Blog Posts

The New Vanguard: First-Generation Students

 By Stanley Chu

Being the first to accomplish something, especially in STEM, is an achievement. Pioneers are lauded for their contributions to the field and remembered for their triumphs. But what’s  often forgotten is the loneliness, insecurity, and oftentimes guilt associated with that journey. First-generation students, those that are the first in their family to attend college, face a similar struggle. While it is difficult to pin an exact definition of who is included in this group, what can be said about first-generation (first-gen) students is that they often “lack the critical cultural capital necessary for college success because their parents did not attend college.”1 This “cultural capital” refers to the intangibles that contribute to student success in a college setting.

As a first-gen student, perhaps one of the toughest challenges I’ve had to face in pursuing higher education was my relationship with my family. My family immigrated to America from Hong Kong in the 80’s. As is true for many immigrant families, the move was inspired with the hopes of having more opportunities in America. It’s the dream of many immigrant parents to watch their kids pursue higher education. While I was able to earn my PhD in STEM, I wasn’t able to share the entirety of this journey with my mother. For one, I simply do not have the Chinese vocabulary to describe Chemical Engineering to my mother. I lack the language to describe my research and to accurately portray the rigors of academia. While my family has been approving in my academic pursuits, they were unable to act as an effective support system during my undergraduate and graduate years when it came to academic affairs.

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March 2nd, 2020|

My Interest in Protein Engineering Research

By Xiaole Wang

In one of my undergraduate biochemistry labs, I was introduced to sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). This is a process by which proteins are separated based on size from a protein sample with various kinds of protein. Running these experiments sparked my interest in biology research. After this experience, I joined a lab where I studied a food related polypeptide derived from naked oats. I was surprised to find that this kind of polypeptide is able to prevent blood sugar spikes after meals. Because I desired to understand proteins with greater nuance, I followed up my undergraduate study by enrolling in the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, majoring in biotechnology. In addition to my studies in the Engineering department, Dr. Montclare has given me the opportunity to volunteer in her lab where I have broadened my experience in protein related research, especially in protein engineering.

 

sds-page

Line pressed with loading buffer of samples during SDS-PAGE

 

I am amazed that proteins, composed of only 20 different building blocks, bear function in almost all of life’s activities. They play an essential role in daily exercise, cellular growth, metabolism, immunity, gene inheritance, and evolution of species. From microscopic creatures to dinosaurs with legs the size of the Parthenon’s columns, life cannot exist without proteins. However, there are many proteins that remain unknown in their function. Scientists continue to make steps in uncovering the mystery of nature by identifying new proteins. With the advances in gene manipulation, it is now possible to produce artificial “engineered” proteins. These engineered proteins can be developed to address issues in human health care. For instance, the creation [...]

February 16th, 2020|

Breaking the Gender Stereotypes in STEM

By Jordyn Pierre-Raphael

Most little girls like to play dress-up with their dolls, but when I was younger I always treated my dolls as “patients,” who needed my help with a fever or a stuffy nose. I remember that I would wear a lab coat and use my plastic stethoscope to listen to my patients’ heartbeats. At this young age is when I first decided I wanted to become a doctor for the simple reason that I found helping people to be rewarding. In retrospect, I acknowledge my naivety because many occupations involve helping people in one way or another, but my motivations have certainly changed as I have matured and become more interested in the field of science.

In high school, I have developed a passion for science because it challenges me while simultaneously feeds my sense of curiosity. I have taken almost all of the accelerated science courses offered at my school, and my favorite of the many I have taken so far would definitely have to be Experimental Chemistry. It is a semester laboratory intensive course where I was exposed to some of the challenges that must be addressed in moving a chemical reaction from the page to the plant. This course taught me about advanced laboratory techniques for synthesis, purification, and analysis of compounds, including thin layer chromatography, gas chromatography, and UV-Vis spectroscopy, and the hands-on aspect of the course reminded me of my work in the Montclare Lab. I think the most important concept that I learned from the course is how important it is to approach problem-solving with a creative and collaborative mindset, and I have carried [...]

