One experience that really stuck with throughout this program was our guest speaker Dr. Stoddard, who talked about his specialty X-ray Crystallography and Electron Cryo-Microscopy, where proteins are crystalized and X-ray Photons or Electrons in a beam hit a protein crystal to create a diffraction pattern. However Electron Cryo-Microscopy is much stronger than X-ray Crystallography and allows us to study the structure of small and complex membrane protiens. Learning about this process and the real life impact of this research has really inspired me to learn more about both X-ray Crystallography and Electron Cryo- Microscopy.
Here you can see a model of a Protein that was generated with thousands of other photos, taken by the Electron Cryo- Microscopy microscope.
Another experience that this program provided were the tours! The tours were an amazing experience and taught me a lot about the research that goes on in Fred Hutch. From the Fish lab to the X-ray Crystallography lab, I got to learn a lot. My favorite part about the tours was when I got to see the $2.5 Million dollar microscope that was used for Electron Cryo- Microscopy.
This is the Electron Cryo- Microscopy microscope that is worth $2.5 million. It's the same microscope that generated the protein model above.
This picture was taken after I was done exploring the Arnold Library, where they have many journals and reviews on subjects like Cancer, Blood, Immunotherapy, Neuroscience, Chemotherapy, and much more!
This photo was taken after our PCR lab, where we got to look at some bacteria and lung tissue under a microscope. In this photo you can see 2 different bacterias that are shaded in different colors of pink.
This experience at Fred Hutch really made an impression on me because it really opened my mind to other science careers that I didn't know existed. From the 2 weeks I spent, I learned about many positions, roles, careers, and research that exist in this field of STEM. Before Fred Hutch, I didn't even know X-ray Crystallography existed, but now it's one of those fields that I want to learn more about and am really invested in. The narrow mind that I kept for so long about STEM was broadened by Fred Hutch and their 2 week explorers program.
This is my cohort. This picture was taken on the second to last day of the program and was also our last day in our training Lab. A lot of fun and exciting experiments took place in this lab, where I learned many different lab techniques and skills.
Comments