1. Last week the trainings and discussions we had cut across the disciplines. How does the interdisciplinary nature of this program, the fact that students are focusing on such a diverse range of projects, help you think about your project and/or your academic interests more broadly?

After talking to many of the scholars in the program, I was interested by how varied the projects were. Although I am currently working in an intense STEM lab, I have always had a soft spot for the humanities, and thus, I have a fascination with the current humanities-based projects going on in my cohort. This summer, I also plan to start a literature review on global inequities in thalassemia treatments as a part of enriching myself within the Human Rights field, so I find talking to a lot of the different scholars to be incredibly worthwhile. More than once, they've given me ideas on what I want to study/pursue in the future, so I'm really excited to see the research everyone produces at the end of the program!

2. As you begin your individual research projects this week, do you anticipate any challenges in getting started? If so, what are they?

Something that I definitely anticipate being a challenge to getting started on my project is a lack of materials/resources. Since I will be sharing the lab with around 7 other graduate students working on other organic projects, materials can run out surprisingly faster than expected. For example, the other day my graduate student mentor and I needed a large septa to close one of the flasks on the rotovap. We were confused as to how we could not find these septas as we had ordered a box of them a few weeks ago. We even got our post-doctoral candidate to help look around the lab for him; he joked that someone had "eaten the septas" (it was me, I got hungry. Don't tell them). Not only were the septas missing, but we were also missing some solvents, which forced us into critical thinking to replace these missing solvents. Throughout my time in the lab this summer, I anticipate running into more of these challenges, but I definitely also think that these challenges will force me into periods of critical and creative thinking. By improvising more solutions to these problems, I can gain some kind of mastery in working in the lab.