Margaret Turner ’20
Week 8:
End of the Line
July 27, 2019 | My senior year is fast approaching, and this summer internship has come to an end. To anyone who has read all my entries: thank you. You are a trooper. Or you’re using these blog posts to help you fall asleep. I have a couple of final thoughts on what I have gained from my time […]
Week 7:
Meet and Greet
July 20, 2019 | Life in the Lab Allow me to introduce you to someone who is both friend and coworker to me: Dr. Kisha Sivanathan. Kisha is originally from Malaysia, which is where she spent her undergrad years. She moved to Australia and earned her PhD at the University of Adelaide. She works in the Nowarski lab as […]
Week 6:
I Become a Tourist
July 12, 2019 | No “life in the lab” or “biology corner” sections this week, folks. Very off-brand of me, I know. This week, I took some time off work because my family came to town. They drove the family RV from Longmont, CO, all the way to North Carolina and have been working their way up the east coast […]
Week 5:
Science on the Rocks
July 5, 2019 | Life in the lab at the beach This week, the Harvard Medical School Department of Immunology had its annual retreat. We stayed at the Sea Crest Beachside Hotel in Cape Cod. The Sea Crest is easily within the nicest three hotels I have ever had the pleasure of occupying. The food was excellent, the rooms […]
Week 4:
If You Give a Mouse Some Drugs
June 23, 2019 | Life in the lab This weekend, our lab attended a symposium about neurodegenerative diseases. But Margaret, you might be thinking, your lab doesn’t seem to do anything related to the brain. And you would be right! Good observation. When Dr. Nowarski joined Harvard, he moved into the Ann Romney Center for Neurological Diseases for obscure bureaucratic reasons that […]
Week 3:
And Genetic Manipulation is Half the Battle!
June 15, 2019 | Life in the Lab One of my most pressing concerns was to renew my access to the labyrinthine halls where we keep our mouse colony. Fortunately, that soon happened. Work in the mouse house is never in short supply. I wean pups from their parents. I genotype — that is, I test mice to see […]
Week 2:
The Proverbial Office Water Cooler
June 5, 2019 | Life in the lab People are often drawn to the glamour of research. It has a reputation as an intellectually-stimulating line of work where your brain is always churning. And, to be sure, there is some of that. But research has its quiet moments as much as any other job. We label tubes, organize reagents, […]
Week 1:
Return to Boston
May 26, 2019 | Back to the Nowarski Lab In 2018, I was accepted to Harvard Medical School’s Undergraduate Immunology Summer Program. I spent ten weeks in Dr. Roni Nowarski‘s lab, where I had the unique experience of working with brilliant (but understanding) coworkers, cutting-edge biomedical technology, and hundreds upon hundreds of mice. Through the support of the Cornell […]