Week 8 Blog

 

Monday 15JUL2024:

Monday was spent modifying the cutting recipe for the wires so that I would be able to perform 9 tests at once. Which made it to where I could perform more tests per run but also took significantly longer to calibrate the laser cutter. Due to this I had to save the observations for the next day. I was looking forward to joining my co-mentor Douglas to see what experiments he was going to run.

Tuesday 16JUL2024:

Tuesday began with the poster workshop for advice on setting up our posters for the symposium. Following that, I went to meet up with Douglas, but accidently walked past his building and had to quickly turn around so that I wasn’t late. Douglas went over the scanning electron microscope that they had at their lab and we got into a discussion on how I had previously written a standard operating procedure for an (older) scanning electron microscope at Lonestar College. The scanning electron microscope was acting finicky that day and was having difficulties producing images at a sufficient quality, so I had to head back to the BRC and couldn’t stay to see the end. The rest of the day was spent trying to figure out a system for how to optimize my testing processes while running a cut, and ending the day by sending out my abstract for review.

Wednesday 17JUL2024:

Wednesday was spent imaging the wires made in the previous two days, in which I unfortunately tunnel visioned and missed a lab meeting. I ran another set of tests with slightly different parameters, but was getting frustrated because I felt I was going about the tests very inefficiently. So I talked with Romain and he found out how many tests I had been running and suggested that I focus on data analysis, in the form of a presentation, explaining what results I could find from the tests. I then spent a couple of hours that evening rewriting my abstract for the symposium.

Thursday 18JUL2024:

Thursday I went to the abstract workshop that had been rescheduled due to hurricane beryl, then went to take some more pictures of the wires for the data analysis presentation. Only to realize afterwards that I had left my notebook at my apartment, which had all of the information regarding which tests were performed. I informed my mentor and went to get it back, but it was decided that I could work on the presentation at the apartment and bring it back to the BRC later at the end of the day to share the results. It took me a very long time to find any results I could bring up, as I had trouble understanding what I was looking at. I wasn’t able to get the presentation ready in time, but I was able to share my findings which was good. So once I could get the presentation finished, I can use it to serve as the results section for my poster at the symposium.

Friday 19JUL2024:

Friday started with the poster presentations for those in the program who weren’t able to present earlier due to hurricane beryl. Overall, it went really well and the only major piece of advice for the symposium was to shift my focus more on what I was doing, and less on the project as a whole. Unfortunately, after the presentations, I started developing a migraine along with a sinus headache that got progressively worse until I had to inform Romain that I would need to continue my work at my apartment in order to better deal with the migraine + sinus headache combo. It took a while to subside enough for the pain to go away and let me turn in my hours and write this blog post. I’m planning on finishing the abstract and working on the poster this weekend.

(End of post for Week 8)