Category: Blog Posts

By Joseph Thomas I still felt incredibly groggy in the morning when I rolled over to check my email inbox on my phone. I usually joke that my brain isn’t fully “on” until I have my morning coffee and this cold April Saturday was no exception. I was staying in a Philadelphia suburb with my… Continue reading From the Frontlines of COVID-19

  It was December of 2019. The ground was full of snow, my student home looked like a holiday store exploded in it, and peculiar news was circulating after a mystery disease infected a Wuhan, China local who ate a bat; we thought it was probably fake news… The year was coming to a close,… Continue reading Rolling with the Punches

By Andrew Wang As the saying goes, “If you feel like you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room”. Throughout the years I’ve had the opportunity to enjoy the company of some very smart people, not just in STEM but also diverse fields like journalism, law, politics. As much as I… Continue reading Walking my own path

By Jacob Kronenberg   When I was little, I wanted to be an inventor. At the age of five, my grandmother told me that I descended from Thomas Edison. I did some investigating and it turns out that my grandmother’s grandfather was friends with Thomas Edison’s father, Samuel Edison. It’s a tenuous connection, but when… Continue reading What I Want to be When I Grow Up

By Alara Tuncer   https://pl.pinterest.com/pin/36451078205754885/ Beep Beep Beep. I woke up punching my alarm from a vivid dream of me in the fifth-grade science fair—sheepishly presenting about tungsten lamps. This is when I should’ve known that I was going to become a scientist. What kind of 10-year-old tries to build a light bulb with tungsten… Continue reading A day in the life of a scientist….

By Stanley Chu, PhD Academia is a nomadic path for many of us who are in the early stages of our career. You spend a few years in one place to get your bachelor’s degree, pick up your life and move to go to grad school, move again for your postdoc (and again for your… Continue reading Starting a Postdoc in a Pandemic

Alara Tuncer Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop.  Perhaps I was three, maybe four, sitting in a tub, soaking in bath water. The first memory I have of my existence is one where I am sitting surrounded in bubbly splendor, holding tiny little tubes filled with color. My already large eyes grow in the reflection of the… Continue reading Why do I write as a scientist?

By: Jay Kang “This is it! This is the moment I have been waiting for!” I thought loudly, as I waited in front of my research poster for the Montclare lab. I was finally ready to present my work at the 52nd MACUB Research Conference. Looking around, I saw students standing in front of their… Continue reading Help! The Tricky Task of Communicating to a Broader Audience

By Priya Katyal After months and months of performing arduous experiments and data analysis, the time finally comes when you turn a disorganized pile of results to something orderly and beautiful. You sort and group results and put together all your scientific discoveries, piece by piece. And after multiple writing sessions that includes writing, rewriting,… Continue reading The Not So Final Version !

Livin’ Like a Protein Joshua Senior Would you believe me if I told you that during Career Day in fourth grade, I told my homeroom teacher I wanted to be a protein when I grow up?   Neither would I. That is why I’m saying it now.   Don’t worry, you read that correctly. As… Continue reading Livin’ Like a Protein