Week 11: Interviews and Presentations

Welcome back to the blog! This week was a pretty big week as I interviewed Chloe and did a rehearsal presentation for this project. I got some great feedback for my presentation and I am going to improve a few things for my real presentation on Monday.

My interview with Chloe went really well as we had the opportunity to tall about my project and reflect on ideas. Chloe made me look at my project in a different lens and was very helpful for the overall outcome of my project.

One of the things we talked about was stem cell therapy. She had a lot to talk about in that topic because she has worked in a stem cell lab during her time at Harvard graduate school. I learned that stem cells are taken at a very early stage and put into a dish where scientist curate them to a desired outcome. The stem cell is given a very specific environment and stimuli in order for it to become the correct specialized cell. This was great to learn about because I was able to look at my project and think about how sea star undifferentiated cells could be used in this manner.

Another thing we talked about was her experience in a neuro-aging lab. There were some interesting new perspectives about Alzheimer’s that was brought to my attention. Apparently, researchers are leaning away from studying Alzheimer’s because it is hard to test the disease. For example, when testing drugs on a mouse, it is not apparent if the mouse memory has improved because they cannot communicate like humans.

Next weeks blog is actually the last blog which is crazy and I will be completely done! See you in next weeks blog!