Research

Experiences:

I was able to start off my college career with a summer research position with the DoD Minority Undergraduate Student Internship Program (MUSIP) the summer following my freshman year. This internship gave me my first taste of what it is like to perform research, and helped me see how wide of an impact research can have, and how the opportunities are endless. This research opportunity counts as my Gold level experience.

Gold:

Summer research Internship at the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC)

• 10 week long internship at the ECBC Army Base (June 2014-Aug 2014)
• 400+ hour time commitment

The research I performed involved the synthesis of cationic nanoparticles that could be used for a variety of applications, including water filtration. Because filtration is a key aspect of providing clean water, it goes hand in hand with my challenge. This internship taught me the basics of research methods, ethics, and the ins and outs of publishing research.

Learning Objectives:

Program Learning Objectives:

Integrity

• With inconsistent data and outliers, I had to take the route of recollecting the data numerous times and figuring out what was going wrong, rather than simply throwing out the outliers and manipulating the data; it was more important to be ethical than it was to meet a deadline

Persistence and Flexibility

• Data had to be recollected 3 separate times due to issues with the equipment used for analysis
• I had to persevere until I got the accurate data in order to avoid the unethical choice of"data fudging"

Research Learning Objectives:

Express ideas in an organized, clear, concise, and accurate manner.

• The research had to be compiled in a published manuscript which would contribute to this objective

Write clearly and effectively

• The writing of the manuscript helped me improve on my technical writing skills.

Effectively connect multiple ideas and approaches.

• The research was in collaboration with a team at Columbia University who we had to work with and combine our ideas on

Formulate questions and hypotheses within the discipline

• In order to relate the research back to the department funding it, we had to hypothesize other potential uses for the nanoparticles that we were developing for when I presented to senior leadership

Understand how practitioners think within the discipline and view the world around them

• I got to see firsthand how to tackle challenges that arose during research and how they were able to relate one solution to a variety of disciplines

Predict, recognize, and weigh the risks and benefits of the project for others

• Our project had to potential to help a variety of fields because the nanoparticles had potential to be used in filtration, gene delivery, and more. We had to try and determine which aspects of the project to focus on

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

• Because of the inconsistent data, we had to do a lot of problem solving to figure out what the issue was. In the end, we had to adjust the concentration of the polymer that we were testing, as well as clean the diodes in the DLS equipment we were using to analyze the polymers

Understanding Ethical Conduct

• Our inconsistent data was extremely frustrating, especially when I had to recollect the same data numerous times. At times, it was tempting to throw out the data that was not what we were looking for and only keep the data that we expected. This would have been completely unethical however, so we stuck to our guns and just kept pushing until we figured out what was wrong and got the data that we expected