My name is Devesh Ajudia and I attend Kentridge High School. I am a rising sophomore, and I am looking to learn more about science and biology-based research. The Explorers Program helped me do that, as it got me more interested in science due to learning about what others at Fred Hutch do in terms of their labs and jobs in their expertise. One of the highlights of my time at Fred Hutch was touring the labs and doing labs on our own. The lab that was most interesting to me was the lab about Protein Crystallography. The person who showed us around the lab was Dr. Barry Stoddard and he showed us the X-ray microscope and what it does to scan and learn more about the protein that has been frozen before to be studied. What intrigued me the most was that all the equipment cost so much money, especially the X-Ray Microscope and Electron microscope which changed my perspective on how science works and how expensive research is. What surprised me was that the machines were hundreds of thousands of dollars and even into the millions. I also enjoyed doing some of my labs with my partners that I worked on the labs with. I worked with Moe and Josh in the lab, and I thought it was cool as we could use the pipettes to move liquids at precise quantities and make our gels out of agarose to run our experiments in the laboratory. Lastly, I enjoyed going to the Zebrafish labs and seeing how the embryos are raised and how we can see the Zebrafish embryos and their process of being born and growing up in just a couple of days. I loved all the labs we were in and visited throughout my two weeks and Fred Hutch and most importantly how people communicated and taught us about their field of work.
The science I learned also helped me better understand what researchers do in our lives. They help make advances in technology and medicine to further our progress on this Earth and better ourselves from diseases using intriguing tactics and demanding work displayed in their research and trials. I learned a lot about Cancer in this two-week session including how we can remove and cure a patient from cancer. By things such as Chemotherapy, Surgery, and Radiation therapy. We focused on CAR T-Cell Therapy and the different processes and orders in which things need to happen to make it a successful trial. I learned we must extract T-cells from the patient's blood and add Chimeric Antigen Receptors to re-engineer the cells. Through this, we can make large quantities of new CAR T-cells due to various amounts of modern technology. Also, chemotherapy can help especially a few days before the treatment as it lowers the T-cell count and can help the treatment go smoother and more successfully. Fred Hutch has an array of work and labs on campus that help solve real-world problems daily. They are one of the leading Cancer Research Centers that work on Liquid Cancer that can move around the body. But they also made countless advancements in the long period of its founding. Another factor that contributed to the fun that I had here at Fred Hutch was the people that I would talk to and hang out with. Whether it was the TAs, Guest Speakers, or Dr. Gennifer Goode and her team. I would always receive a great sense of respect from them and a great answer to my questions! All the students in the program did the same and listened to different perspectives that people had which made this time here at Fred Hutch so enjoyable.
This was the PCR lab, and we dyed some parts of the DNA so it could glow when being shined with a light. We mixed the extracted DNA with a glowing liquid, and it had a negative control in which it went up as negative goes up and positive goes down. The PCR Lab was successful as our DNA was visibly glowing.
This is the X-ray Microscope in Dr. Barry Stoddard’s lab. This machine uses X-rays and blasts them at proteins to scan the outside and the shape that the protein holds. The protein can be blasted with the X-ray due to Protein Crystallization as the protein is frozen to a certain temperature using liquid nitrogen or other cold substances.
This is a picture of me on the deck of the steam plant building as we had just gotten done with a tour of the steam plant building and labs. In this picture, I am just enjoying the view of South Lake Union and the many boats located on the lake.
This is me using the pipette tool to get the right amounts of DNA, dye, negative control, and positive controls. These are all needed to measure and have the gel electrophoresis work successfully.
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