The research process is not easy. There have been times in the past where I spent months working towards a project goal only to not get good data in the end. Since a lot of STEM research can be very niche and discipline-specific, I found that building a good rapport with everyone in your lab…
Category: Chancellor’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship
Jurkat’s Bizarre Adventures: The Finale
As the semester comes to an end (only one more month left!), I wanted to take the time and reflect on my time in CURF with Dr. Du’s lab. For every semester I’ve been in her lab, I’ve learned more and more about the research process and what it means to be a student researcher….
CURF 3: One Project Ends, Another Begins
Throughout the last three months of work on my Chancellor’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship project, my understanding of bioethics as an interdisciplinary field has expanded remarkably. I began the semester planning to investigate the specific, controversial case of neonatal euthanasia as a microcosm of ethical debate about a right to life and a right to die…
CURF III: Next Steps and Suggestions
Research mathematics can seem inaccessible to undergraduates, mathematicians prefer to state results in their most general setting, so the theory and terminology can be very dense. I learned through my experience that it is unrealistic to try to understand every mathematical concept related to your research, at least at the undergraduate level. There is an…
CURF 3: Reflections on Journey Through CURF
Through my experience with research over the last few years and the Chancellor’s Research fellowship this semester, there have been times when I was frustrated and overwhelmed by the number of patient cases that I had to balance at once for a project. However, over time, my understanding of how to balance the diversity of…
CURF 3: Reflections and Recommendations to New Researchers
This semester, I learned that the process of conducting research is not often as linear and straightforward as I thought when planning out experiments. There are often unforeseen challenges that arise that can delay or modify the approach you take to conducting the research. Coming into the semester, I had a detailed plan for the…
CURF Ends, Research Continues
Hi all! This is my third (and final) blog post on my CURF research. You can find the second and first here. The featured image on this post is me presenting my research at the physics department spring poster session. Presenting research is really cool, particularly getting to talk to people who are knowledgable about…
CURF 3: No Longer a First-Time Attendee!
Hi everyone! Throughout the course of this semester, I have had a lot of amazing experiences that have allowed me to grow as a researcher and a student. This past week, I had the opportunity to present a poster at the Society for Research in Child Development’s 2023 Meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah. This…
CURF 3: Wrapping up this semester’s research
The overall goal of my project is to understand how the molecular chaperone Lhs1 facilitates the degradation of the Epithelial Sodium Channel (ENaC), an ion channel on the cell membrane that plays an important role in sodium reabsorption in the kidney and lungs. Specifically, I am studying how mutations in different domains of Lhs1 affect…
Me vs Big New Research
Hi again everyone! I am back with another blog post and this time around I get to speak about my experiences on beginning my project. My start was a bit unconventional when it started in Summer 2022. I was gearing up for the summer after concluding my first year at Pitt and I desperately searched…