lows. This week featured a (multiple) mad dash(es) to find enough lab supplies for a time sensitive operation, 4 rides with...
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By: Feimei Liu
Even though the Howard Hughes summer program is drawing to an end, my project is far from completion. My goal is to reprogram fibroblasts into smooth muscle cells. The first half of the summer was spend on literature research, experimental...
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By: Daniel Lam
It was when I started writing the title that I noticed how fast time has passed and how little time I have left with the program and my lab this summer. There is some ambivalence, some bittersweet, some comfort that the...
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July 14, 2014
By: Levi Edouna
Sadly, the adventure of discovery for scientific treasure has turned to the stages of monotonous digging. It strikes me that research, like any activity, is something that you grow accustomed to. Well, the experimental benchwork part at least. I kept...
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By: Michael Ortuño
Even though we have all only been doing research in the HHRF program for 6 weeks, it has become evident to me why they call it "research." Somewhere along the line, somebody probably searched for the answer to some question...
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By: Alcida Karz
Most of life in the lab, to be completely honest, is not at all exciting. I pipet things into tubes, mix them together, and move them into different tubes with other things. There is a peace to be found in...
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By: Vanessa Wu
When I came into the HHRF program, I had extremely naive and overblown ideas of how much I would be able to accomplish. Retrospectively, the idea that I would definitely have some kind of concrete results is almost funny now. Ever since...
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July 13, 2014
By: Jo Zhu
Expectations. First week of the program, I had in mind three things I wish to accomplish: to learn how to ask questions as it’s the important first step of research, to reach out and take initiatives such that we would...
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By: Mitch Lee
Science is difficult. I said that I expected this coming into the program, and indeed I have been proven to have anticipated correctly. Oddly enough, however, I came into this program expecting the theory behind the science to be the...
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By: Azeb Yirga
As another week comes to a too-soon end, I am forced to wonder where my summer has gone and what has happened to the eight weeks that I thought would take forever. Over the course of this internship, I would...
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By: Hannah Kwak
It's hard to believe that I have already spent 6 weeks working in Professor Williams' lab - we only have 2 more weeks to go, and I am nowhere near done. Despite the relatively short period of time that I...
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By: Matt Alston
After six long weeks grappling with matlab I'm just about ready to start collecting data. I've organized all of the coding steps into separate scripts, and with one exception they all seem to be running smoothly. I am still struggling with...
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