February 10th, 2020|

What I’ve Learned to Live My Best Life as a Maker in the Lab

By Shengbo Guo

Edited by Eliza Neidhart

Having graduated two months ago, I am situated at a point of transition. I cannot be counted as a student technically, yet I continue to work in the lab and interact with the world just as any other student. We students stay up late, wake up early, and have fully committed our lives to be intertwined with work. My research in protein engineering requires me to return to the lab at strange times.

 

What is a protein? We know proteins are found in the meat and beans that we eat. This is because they are the building blocks of animals and plants! Inside of animals and plants, they act like tiny workers in a factory, performing tasks for the larger organism. Some proteins chop our food into tiny digestible bits (proteins can chop proteins! woa!) while others do quality control to ensure our bodies produce safe and quality materials.

The protein I am working on is Phosphotriesterase, aka PTE. I think of it as a tiny machine that convertsF toxic pesticides and military grade nerve agents into nontoxic substances

Now, back to my daily life. To give you a better idea of my research I’d like to describe my research processes as if it were a recipe for finicky cookies.

EXPERIMENTAL FLOWER COOKIES

Ingredients:

  • 3 Tablespoons of yeast

January 31st, 2020|

Materials I Consume in a Single Bioengineering Experiment

By Yifei Wang

When my mom last visited me from China she saw my daily tasks in the Montclare lab. Upon returning home, she confided that she now understood why clinical treatments are so expensive. She saw the high cost of bioengineering research, including both physical materials and dollars. Inspired by the discussion with my mother, I decided to count the number of single use items consumed in a cycle of sample protein production to quantify some of the costs of research.

Sample Protein Production Overview

The production of sample protein begins by inserting the target protein’s DNA into E.coli. cells. The E.coli. containing the protein’s DNA are grown to produce the desired protein, almost like a protein factory. Our lab uses these proteins as a drug delivery material.

Sample Protein Production 

We first make a dish to grow and select cells. E.coli. take 14-16 hours to grow on the plates. This step requires the following single-use items: 3 plastic dishes, 3 glass pipettes, 2 small Eppendorf tubes, and 6 micropipette tips.

 

Then we select a small portion one cell colony and place it into a test tube with media for growing cells. We let it grow overnight. We need 1 glass test tube, 10 micropipet tips, and 3 serological pipettes for this step.

The next day we grow the cells in a larger flask for a greater yield. We centrifuge them into a pellet and dump the liquid media. In this step approximately 8 Eppendorf tubes, 6 micropipette tips, and 6 serological pipettes are used for each of the 6 pellets.

January 17th, 2020|

The Stars In My Television

By Joseph Thomas

 

As the static of the TV crackled, I heard my mom call from the kitchen. She couldn’t understand why I would just sit on the floor and stare into the screen set to a channel with no video signal. As the specks of gray and black flashed in front of me I couldn’t help but imagine I was the captain of a rocket flying through the stars at warp speed. Endless worlds passed by me in an instant and I had a sense that my purpose in life was to explore and catalog these unknowable realms. I knew that space travel was still in its infancy, but I was only five years old at the time and there was still plenty of time for technology to catch up to my ambitions. I knew that we would most likely have spaceships by the time I was 18 and that I would grow up to be a space captain. This is the first time in my life I distinctly remember yearning to explore the universe and find out what made it tick; my first scientific memory.

 

Mysid, TV noise, marked as public domain, more details on Wikimedia Commons.

 

As I grew older I explored other career options such as being a Major League Baseball pitcher, railroad engineer, and garbage man but I always seemed to come back to being some kind of explorer. As the idea of college loomed I was disheartened that Space Captain was still not a viable career, but there was still plenty of exploration to do on the [...]

January 8th, 2020|

My Early Connection to Science

By: Yao Wang

My connection to science starts early. By early, I mean really early. My mom always tells me the story about my one-year-old catch, which is an ancient Chinese tradition for determining the child’s talent at his/her first birthday. In China, we believe everybody is gifted in something and this magical divination is the methodology to tell.

