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.

Mentor Backround

My mentor Dr. Terry Jernigan was busy in meetings and teaching classes today. So to get some background research I asked her son Christian about her and read her bio online. She grew up in Alabama and lived there until she went to college. She went to University of Texas, Austin for two years and then followed a boyfriend to UC Irvine. She received her PhD from UCLA in 1979 and did an internship at the Palo Alto VA Medical Center. She has worked at UCSD since 1984. She teaches classes at UCSD and is the director of a lab there and has another lab off campus. She gets the opportunity to travel all around the world through her job.

Thats all I have so far, more information and revisions coming as I learn about them!

Appreciating The Things Around You

I have developed several new appreciations through my internship. One has been I have learned to appreciate being able to walk to school every day. The morning and rush hour commute up and down the 5 is no fun. By the time I get home I am exhausted and so over traffic and drivers.I am fortunate enough to just stroll down my hill and not go through traffic, accidents, driving in the rain, merging and watching for cops every single day like I do for my internship. Without doing my internship I wouldnt have gained this appriciation through my every day commute.

Another thing I now appreciate is how busy someone in the college researching field is and how many different things they are constantly working on. Being a researcher isn't just your standard 9-5 job, some of the people here stay until 10 working just to get some things done. My mentor is out in meetings all day or teaching classes while still running a research study and being the director of a building. I now have an appreciation for the seemingly always vanishing people that work around here because they are always working on something important and their job isn't just sitting at a desk. I gained this appreciation and respect through just being here and always seeing different people at different times. Sometimes I wont get to see my mentor all day because she doesn't have a free minute to come to one of her two labs. I appreciate that she makes time in her day to come talk with us and teach us new things so we get the most out of this experience.

Internship Project and Summary of the Week

Project Description

Hello everyone back at school!
My internship site is at UCSD in the neuroscience department. The project that I am working on is the PING colorization project. UCSD recently launched a new study having to do with children and how their brains develop and how our genes effect behavior. As a part of the study, after the children participate, they receive a olored picture of their brain. Everyones brains look a little bit different, and since kids might want to compare pictures and one persons might look different and the researchers here dont wantc one of the kids to feel un comfortable because their brain may be different. Calvin and I are going to take the brain images and mask them so even though their brain may be different, no one would be able to tell the difference. We are going to create pictures from different angles, make the pictures more cartoonish and add color. We are going to learn about the brain and how a research study is conducted and how it runs. This will benefit the department because it is something that they want to do, but no one has time to work on it and we are going to get it done. Our schedule is pretty up in the air because at some point we are going to be experiencing the research in another lab on campus and I am even participating in the study. By the time internship is finished, we should have a system of coloring the images and we will have already processed some from the study. I am going to use my science skills to help out and teach me more about the brain. I also am going to use my photoshop skills and my technical problem solving skills to work on the project and learn how to use various brain imaging programs. I will be collaborating with Calvin and we are going to be collaborating with many different people on the new PING study. At exhibition I could show what the PING study is and what it is about and show the pictures that I processed and teach the people some things about the brain.

Summary of My Week

My main highlight was getting to learn about things you can see in an MRI about a childs brain and learning how to kind of use the brain imaging program. It was really cool to play around and look at different slices of brains that we could use in our project. My only challenge was that I was sick and so it didnt make internship very pleasant, but I still powered through. This is an academics office, so everyone here is always coming and going. I dont really have the opportunity to work with anyone else besides Calvin, everyone is pretty wrapped up in what theyre working on. I guess I really didnt expect to be working in an office where people arent always on a daily routine and always talking to each other. Everyone does their own thing and goes to meetings and classes and it all changes on a day to day basis.

Mentor Interview Planning

I would like to learn about how she got into research on the brain and what made her want to do it. I also want to learn about where she went to college and how she worked her way up to a directors position. I also want to hear about how she balances such a busy schedule with all the meetings and studys and classes and things like that. All of these things interest me because they are all kind of unknowns in my eyes and I want to see how she ended up where she is and how she keeps it all balanced. Through the interview, I want to learn about what its like to head up a research study and how you even get that going, and I think I might even learn about that just through my internship. I want to know how you end up leading a study and what its like to do so because I think that it is really interesting and it seems like it would take a lot of perseverance and drive.






Still not sure when I will be setting up the interview, I guess I will talk to my mentor when she gets back from a meeting so she can meet up with us and Brandon for our site visit!

Internship Project!

PING Colorization Of Brains!

Calvin and I are going to be working on taking images from MRI scans of the children that are a part of the PING study and we are going to add overlays and color to make them more visually appealing.

We dont really have too much of a schedule yet, since we will working on other things having to do with PING throughout internship.

We are going to use brain imaging programs, and photoshop to create the final images that will be given to the children.

We will keep track of our work on the computer, and other people will know about it because we will be able to show them some of the finished images. We can also teach people about things we learned about brains in general and what we learned about PING and how a research study works.

Developing Our Project

I could use my skills in science on the job to help out with my project and to teach me more about the brain. I can also use my teamwork skills to work with Calvin to create a cool end product.

