Week 12

I have been working very hard to complete all of my work without falling too far behind while keeping up with all of the activities that I love so much. My family has been very patient with me. We are making it work. I will be graduating in the spring!!! Let me just enjoy that for a few seconds... That means that I'll be transferring to ASU next fall. ASU is way more expensive than PC. There were a handful of scholarships due the week after midterms this semester. I was notified on the 12th that I GOT ONE! I'm so excited and honored to have been awarded the All Arizona scholarship. I will be representing PC as the All USA nominee. The scholarship will help me by paying for 64 credits at ASU. I don't think that it's a stretch to say that it is going to be life changing. Shout out to STEAM Club and Phi Theta Kappa. I'm pretty sure that I just raved about how awesome and meaningful your events were on my application. I'm so grateful to have the support and opportunity that I have at PC. My time here has been precious to me in a way that I hadn't anticipated.
For research this week, I went on a hike at Oak Creek Canyon. It was beautiful. I was so worried about everything that I needed to get done that I almost didn't go. I'm so glad that I did.

Week 11

STEAM Day was this week! I've been working with the STEAM Committee for months leading up to this event, so I was extremely excited. It came together great. It's one of my favorite events that we've ever had. Nearly every table  that I visited had information on available internships. The Department of Environmental Quality was there! I'd love to intern with them. The STEAM Club has been working on the music bench since nearly the beginning of the semester in preparation for the event. It came out great! We still have some finishing things. We couldn't have done it without James Peterson from the Chemistry Department.

I also did some SEM on 28 day plastics that I first treated with a specific detergent. From just these pictures it does appear to remove the biofilm more effectively than alcohol alone. There is still small amounts of biofilm on the plastics. It's become problematic for our FTIR because out spectra includes the biological material, and we are only interested in the plastic. We can't use detergent on an FTIR sample though. It works for SEM.

Week 10

The symposium was this week! Oh my goodness, I swear I wore no more than a 1 inch shoe, and I ended up with 6 blisters on my feet. I haven't had issues with the shoes before, but I haven't tried to walk a half mile in them either. The campus is so big. I always joke with people that after being at ASU Tempe I understand how skateboarding can be a valuable life skill. I don't know how anyone wears anything but tennis shoes there. I wanted to wear something a little more professional, but I have seen the error of my ways. I only had to walk one way on top of that. I managed to find a ride back to the parking garage.
The symposium itself was good. There were interesting projects and helpful talks related to careers. I did Much better this time around on the lightning talk. It was good overall. I wish that I had more time to look through some of the other posters. I only made it through less than half.

Week 9

This week we're working very hard on our poster in preparation for the BioSci Southwest Symposium at ASU Tempe. I actually submitted individually with the research that I worked on over the summer and was chosen for a lightning talk. I always forget how far I've come learning to work on the formatting and choosing poster content until I have the opportunity to help someone else. I think that I get so focused on moving to the next thing that I need to learn that I don't stop to appreciate all the work that I've already done. I'm going to try to work on that in the future.
I've done almost everything for the research that I will be presenting, but I was on high alert when I realized that I didn't have pictures of one of the plastics at the time point that we needed. I rushed to SEM and ended up getting good pictures, so it worked out. We also gathered and formatted some other things. Below is a picture of Ruben working hard to punch PVC. He's never punched plastic before! We had a bit of fun initiating him. :-)

Week 8

Tons of SEM this week. I finished the 7 day samples and the 28 day samples. Because the biofilms are so thick at 28 days, they mostly obscure the plastic except where they are flaking off after air drying. I cannot put anything that flaky into the SEM, so I'm making sure to spray it off thoroughly, but I'm not happy with the results. I'm going to be using different protocols going forward. I'm excited to be extending the time study, and I want to get it right before we get to the 56 day samples. Below is a picture of some of our plastic disks mounted on studs. You can really see the flaking.

Week 7

This week the STEAM club has been working on the musical bench. It uses electrical impedance to produce music. We hope to finish most of it by the STEAM Day event on campus.

I did some SEM this week and was able to find bacteria on all coincubated 7 day samples. The pictures came out great. I am really feeling more confident about my skills on our campus SEM. I am so curious to see if the SEMs at other places or very different and if that will affect the translation of what I have learned operating ours. I would like to continue to use the skill in my future endeavors.

Week 5

This week we did the PCR for our experiment and double checked the dates for all of our media additions and quantities. I'm going to think about if it is possible to UV degrade the plastics for part of the experiment. This should have the effect on oxidizing the plastic and increasing carbonyl groups that will make the plastics more biodegradable. I'm not sure about the availability of an appropriate UV light source. That includes the amount of time that I am able to use it. We've started SEM of samples from this semester. We have been attempting to use alcohol treatment for the removal of biofilms on the plastics post coincubation in order to better visualize plastic biodegradation. Preliminary SEM indicated that this is ineffective. We also have a specific detergent that we are thinking of adding to the protocols but probably just for SEM as we worry about its effects on FTIR. We'll see.

