This year actually started with classes over the summer (the one semester of summer classes for engineering students). It was really nice being on campus with not many students (finding empty meeting rooms was a breeze) and plenty of parking in the garages (except for the last month where two levels were shut down for construction). It started to get exciting because we started taking more BME specific classes rather than the general foundations. We completed our third and final physics class and started the first electric circuits class. We also got to start the BME tracks (research or med device) that consists of three classes to get ready for Capstone. I chose the research track based on my co-oping experience and my lack of enthusiasm for CAD when we took the class as first years which is nice because there are less than 10 BME of the 100 or in that track and from what I have heard about the med device classes the others have taken, it is a lot less stressful. The first class in the research track was Research Methods where we did a broad overview of different research techniques and visited five labs around UC. I realized that the lab I have been working in at Children's does not really give me an opportunity to utilize the techniques that were mentioned in class and in the labs we visited but there were three or four students in the class that seemed to already know all of them from their own co-ops. From the Research Methods class, one of my goals moving forward was to get into a lab that did more basic science experiments versus the data mining I have been working on to have a more well rounded experience. I was particularly interested in cell culture because one of the areas for the BME ACCEND program for a MS is tissue engineering (which was one area I had been interested in going into BME).
Probably one of the more interesting (for lack of a better word) parts of the summer semester was learning about OMBUDS. We had an associate professor whose background was research and it was his first time teaching. He was given Solid Mechanics which was the follow-up class to Statics and Dynamics (which quite a few people struggled with). The first day of class, he told us his goal was to learn the entire textbook (it is a 14 chapter textbook; students who took the class last year got through 6 chapters), and in the beginning, we were well on our way to that goal. The first test ended up covering 6 chapters with lectures consisting of him having slides of the material and then screenshots of problems straight from the textbook that he did not explain or write on the board to give us an idea of where the numbers came from. As I mentioned, our knowledge of the Statics and Dynamics portion was a bit shaky, but we just went full throttle on new material. After the first exam, he took a class for us to give suggestions. Long story short, we gave suggestions, he seemed to take them in stride, but then he would do something to make the class harder. Throughout the semester, classmates were talking to OMBUDS and were being told the professor would be contacted to offer resources to improve, but it felt like the class and the professor would take one step forward, two steps back. Flashforward to the week after exams and we get an email saying he was upset about the negative feedback and the next day everybody's final project grades went from a 100 to a 10 with him giving a sudden explanation for what the project was supposed to be when he had never shared one before (the impression we all got was that it would be a literature review and when we asked questions, he loosely confirmed that idea but in the new explanation, he said he wanted us to actually carry out experiments that dealt with solid mechanic principles and report the findings...how we were supposed to do this even if we had the information in the beginning was unknown since we do not have much to the equipment that would be required to run the experiments he suddenly wanted). OMBUDS stepped in much more proactively after this incident. This was not the ideal way to be introduced to OMBUDS, but now I know.
Returning to CCHMC's Cardiothoracic Surgery Department for co-op in the fall was a lot of fun. The lab went from five people (including me) to 8 people over the semester, so there were a lot more projects being assigned. Because I had been there for a previous semester and had gotten used to the dataset they use for a lot of their clinical studies, I was able to work on more projects. The deadlines for a lot of abstract submissions was in the fall, so there were a lot of projects being worked on during this time. The clinical project I had started in the spring was turned into an abstract and was accepted for poster and oral presentation at the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) and the International Conference on Pediatric Mechanical Circulatory Support Systems & Pediatric Cardiopulmonary Perfusion respectively; even though the conferences were cancelled, a manuscript is in the works for the abstract for publication (Stroke on VAD Support link). I also worked on two other abstracts and another project that Dr. Morales (cardiothoracic surgeon) has presented at least once and will (hopefully) give a Heart Institute lecture on at some point when things get back to normal that will be turned into manuscripts. Once/if manuscripts are published, I will try to post them or link them, but for now, you can find the links to the three abstracts accepted to ISHLT below.
Heart Transplant LOS
Lung Transplant LOS
Stroke on VAD Support
I also got to start to use what I have learned in class on co-op. Another project the lab has is a device that uses a piezoelectric sensor where the goal is to be able to non-invasively get a blood pressure curve. I worked with CCHMC's clinical engineering department to try to build the electronic component of the sensor. I mainly worked on coding where I got to bring back my MATLAB skills from Freshmen year. I know they were struggling with moving forward with the sensor due to the noise, and I just so happen to be taking a class that focuses on sensing and measuring biological sensors, so I am looking forward to be able to try to use what I have learned this spring semester to the project (for some of the projects like the sensor, it does depend on if I am able to go back to working in person).
Overall, I have been very fortunate with this co-op in terms of projects and being able to have my name on projects and I am looking forward to continuing full time with the lab for another co-op in the summer.