Calvin and I are going to collaborate on our main project, and together we will be working with the new study that UCSD is leading called PNG.

I will be using a lot of my technical skills in photoshop to alter the brain images, and to work in the programs that they use to view the MRI images. I have already begun using my technical problem skills to learn the new programs and use them in a way that will benefit me in my project.

I have already started to learn new things about different imaging programs, how a study with human subjects is done, and all kinds of new things about the brain. I think that I will continue learning about all of these things throughout my internship and I will also learn some other new things. I think that I will get to learn more about the research study and all of the details about it and how it is conducted.

I could share my work by showing pictures of the MRIs that Calvin and I alter and I could share it by teaching others about what I have learned about research studies, the brain, MRIs, and things like that.

What Calvin and I are working on for our project will help our organization because we will be doing something that they want to give to the participants of the study. My skills will help because my knowledge of photoshop will make the images look even better. My technical problem solving skills have already been helpful because I am experimenting and learning these new brain imaging programs.

Looking Back On My First Two Days

I have dressed professionally, and made an effort to but professional in the workplace. I have listened to everything my mentor has taught me about, and I have retained the information so I can be a better educated intern. On Friday I worked on messing around in programs to figure out what is going to work best for all the images we will be processing.By doing this I became familiar with the programs, instead of just going in cold not knowing anything. I am creating opportunities for myself by choosing to take part in the study that I am helping out with. I think it will be a good experience to be a part of the study and then get to be on the other side and learn about all of the details. So far to advance the interests of my mentor and site, I have researched how to program things in photoshop so when we leave, it will only take a click of a button to output a brain image. To improve myself and my experience, I want to work on asking more questions and really look into how the office runs and how I can advance the interests further in other ways besides my project. I also can work on maintaining my professional look and attire.

My First Day

This poster struck me because it was a study done that has to do with how meth and AIDS effect the brain. Reading the abstract and the background information was really cool and so was getting to see the pictures of the brains. It was a cool visually appealing science poster


My workspace is a small office that is an overflow area that I share with Calvin. We have a really large computer that runs linux and windows! Im pretty excited to have my own office! This lab is right down the hill from the UCSD campus, but it is still a part of the UCSD researching lab.


This is me working! Dr. Jernigan had Calvin and I read over the description of the study, some protocols and the forms they give to the participants of various ages. For each different age group the permission form was worded slightly different so the reader would understand it better.



This is my mentor Dr. Jernigan. She is my example of what people in the office wear. Everyone wears something on a different level of professional, some wear jeans, others wear slacks and we were told about one professor that wears shorts and a Hawaiian shirt.


In our office, we had a really cool pinata, so we chose it as our cool experience of the day. There was also a piece of paper outside that said no pinatas in the office so it was pretty funny to find one there.

My Day

Today I woke up around 8 and got ready for my day. I wasnt sure if I was dressed professionally enough but in the end I decided I was after an opinion from my step mom. I used my car, a beautiful red 2001 Mitsubishi Mirage with a manual 5 speed to get to my internship. I left the house a few minutes late so I knew I had to hustle to get La Jolla on time. My drive took about 15-20 minutes with all of the stoplights and my search for parking. The drive went smoothly, but I felt a bit discouraged when someone with a handicapped license plate passed me on the highway. I got a bit lost getting to the building, I went up and down the right staircase twice thinking it was the wrong one. I made to the right suite at about 9:35 (when I should have been there at 9:30) and went to a briefing in my mentors (Dr. Terry Jernigan) office with her colleague Sarah, Calvin and a UCSD graduate Connor. We talked about what our project would be and about the new study that is taking place right now. Our mentor told us that we would get to do really fun and interesting things, while other people at our level did not, so I am pretty excited to dive into the internship. We started out our day by reading some materials and getting our very own username and password. For lunch Calvin and I met up with Christian and we went to the food court on campus. It was weird because we were surrounded by college kids and I felt really judged. I got jamba juice, Calvin got burger king and Christian got panda express.

In the next few days, I see myself working on experimenting with brain images and making them more appealing to children. I also think that we will work on miscellaneous things to help with the new study or related to something else. I know at some point we are also going to go visit Dr. Jernigans other lab that is on the UCSD campus and maybe do some work there. I have no idea what lies in the weeks ahead but I think it will be fun and interesting things that will help me learn a lot about how a research study works, the brain and what its like to work in a lab. Im really excited to be an intern here! My commute home was smooth for the most part, and I was able to navigate my way home really well, even through almost-kinda rush hour traffic. I got home around 3:35 and I saw all of the media arts students walking to the bus stop.


Economic Questions:

How have other departments been effected by the recession and budgets cuts as compared to this one?

-They have been effected in a negative way because people working at UCSD have been forced to take furlough days. The work load doesnt decrease, but their pay has. Some professors avoid the pay decrease by having a research project so then they receive stimulus money, but not everyone has that option.

Have you lost any research money or grants due to the recession?

-Actually no, since UCSD is a federal research entity they have received money from the stimulus package and it is funding the latest research project that Calvin and I are helping out with.