Can you see the bacteria and biofilm? This is one of the best pictures that I've gotten of it on our samples which is exciting. Unfortunately, it's not really what we were hoping to see. 

Week 4

This week I continued monitoring the growth of our new bacteria. It hasn't grown on any of the first agar plates that we used. It's really disconcerting. It does seem to be growing in the broth media, so it could be that we just made the plates before giving the bacteria long enough to grow in the broth. We made some more plates including a blood agar plate this time.
We did the DNA purification for PCR. It was fascinating to see the DNA strands when re-suspending them in alcohol. They looked exactly how I had imagined, like a little ball of tangled string. I'm excited for the qPCR.
I applied for some scholarships for the spring. I got good feedback at a scholarship workshop that was held in the college library, but we'll see. I wish the people who decide would give you some feedback after you submit.

Week 3

This week we moved our 7 day plastics from co-incubation to agar media to test for contamination before storage for instrumentation. We got the new bacteria, plastics, and hole punches. We re-hydrated the new bacteria in a variety of broth media so we can see how it grows. The scholarship workshop for PTK was extremely helpful. One of the things that I really struggled with was writing about myself for the personal statements and what not. Shout out to Amy McPherson who is next level awesome and gave us some very useful feedback about potential answers and how to best frame answers. Also in STEAM Club, Nicole Spenser told us about RaiseMe. It's a website that allows you to use your accomplishments and participation in community college to accrue scholarship money towards transfer to university. It looks amazing.

Week 2

This week I took our filters from waste water to Dr Beth Polidoro's lab to be analyzed. We also got our new bacteria, plastic, and hole punches ordered. We started the co incubation of plastic and bacteria as well. The Field of Interest meet and greet on Wednesday was great. I wish that I had taken some pictures of that! STEAM Club is collaborating with the art department to work on a musical bench! It seems like it's going to be the coolest thing ever. We're thinking of displaying it long term on the first floor of the Dalby building which I love because the building is beautiful but the decorations down there not so much (aside from the interior design display section-I see you guys). Next Tuesday, we are planning a scholarship workshop in PTK! It's just on time.

 

 
 

Week 1

I'm working on purchasing a new bacteria and plastic to add to the experiment. I'm going to use the bacteria for sure (but probably won't collect data from using it until next semester). I'm really interested in expanding the kinds of plastic that we're using.

We filtered plastics from our wastewater samples, and I'm going tomorrow to drop them off at ASU West. We're collaborating with members of Dr Beth Polidoro's lab. That's really exciting for me since the projects in their lab are definitely the main ones that I'm really hoping to have the opportunity to participate in once I transfer there. They're going to do Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry on the samples.

This week we are setting up to begin the long time study. Soon, we hope to begin instrumentation on some existing samples to further refine our protocols before we begin analyzing the new time points. I'm really excited about exploring and working with the new protocols that we already have. Our team is a great mix, and we've had a lot of experience to really get good at the protocols that we already have. I'm really anticipating the results of the new time study. Our existing protocols are going to be better than ever, and I'm so excited to find out about microplastics in our local wastewater treatment plants. I've read tons of papers about microplastics in wastewater treatment plants, but now I get to check my own area.

It was so nice to see everyone again! and get to work with some new people as well. I'm so glad to be back at PC.

