Ryan Quiroz

Greetings from Boston, Massachusetts and the famous Harvard University. This is Ryan Quiroz, and I am spending my summer research experience in Boston as part of the HHMI EXROP program. I am living in the Harvard dorms in Harvard Square, but I actually work right across the street from MIT at the Broad Institute. It is a unique mixture of Harvard and MIT professors, as well as some collaborators from the many surrounding hospitals, in a part-industry part-academic lab environment. The institute was created by my P.I., Stuart Schreiber, in partnership with Eric Lander, one of the driving forces in the Human Genome project. The institute is funded by the Broad family, humanitarians from Los Angeles, who actually have a building named after them at UCLA, the Broad Stem Cell Research building.


I work in the chemical biology platform at the Broad, and my project is concerned with the chemical synthesis of analogues of a compound that exhibited potent and selective activity against multiple myeloma cancer cells compared to wild type blood progenitors. Using the high-throughput screening technology available at the Broad, this parent compound was identified out of a 25,000 compound library, and my goal is to make structurally and chemically similar probe molecules that exhibit better water solubility and enhanced selectivity in killing multiple myeloma cells. To do this, I am currently working on heterocycle and coupling chemistry, as well as learning how to run high throughput cytotoxicity assays and RT-PCR to comprehensively analyze my compounds. The 8 weeks I have been here so far have been great, and I have been learning so much.

Boston itself has been a great city. Although it has quite a different feel (and climate) from the west coast, I love the Charles River running through Cambridge and Boston, the beautiful bridges, and the quaint skyline. I have been kayaking, site seeing, and exploring in Cambridge and Boston, and it has been a lot of fun seeing all of the historical landmarks and enjoying these old but prestigious towns. There is also not a lot of chain restaurants or major highways in this city, so it has been a great new experience walking all over town and trying many different local eateries.

Harvard is about to start school again, so I will actually be moving out of the dorms and into a hotel near the medical school very soon, and hopefully that will be another new area of town to explore. I hope everyone else is doing well and I will see all of you again in the fall.

Martin Mwangi

My name is Martin Mwangi and I have been spending my 2011 summer at the amazing University of Pittsburgh as a part of the HHMI EXROP program. I’ve been enjoying working in the Hatfull lab studying mycobacteriophages under the supervision of Dr. Bekah Dedrick. My project involves analyzing the expression of a putative DNA methylase in several mycobacteriophages(which also putatively encodes an endonuclease in a different frame) in both Mycobacterium smegmatis and E. Coli. I have already learned a couple of news techniques such as cloning.

The lab I am working is considerably larger than at my home institution which has been great as there are plenty of people to ask questions. In lab meeting, where I presented this past week, their questions and feedback was very helpful in thinking about how to best approach my project. All the people are very friendly and I had the opportunity of enjoying a potluck at the lab coordinators house this past weekend.

Getting to see the city of Pittsburgh has been pretty amazing. I had the opportunity to see all the amazing fireworks shows across the city of Pittsburgh on the 4th of July. This weekend I hope to go Kayaking. Overall my stay so far has been great and I look forward to what the next 5 weeks have to offer.

Hasta luego UCLA

Greetings from the rooftop study lounge in Rodin [dormitory],




My name is Matt Pimentel and I will be participating in the Summer Undergraduate Internship Program at the University of Pennsylvania (through the Leadership Alliance) this summer.

I left my humble dwelling in the hills of Westwood on Sunday, May 23rd to catch a flight to Philly.

5 hours later, after a flight of conversation with an 84 year old woman, an hour waiting for baggage at baggage claim, and a $10 taxi ride where I sat quietly panicking after realizing I had lost my cash, I arrived to UPenn. I should inform you that my summer program has about 34 students, however, I have arrived 2 weeks early in order to accomodate my need to attend summer school at UCLA while fulfilling the 10 week committment to research at Penn. On top of that, the quarter doesn't officially end for another 3 weeks, so I will be juggling working a full time job and school for a while. Wish me luck!

After a few hours of sleep, I groggily headed over to my lab to begin work. Even though it's only been two days, I can say with confidence, that this is going to be a good summer (especially after Finals are over)! I am working with Dr. Gary Koretzky in the Department of Medicine, and my graduate mentor is a Penn M.D./PhD student named Tao. Tao is a 5th year student, and Dr. Gary Koretzky is a well known PI in immunology, he is particularly interested in T cell signaling pathways, and is the director for the Penn MD/PhD program. As a result, there are about 5 MD/PhD students, 1 postdoc, 2 graduate students, a tech, lab manager, and 3 undergraduate students in my lab.

My first day at work was a long one. I arrived at 10AM and left around 8PM. However, I really enjoyed it. Tao introduced me to so many people around the School of Medicine, showed me what he's working on, and already gave me a paper that I need to read by Wednesday. The lab is really lively, and the Dr. Koretzky is really involved in the lab, on top of all of his administrative duties.

