Category: Life Sciences (SV)
Choosing To Be Uncomfortable
Choosing to study abroad in Switzerland was one of the most uncertain decisions I’ve ever made. About a year ago, I had taken a leap and flown outside of Canada to intern in a distant part of the world (not Switzerland). The lab had a very different work culture, support was limited, and I struggled (…)
Molecules and Mountains exploring the Cantons
I chose the Thomä Lab because of my personal and academic interest in cancer research. My research project was about molecular glues, specifically the VHL E3 ligase complex. I worked on applying different molecular glue compounds to yeast two-hybrid assays to assess their ability to induce protein-protein interactions. The lab environment was efficient and collaborative. (…)
Neurons & Nature
Finishing my presentation at 3 a.m., I finally have a chance to reflect on the journey that brought me to this point. I worked in the Cells and Neuromathematics Group at the Simulation Neuroscience division in the Blue Brain Project, which is a large group of researchers, PhD students, post-docs, and software engineers working together (…)
A Summer of Learning
I almost didn’t apply to EPFL’s Excellence Research Internship Program (ERIP). In my mind, working abroad in a laboratory in Switzerland for a summer was a distant dream. But with encouragement from my family, I applied despite my doubts. Looking back, I’m glad I stepped outside of my comfort zone as this past summer at (…)
And it was just the beginning…
Throughout the summer, I conducted cancer research at the Hanahan Laboratory of Translational Oncology in the Agora Translational Cancer Research Center in Lausanne. Upon my arrival, I spent several days immersing myself in the literature to get up to speed on my project, which was a subpart of an ongoing project in the lab. Soon, (…)
A matter of scale
This summer turned out to be quite a story, and good stories usually have a running theme. This time, such a theme was scale. Throughout my internship, I contributed to the PhD project of one of the lab members – and unlike all my prior projects, doctoral research takes years to complete. Having done a (…)
Bikes & hikes
It’s 2:00 AM on a hot summer Monday, and I’m still editing bits and pieces of a 70+ slides Powerpoint presentation. I need to present my results from the past 6 weeks of work to a team of 15 biologists including the lab’s head, each of them keen on scrutinizing the data I’ll be presenting. (…)
Adventures in Switzerland
My experience in Switzerland has managed not just to meet, but to exceed, everything I had hoped for in a summer internship in Europe. Let me preface my explanation by saying that I had already spent a year studying abroad in the UK before starting my internship at EPFL. When you come from the U.S., which is relatively homogenous, (…)
Debating the existence of Switzerland
At the time of application for this internship, I knew of two things: one, it in Lausanne, Switzerland, and two, they spoke French there. Despite the weeks of research I did on EPFL I somehow forgot to google Lausanne. The acceptance letter arrived at the end of January. To my relief, I was no longer (…)