- What are some of the ethical issues that you are grappling with in your research? What are some of the ways in which you are responding to these questions?
I recently found out that the crystal that I’m using for my experiments costs thousands of dollars. In the first few weeks of my project, I made some mistakes that led to waste of this crystal. If I had known how costly the material was, I would have been more careful when handling it. This experience has led me to be more mindful of creating experiments that minimize waste.
- As you continue your research, have you considered alternative viewpoints in your investigation? If so, how have these alternative viewpoints enriched or changed your project?
The first week of the program, I performed an exfoliation of a crystal that didn’t yield satisfactory results. I was hoping to find flakes of a few nanometers of thickness, and instead the smallest ones I had were 50nm. I realized that I needed to change my exfoliation method. So when I did the experiment a second time, I wrote a protocol based on the mistakes that I had made the first time. I also asked a graduate student for advice. When I measured the thickness of the new flakes, they were 5-8nm! I learned from my mistakes, and ended up understanding the science behind what I was doing way more than if I had succeeded the first time.