Probably one of the more interesting (for lack of a better word) parts of the summer semester was learning about OMBUDS. We had an associate professor whose background was research and it was his first time teaching. He was given Solid Mechanics which was the follow-up class to Statics and Dynamics (which quite a few people struggled with). The first day of class, he told us his goal was to learn the entire textbook (it is a 14 chapter textbook; students who took the class last year got through 6 chapters), and in the beginning, we were well on our way to that goal. The first test ended up covering 6 chapters with lectures consisting of him having slides of the material and then screenshots of problems straight from the textbook that he did not explain or write on the board to give us an idea of where the numbers came from. As I mentioned, our knowledge of the Statics and Dynamics portion was a bit shaky, but we just went full throttle on new material. After the first exam, he took a class for us to give suggestions. Long story short, we gave suggestions, he seemed to take them in stride, but then he would do something to make the class harder. Throughout the semester, classmates were talking to OMBUDS and were being told the professor would be contacted to offer resources to improve, but it felt like the class and the professor would take one step forward, two steps back. Flashforward to the week after exams and we get an email saying he was upset about the negative feedback and the next day everybody's final project grades went from a 100 to a 10 with him giving a sudden explanation for what the project was supposed to be when he had never shared one before (the impression we all got was that it would be a literature review and when we asked questions, he loosely confirmed that idea but in the new explanation, he said he wanted us to actually carry out experiments that dealt with solid mechanic principles and report the findings...how we were supposed to do this even if we had the information in the beginning was unknown since we do not have much to the equipment that would be required to run the experiments he suddenly wanted). OMBUDS stepped in much more proactively after this incident. This was not the ideal way to be introduced to OMBUDS, but now I know.
Returning to CCHMC's Cardiothoracic Surgery Department for co-op in the fall was a lot of fun. The lab went from five people (including me) to 8 people over the semester, so there were a lot more projects being assigned. Because I had been there for a previous semester and had gotten used to the dataset they use for a lot of their clinical studies, I was able to work on more projects. The deadlines for a lot of abstract submissions was in the fall, so there were a lot of projects being worked on during this time. The clinical project I had started in the spring was turned into an abstract and was accepted for poster and oral presentation at the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) and the International Conference on Pediatric Mechanical Circulatory Support Systems & Pediatric Cardiopulmonary Perfusion respectively; even though the conferences were cancelled, a manuscript is in the works for the abstract for publication (Stroke on VAD Support link). I also worked on two other abstracts and another project that Dr. Morales (cardiothoracic surgeon) has presented at least once and will (hopefully) give a Heart Institute lecture on at some point when things get back to normal that will be turned into manuscripts. Once/if manuscripts are published, I will try to post them or link them, but for now, you can find the links to the three abstracts accepted to ISHLT below.
Heart Transplant LOS
Lung Transplant LOS
Stroke on VAD Support
I also got to start to use what I have learned in class on co-op. Another project the lab has is a device that uses a piezoelectric sensor where the goal is to be able to non-invasively get a blood pressure curve. I worked with CCHMC's clinical engineering department to try to build the electronic component of the sensor. I mainly worked on coding where I got to bring back my MATLAB skills from Freshmen year. I know they were struggling with moving forward with the sensor due to the noise, and I just so happen to be taking a class that focuses on sensing and measuring biological sensors, so I am looking forward to be able to try to use what I have learned this spring semester to the project (for some of the projects like the sensor, it does depend on if I am able to go back to working in person).
Overall, I have been very fortunate with this co-op in terms of projects and being able to have my name on projects and I am looking forward to continuing full time with the lab for another co-op in the summer.
I also fostered a mother cat and her two kittens for about a month about the time I started co-oping in the fall. I mentioned fostering a mother cat and kittens was one of my goals in my Global Citizen Scholarship plan from first year, and I did it. The fostering was through Interfaith Hospitality Network of Greater Cincinnati where I have been volunteering since first year. They actually take in the pets of people who are in shelters and take care of the animals until the owners are able to find housing and be reunited, allowing owners to not have to give up their companions. We kept them in a guest bedroom and then I would let them run around the basement for at least an hour or two each day. When I first met them, the two kittens were extremely skittish. Playing with them for the hour or two I did helped them and I think towards the end, they were not as scared when you approached them. I realized how much work goes into fostering kittens (I ended up having to help with vet visits for them in addition to the feeding, playing, litter box, etc.). When I took on the fostering responsibility, the pet coordinator said it would only be for about a month, and when he said the family was ready for them back, it was sort of a relief. I mentioned I thought the hardest part of fostering would be saying goodbye, but in all honesty, I really only missed Calypso (the tabby) afterwards. The mother tended to escape and disappear upstairs (where she was not supposed to go and then I had to chase after her and hope she didn't disappear into a bedroom) and the brother was just really squirrely. Calypso, on the other hand, tended to be a bit more docile except when Keiko (one of my cats) came down. She and Keiko would get into batting matches where they would swing their paws at one another as fast as they could (their paws were actual blurs on camera). I wouldn't mind fostering more cats and kittens in the future, but now I am more aware of how much time goes into fostering.