Today (2nd day of work), was a beautiful day, sunny just like most days at UCLA (in contrast to the day I arrived when I was greeted with a warm gust of moist air). Other then enjoying the beautiful weather, I spent 3 hours in a lab safety class, did some reading, and had lunch with the program coordinator. The program coordinator is extremely helpful and has been working tirelessly to make sure I have everything I need.

For most of my time this week I will be taking all of the lab training courses that will be necessary for me to start my project, and hopefully I'll be able to make some time for studying after work.

Penn is a beautfiul school, and I'm really looking to exploring the city and the resources at Penn...after Finals (15 days to go!)

Also, to those that have read this far (kudos to you!), I forgot to bring a camera so my 3.2 megapixel camera on my LG EnV Touch will have to suffice. Additionally, lets hope that the humidity stays far from Philadelphia this summer!

See all of you beautiful people in 10 weeks,
Matt

Matt Pimentel

Matt Pimentel is a third year student majoring in Molecular and Cell Developmental Biology. He is a first year MARC student working collaboratively in a Psychoneuroimmunology lab under Dr. Erica Sloan and in a Molecular & Pharmacology lab under his MARC Preceptor Dr. Lily Wu. Prior to MARC, beginning in fall 2008, he worked in Dr. Steve Cole’s lab under Dr. Sloan investigating the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in promoting breast cancer metastasis as a result of chronic stress. He also participated in PEERS & CARE Fellows and is planning on applying to Ph.D programs in molecular biomedical research. During his first summer as a MARC student he participated in the REU program at the University of Texas at Austin Marine Science Institute.

Jessica Jimenez:

Jessica Jimenez
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Carlos Portera-Cailliau

Jessica is a third year neuroscience major, and began working in the
laboratory of Dr. Carlos Portera-Cailliau in fall of 2008. She is
currently a first year MARC student and is a past participant of the
PEERS, BISEP, CARE Scholars, and Amgen Scholars Program.
The laboratory currently studies the mechanisms by which cortical
circuits are assembled in the brain during development. The project
Jessica is specifically involved in focuses on Cajal-Retzius (CR)
neurons, which are known to play a crucial role in neuronal migration
through the secretion of reelin. In mice, after cortical layers are
properly assembled, CR neurons gradually disappear for reasons that
are still not clear to date. Still, a fraction of these neurons remain
in Layer 1 into adulthood and continue to extend axons. Therefore,
some CR neurons may have other functions in brain development, perhaps
playing a role in the structural maturation of pyramidal neurons and
their integration into functional cortical circuits. To examine the
fate of CR neurons during postnatal mouse development, a transgenic
Ebf2 mouse line that expresses the green fluorescent protein (GFP)
only in CR neurons can be used. Utilizing two-photon imaging and
electrophysiological techniques, Jessica works to begin characterizing
surviving CR neuron morphological and electrophysiological properties.
If surviving CR neurons do in fact have other functions in the
development of the cortical circuit, a comparison between these
characteristics at early and adult time points will provide insight
needed to begin making inferences about those functions.

Paola's summer research experience at UCSF

Hello fellow marchies,

My name is Paola Castro. I'd like start by saying that my summer experience at UCSF was absolutely amazing.
I was part of the SRTP (Summer Research Training Program) at UCSF. I had the pleasure to work in the laboratory of Dr. Cynthia Kenyon who is part of the biophysics and biochemisty department at UCSF. On the day to day basis, I was delighted to work with Dr. Della David. Della was a great mentor whose enthusiasm for science was contagious. Della focuses her studies in protein aggregation. I had the opportunity to work on two projects using the fabulous Caenorhabditis elegans model. One of the them consisted in studying the interaction between proteins with a propensity to aggregate with age and proteins that aggregate because of the presence of a polyglutamine expansion. In the second project, I studied the role of the proteasome in protein aggregation.
At the end of the program I not only had to present a poster but also give a 12 minute talk about the research done throughout the summer. Giving the talk was a really good experience.

Now on the non-science part of things, San Francisco was amazing. The dorm all us kids in the program were staying at, which belonged to USF, was accross the city from the UCSF campus I did my research. For this reason we had to use public transportation accross the city everyday. I am happy to say that am very comfortable getting around the city.
Thanks for reading,

Paola Castro

Saludos from Santa Barbara

Hi all,

I'm really having a great time doing research at UCSB eventhough the RISE program keeps us really busy with talks, seminars and poster presentantions. I'm doing research with Dr. Craig Hawker and my research consists in making polyelectrolytes hydrogels using triblocks copolymes with anionic ends (middle block is neutral) and homopolymers with cationic chains. Polyelectrolytes copolymers are soluble in water, responsive to the environment, thermodynamically stable, and have important applications in drug delivery and underwater adhesives. So far we have not been able to make a hydrogel but we are very close of doing it.
Since I'm here, I've been driving to L.A. pretty much every weekend to see my lovely family. Eventhough it has been nice to have some time for myself, I miss my two boys and husband a lot!!!. They have come to visit me twice and here are some pictures when they came.