During my catch, a line of toys representing a different occupation or future was presented to me.  My mom said, I crawled straight to the pink toy that represented science, ignoring all the money and gold on the floor. Not sure it was the pink part or toy part that got me. But all my family were very happy with my instinct choice, especially my grandparents who were both scientists. Ever since then, I grew up with my grandparents’ science stories, which fascinated me and nucleated a science dream in a little girl’s mind. However, science was still far-reaching for me until in high school, when I conducted my first experiment on observation of my own epithelial cells. For the first time, the science was more than a story or an image on the book. I clearly remember how simple the experiment was but how much joy I had. After that, I experienced my first physics and then chemistry experiment. I had a lot of fun from testing Newton’s Law to observing the color reaction. However, the scene of vivid epithelial cell under the microscope stuck in my head and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was the moment that I knew I was determined.

Following my heart, I completed my B.S. study, focusing [...]

December 17th, 2019|

Stepping Out Of My Comfort Zone and Into STEM

By Jay Kang

I think one of the major obstacles I face while pursuing an education in STEM is self-doubt, especially as an undergraduate working in the Montclare Lab and surrounded by many impressive colleagues. The people I work with have either achieved a PhD or plan to pursue a PhD in the future, and seeing them work hard in the lab is very inspiring, but also very daunting because it makes me think about what I will do after I graduate.

As a BS/MS student, I never considered pursuing a PhD, and instead just figured I would try to achieve a masters in biotechnology. Yet, what will I do after that? This thought haunts me every day because even though I think there is something greater I can do, I immediately shut that idea down and deem it irrational. Consequently, I feel stagnant. I can choose to follow one path, but then I ask myself, “Is this the right choice?”. This anxiety coupled with self-doubt just makes it harder for me to think there is something I can do.

[Above: Jay Kang mixing a protein sample in the concentration filter tube]

I do not want to be afraid of working hard in STEM anymore. I do not have any particular role models that inspired me to enter the STEM field, but I am inspired by few of my undergraduate colleagues, particularly the zealous ones, to be passionate about what I am studying today. When I asked a colleague why she would take several hard courses while participating in an extracurricular research team, she simply replied “because I enjoy the subject and [...]

December 2nd, 2019|

Two Parts Entwined

By Shanya Sam

STEM is rigorous. It forces me to use all parts of my brain, and I would eventually overload if it wasn’t for sports. I play basketball and soccer throughout the school year to de-stress. It’s an outlet for me that ensures my mental and physical health does not deteriorate. It provides me with a balanced mind and body because while STEM stimulates my mind, sports keep me active. The competitions and games have taught me to be more mindful by focusing on the immediate challenge rather than always stressing over the future and how to solve its problems.

The first ball I picked up was a basketball. I learned to play basketball in the third grade when my family and I moved to Tennessee. We were alone in a foreign place, so it was a way to connect with my older brother. Even today, it is something we bond over as we go to each other’s games and support one another. It slowly evolved into a necessity for me over the years.

Prior to moving, I was an antsy kid with an explosive temper. Basketball was my first outlet for all of the emotions coursing through me. It grounded me, helped me focus, and helped me learn discipline. These attributes I still carry throughout school life, and without them, I highly doubt I would be where I am today academically.

In my last year of junior high school, the girls basketball team was cut due to the lack of interested girls. I didn’t touch a basketball that entire year but instead signed up for every event and afterschool club to fill [...]

November 11th, 2019|

My personal Journey into Science

By Appy Bhattacharya

When I was little, I was a very curious kid and I would ask everyone a whole lot of questions. Thankfully, the adults who were around me at home as well as at daycare never attempted to stifle my seemingly insatiable curiosity.

Rather, they appreciated this quality in me, and they enjoyed having discussions about the nature of the physical world with me. These inherent qualities made me naturally drawn toward the subject of scientific inquiry. However, the reason I got into research is a bit grimmer. My dad passed when I was 4-years-old due to food poisoning-related complications, at the hands of an incompetent medical doctor in India.

I was too young to even have a complete understanding of death itself. Eventually I was able to grasp the story behind his death and his poor health. However, it didn’t seem to settle with me. For years, I kept thinking how he didn’t have to die this way. It made me wonder what we could have done to save his life. Because of how his drastic passing affected me and my family, it also paved the course of my educational career at that time. I first wanted to be a doctor myself as I was starting to think about the lack of ethics in medicine in India. Eventually, as I went through my years of education and as I learned more about how research and medicine were connected, I had a major realization around the age of 16 or 17, just before it was time to finish high [...]

October 28th, 2019|