My understanding of my research on hepatoblastoma has changed profoundly over the course of the summer. Getting started on my project, I focused a lot on the technical details of my work. For example, I would focus on how the immortalized cell lines I am using were generated. In explaining my research to my peers, I would talk about the process of how specific transcription factors were overexpressed and the process of knocking out the locus of a gene for tumor suppressors. I quickly realized that explaining these processes and the jargon involved in it just ended up confusing my audience and that it was much more effective to talk about the broader impact of my work. Now that I have gotten a lot of practice in talking about my work through this fellowship, I realized what details to better focus on in more effectively conveying the key points of my research to a wide audience. I learned that although I engage in basic research and most of my work entails taking care of cells and running experiments like western blots and PCR, all of which is exciting to me, the broader context and significance of my work is what allows an audience to relate and find meaning in what I do.

The most valuable experience of this fellowship was getting to both explain my research to my peers and hear about my peers’ research. Learning about what motivates them to do their work, the methods they use, and what they hope to get out of their research allowed me to find more meaning not just in my research, but in research as a whole. Furthermore, having a community of like-minded individuals who are also fresh to engaging in research like myself allowed me to bond over similar experiences such as struggles and setbacks. This experience allowed me to look at my own research through an interdisciplinary lens and identify similarities and differences between my research and my peers’ research.

Now that the fellowship is over, I would like to continue on my project through the school year as I have been equipped with the skills on how to further my engagement with my project, build relationships with my research mentors, and how to best communicate my findings. I aim to take more initiative in my lab and expand what I am working on to more projects. I hope to be able to highlight my research experience when applying to medical school and down the road I would like to take part in research while in medical school.