Week 8:
University of Chicago Medical Center

August 20, 2013

It’s crazy to say that this is my last blog! I’ve had an amazing experience this summer!!! This weekend I got to meet up with Sharon, a recent Cornell graduate! We went to Navy Pier and the view from the top of the Ferris Wheel was amazing!!!

She couldn’t believe that I hadn’t had a Chicago hot dog yet so we went to Portillo’s! The food was so good!

The beginning of this week I spent most of my time working on my oral presentation and some time converting all of our confocal images into a format that will enable us to quantify the intensity of the quantum dots, which would give us an idea of differences between cell types in the amount of exosomes that were taken up. This came from the comparing non-enriched confocal images with environmentally enriched images. The image on the left is of non-enriched exosomes and the image on the right is of environmentally enriched exosomes. As you can see there is some differences in the intensity/amount of exosomes that were taken up.

Tuesday evening my friends and I sent out for sushi. I had never had it before and I don’t know if I will ever have it again 🙂

Wednesday was the big day! I presented my research at the 2013 Chicago Research Forum and Poster Session. I was a bit nervous for the presentation, but my lab was super awesome and let me do a couple run-throughs with them ahead of time.

Here is my poster for my summer research. It turned out very well I think! It was great a experience having to prepare a scientific research presentation and poster. Below is Dr. McDade who is the person who created the PSOMER program I was a part of this summer.

Thursday was my last day working in the lab for this summer. I worked on actually quantifying the images I formatted earlier this week. I didn’t get to finish it, but the results I did get were very interesting!
Friday I had to move out of the dorms and say goodbye to everyone. I made some amazing friends this summer and had an amazing experience! It was crazy to think that 8 weeks ago my suitemates and I were complete strangers and now are great friends!

Turning my keys for the lab in and saying goodbye to everyone in the lab was hard! They were great mentors for me this summer and taught me so much!