Internship POL

My Life At Internship

I had a lot of significant learning experiences over the past three weeks at internship. As I talked about in my presentation, I learned all about how a research study gets started and all of the different aspects to it. I learned about how important collaboration is and how many different people are involved in a study and all the different outcomes of it. I also learned about whats its like to be a research subject since we were the starting participants in PING. I also learned about MRIs and the brain. It was a really eye opening to learn about my mentors journey to where she is now, and I now know to expect anything to happen before I end up in a career.

My Internship Project

Here are some of the images that we learned to generate to give to the kids who participate in PING. Our project was to find the best views and make sure that you wouldnt be able to compare two pictures. We wrote up the protocol on the best ways to show the images, and the views that would be the most interesting to the kids.

I made a meaningful contribution to my workplace by working together with the other interns to establish the best angles for brain images to give to children. Dr. Jernigan (my mentor) didn’t want the kids to be able to compare their brains to one another, in case there were any differences since everyone’s brain is a little bit different. We made sure that each of the angles was different and unique so that the images could not be compared to one another. The protocol we established is going to be used throughout the study and the images are going to be given to all of the participants. They only have two years to hire people, get the project started, conduct the research and get it done. Since everyone here is working to get the project started up, we worked on something that was one of those minor details that will have a lasting effect on the project. Our project is meaningful to the outside world because of all of the children participating. Due to what we worked on to make every picture unique and different, kids will have a cool and one of a kind souvenir of their brain.

My Day As A Research Subject

This morning we went to the center for human development, my mentors other office that is on campus. This is where she holds some of her graduate classes, and we waited here to start our day as participants in PING.


This is the building where the center of human development is located on campus. They share a floor with the math department. Today we were the first three participants out of more than 1500, to participate in PING. We were open to things messing up, taking longer than expected and all of the other little problems that always come up.

The research testing was done in little rooms, like the sign for this one. The tests were all kinds of different things from identifying patterns, memory games, re creating pictures, phonics, and other things like that.

Another thing that is being collected for PING is a spit sample, so they can map out our genome and see if it has anything to do with behavioral and mental development. This is the cup that is used to collect the sample.

This is Christian and one of the research assistants doing some of the testing. This particular game had to do with sound, your reaction time and memory of a pattern. Everything ended up taking a little longer then planned, and I had to leave early to go do another part of the research, an MRI.

Parking on campus is near to impossible, which is one of the reasons we intern at Dr. Jernigans other lab off campus. I was lucky enough to get a special faculty club parking pass! My mentor got me the pass and also told us about how strict the UCSD parking enforcement is.


This isnt the exact building I did my MRI in was behind here, but this one had a sign! We have to share the MRI machine with the Hillcrest UCSD hospital, I have learned that research takes a lot of collaboration and sharing.

This is the MRI machine that I got to sit in for about an hour! I had to make sure that I was metal free, then I was put on the table, given headphones with a microphone, a squeeze ball panic button, and a blanket. Once I was pushed in, I got to watch James Bond Casino Royale while the scanner beeped and made noises around me.

From An Interns Perspective

These are some important papers that Calvin and I read over to learn more about PING. They really taught me a lot about what it takes to do research on a human subject and how through you need to be in your consent forms and research plan.

This is a press release about the UCSD study PING that was just launched. My project is a part of PING and learning about it was a great way to learn more about the study and what it is all about.

This is a view from the outside of our office at the La Jolla Professional Center. Every day rain or shine, whenever I leave the office this is what I see. There are benches, plants and fountains all around the building.

Here is the suite sign outside of the office, its the first thing I see every morning coming in. A lot of the offices in this building are UCSD related and there are a few other brain labs.

When you open the door to the office, this is the first thing you see. There is a lot of paperwork here and in my office. Working in an academic research lab involves lots of papers and paper work.

Looking at brain images on the computer requires a lot of computer power and space. This is a huge computer tower that sits in the office, I think its a server.

One of my favorite desk accessories is this cool magnet thing! I thought that I would post a picture of it because it looks cool and its a fun trinket to play with on my desk.

Christian, myself and Calvin in front of out office door. Our office has several name plates on it, but now it is occupied by us.

An essential to any interns day, coffee in a UCSD coffee cup!

Sometimes I like to get on gmail chat and talk to my friends and see how their internship is going. Libby is always busy at her law firm internship!

In our building, there is a little deli where you can go get a drink, snacks, amazing cookies and a good lunch. Calvin, Christian and I go there sometimes to get a snack.

At the deli Christian and I read Cosmo and Glamor magazine, he likes to smell the perfume samples.

Collaboration

On a typical day, I work with two maybe three people...Calvin, Christian and my mentor and sometimes another researcher in the office. Many people are going to be indirectly effected by my work because we are working on something that slipped everyone's mind in a way. No one is really thinking about how they are going to colorize the MRI images for the kids, they are all thinking about how to get the study going. What we are doing is going to save time and thought for all the other people involved in the study.


Directly I spend most of my day working with Calvin and as of this week Christian. We work pretty well together and it helps that we know each other from school. It influences the work because we are all working together, putting in perspectives and bringing our different talents to the table. Calvin knows all the computer stuff, Christian works with the design and the certificate and I look at the different brain images and keep up with all of the different aspects of our project.


Indirectly, there are all kinds of researchers and scientists that are effected by what we are working on, like I mentioned in the beginning. The kids who are going to be in PING are also effected because they get their very own brain image! This influences our work because we have to keep the kids in mind while we find the best angles, differences for each picture, colors and make it look cool to a kid, we are constantly thinking about what they would like.

If I were in charge, I think I would use collaboration almost the same way it is now. All of the scientific research is done with different people who work in different offices. There are more than just the people working in my office that are researching for PING. There are people on the floor below me (in Christians office) and people on the campus too. UCSD as a whole is also collaborating with 9 other colleges to conduct research and also with Scripps Research Institute to map a full genome of the kids involved. I think that is this field in particular, you work with a lot of people and learn about the importance of collaboration. A lot of things, including research work so much better when you have other people to bounce ideas off of and to contribute different things to a group.

My Second Week!

Through all of the rain winds and crazy weather, I still had a pretty good week at internship. This week I got to experience more rainy-windy traffic as a part of my morning commute. My memorable experience was getting to do my mentor interview. It was really cool to learn about how she ended up in neuroscience research and as a professor at UCSD. A highlight I had was that the concent forms to be a part of the PING research study came in yesterday! Now I am one step closer to being a subject in the brain research they are doing! One of my other highlights was having a meeting/tutorial with someone who works in Christians office downstairs. He taught us how to use some new brain imaging programs so now we have even more options to create images of the childrens brains! The coolest one was the fiber tract images! Here is an example of what they look like below.My only challenge was trying to keep up with learning about these different imaging programs. Since we use Linux machines it is a whole new world for me to get a hold of, much less in different kinds of neuro-imaging software.
These are the fiber tracts in your brain, cool huh! I got to learn about how to make them colorful like this in a program this week.