Internship Interview

So I was totally accepted to participate in a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) for Nanotechnology Collaborative Infrastructure Southwest (NCI-Southwest) They emailed me to tell me, so I didn’t really have a chance to actually talk to them about the internship. I don’t really think that I was prepared to ask them what I needed to know yet anyway, but I’ll get to that. I also got an interview for NEWT. That’s Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment. I was really favoring the NEWT one before my interview. In preparation for the interview, I asked my mentor, Robin, for advice. She told me to have a summary of my experiences in research so far including any findings and any places that I’ve presented. She told me to collect some information about the different research groups that I might be working with including the projects that they’ve worked on. She also told me to ask who would be training me and what kinds of tasks I would be doing in my role on the team. Oh, she told me to ask what kinds of opportunities I would have to present the work that I was doing as well, but I always forget that one. Though, all the programs that I’ve read about are very upfront about presenting.
     The interview was on the day that I had to respond to NCI to tell them if I’d participate in their program, and I didn’t want to respond in the affirmative if I wasn’t absolutely sure that I was going to do it. I asked Robin what the norms were for tentatively accepting an internship when you weren’t completely sure about your commitment. She advised me to just be honest and say exactly that. So I emailed NCI to let them know, and I did my interview with NEWT. The gentleman that did my interview was very nice, and I was excited to do the interview. He had emailed me the names of the three primary investigators. My first uncertainty about the program was that they were all engineers, but two of them talked a lot about interdisciplinary work and the importance of it, and they knew what my major was and what I was interested in, so I figured that it would be alright. When I did the interview and I asked him about the kinds of projects that I might be involved in, he kept saying that they would be almost entirely engineering focused. He said that the only way that Biology or Microbiology would be involved was as a means to kill bacteria. When I asked him about interdisciplinary work, he talked about engineering some more. I was so excited about a water treatment program, but after the interview, I was just feeling like it didn’t seem like the best fit.
     Then I checked my email, and NCI had emailed me to tell me that they had found a project for me that involved environmental microplastic pollution because I seemed like I was interested in that! I could have jumped for joy. How awesome is it that they tried to pay attention to what I was interested in and actually cared! And they were so patient about waiting for me to hear about the interview! Aww, I’m so excited to work with them. I emailed them back and asked them a few more questions and looked through their PIs (that are from a ton of different backgrounds). I still wanted to ask some of my advisors about their opinion before I responded, but I kind of knew then that I was favoring NCI.
     I have also applied for a fellowship with the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) and ASU West, so I emailed both of them. I won’t find out about ASM until May 13th at the earliest, and ASU West still hasn’t replied. I’m going to accept the NCI one. YAY! I’m excited. Anyway, I wanted to relay the questions to ask and things to think about. Did you get it?

THAT’S GONNA BE MEEEEEEEE :-D kind of :-P

Getting things done

Ooo my goodness, this week has gone by in a blur. I came back from Catalyst on Sunday and then spent all day Tuesday at the ASU West Symposium. This all had the effect of making me feel entirely behind in everything. I missed Wednesday through Friday of the previous week to go to Catalyst and I missed Tuesday of this week to go to West. As a rule, I try not to miss class. It’s just not a good thing to do. Anyway, so I’m feeling very ill at ease. I’ve got way more work than I should have to catch up on and get done. The conferences were good experiences though. I got a lot to think about from Catalyst for sure, and I gathered some good information that I am going to try to relay to our members. At West, I got to see some of the research that is happening under the advisors there and think more about whose lab I might like to work in and what research I might like to do there. I’m glad to have gone to both, but not I gotta hustle to catch up for reals.

PTK Catalyst

I went to an international convention by PTK called Catalyst. It might by the most party like academic event that I’ve ever attended in my life. There were a ton of amazing things to get swept up in like who to vote for for international officer (I heard they get a full ride to college), rooting for your home state, and just being generally happy to see so many successful community college students. The keynote speakers were amazing. I could go on and on really. We won a bunch more awards. The resort was lovely. I’m tired just thinking about it and all the stuff that I did not get done while I was there.  I gotta go! OH! OH! OH! OUR POSTER WON 1ST PLACE AT AZ NEVADA! I couldn’t go, but Maria and Kassandra totally went, and I just know they were amazing. I’m so glad to be part of such a great team.

https://pc-steam.blogspot.com/2019/04/pc-students-win-1st-place-in-academy-of.html

ASU Tempe Symposium

I’m not gonna lie. I totally forgot to make this post. We’ve been working on putting together the poster for the ASU Tempe Symposium. Everyone of us made it to the conference! Go us. I think it was a good conference. The key speaker had a lot of specialized knowledge about FTIR, so that was super exciting. She’s actually been part of working on 3D FTIR! We talked to her a bit about it, and it turns out that while FTIR is really exciting, it’s much more complicated than we are probably capable of interpreting really well especially given that our samples are biological and there are so many ingredients that might be contributing to the different peaking. She suggested GCMS or gas chromatography mass spectrometry, so maybe that’s something that we’ll consider as we begin the experiment again over the summer with the longer time frame. If we do, then we’ll just have to make sure to co incubated a larger number of plastic disks as the samples are destroyed in GCMS. I would be excited to have some addition quantitative data. We also saw some former PC science students! They told us about the LEAP program which sounds like a great program for students interested in conducting research that don’t qualify for S-STEM or TRAIN. I’ll definitely keep it in mind. MNT was really neat this week. We looked at the membrane inside an egg which Totally didn’t look how I expected, and we got to see our nanoparticle silver solutions. The larger particles formed an almost iridescent looking film on the glass tube. Rho Pi won a ton of awards for their activities this last year. I’m excited about participating in our future activities. We have quite a few super interesting things on the calendar related to financial wellness.