The spring semester was back in classes. My schedule was actually all BME classes for the first time. I ended up taking two statistics classes, one a more basic statistics and one a more specific statistics (including data mining techniques). It was nice since the more basic statistics course was a combination of review with a sprinkle of new material. Towards the end, we touched on different statistic tests that I have used during my co-op but did not really know the basics behind (the lab uses statistical software that takes the variable you want and runs the tests automatically) which is nice for going back. The more specific statistics class I took (which is the first ACCEND/graduate class I have taken) touched on a lot of data mining techniques. I was sort of excited learning about the different techniques because when I finished up my second co-op, there was a project that I was not sure how I was going to continue with a project. I was told I would probably have to do some sort of computer learning/data mining technique to try to figure out the project, and the class ended up giving me quite a few options on how to approach the issue. The other class I wanted to mention is Sensing and Measurements where we actually learned about how different devices measure biological signals (refer back to the senor project I was working on at CCHMC).
As I mentioned before, one of my goals from the summer was to work in a lab to learn about cell culture. I emailed Dr. Schutte (who I saw in a couple of emails as one of the new BME professors from Shriner's Hospital and whose focus is on elastin and tissue engineering) about working in her lab and I ended up volunteering there for about 10 hours/week. Her lab was literally being set up throughout the semester. I ended up mainly working on staining slides from a project one of Dr. Schutte's Capstone students had done the previous year and they were wanting to do a couple more stains on samples for a manuscript. I also got to use a fluorescent microscope that they bought for the lab that is actually able to image entire samples and layer multiple colors in one take. In RaMP when I worked in a lab, my role was taking the images of each color, photoshopping the colors in, combining the colored images into a single image, and then piecing together the sections one larger section. The microscope used in Dr. Schutte's lab was basically able to do the work it took me most of a semester to do in less than an hour. It was unfortunate that the cell culture projects were supposed to start right after spring break and then UC shut down. I'm hoping that if the university is open in the fall, I can go back to the lab. I enjoyed my time in the lab and I did get to make a couple of collagen hydrogels (right) without any cells and do a passage of cells.
As I mentioned before, one of my goals from the summer was to work in a lab to learn about cell culture. I emailed Dr. Schutte (who I saw in a couple of emails as one of the new BME professors from Shriner's Hospital and whose focus is on elastin and tissue engineering) about working in her lab and I ended up volunteering there for about 10 hours/week. Her lab was literally being set up throughout the semester. I ended up mainly working on staining slides from a project one of Dr. Schutte's Capstone students had done the previous year and they were wanting to do a couple more stains on samples for a manuscript. I also got to use a fluorescent microscope that they bought for the lab that is actually able to image entire samples and layer multiple colors in one take. In RaMP when I worked in a lab, my role was taking the images of each color, photoshopping the colors in, combining the colored images into a single image, and then piecing together the sections one larger section. The microscope used in Dr. Schutte's lab was basically able to do the work it took me most of a semester to do in less than an hour. It was unfortunate that the cell culture projects were supposed to start right after spring break and then UC shut down. I'm hoping that if the university is open in the fall, I can go back to the lab. I enjoyed my time in the lab and I did get to make a couple of collagen hydrogels (right) without any cells and do a passage of cells.
Flashforward to February this year, and we were down to the three cats, Nellie, and two dogs. It was a bit weird having only two dogs when most of my life, we have had three dogs. I was prepared for two dogs to be the new status quo since my mom said she did not want three again when one night, she asked me to look at her computer and there were two Keeshond puppies she was considering. Apparently, she had been looking at Keeshonds for sale for awhile and had found the two one night and was considering it. I think after the first two dogs, all of the other pets we have had were because I convinced my mom to adopt one more (i.e. three other dogs, three cats, three hedgehogs, and a chinchilla, so my mom being the one researching and finding a new dog was a change. After going back and forth for a couple of days, she contacted the breeder and after a day trip to Indiana, we were bringing home Mizu. On the trip back, we stopped at my grandma's house in Indiana where Remy, the 100 lb German shepherd mix went after her, and Mizu was off to the emergency room for stitches within an hour of picking her up. The two are much more cordial with one another (though Remy still goes after her sometimes), but Mizu has become BFFs with Yuki (the Keeshond we got last year).
Obviously, the spring ended a bit strangely with the COVID-19 situation. Unfortunately, I never got to have the cell culture experience I was hoping for in Dr. Schutte's lab since the lab was brand new and still being set up. They were finally ready to start cell culture experiments right after spring break, which obviously, did not work out. I at least got to do one cell culture split before the break, so I can say I have at least a little bit of experience. I am hoping to go back to Dr. Schutte's lab in the fall to volunteer for another semester, so hopefully I will get to have a more well-rounded cell culture experience then.
In terms of this summer, know that other lab members are working from home. I still have projects that are in the works, but the plan is to return to CCHMC's Cardiothoracic Surgery Department over the summer for one last co-op, come back for classes in the fall (and hopefully make more progress with ACCEND), and then start my double co-op rotation the next spring and summer (TBD-I am thinking about industry just to get that experience or work in another lab to get ready for Senior Capstone). My summer co-op is going to be remote, though CCHMC is beginning to try to phase research back in; one of my lab members said CCHMC is expecting it to take all summer to have research back fully, so I'm not sure if/when I will be working there in person again-the shuttles that some of the workers like me have to take each morning/afternoon for the parking garage is a hurdle I'm not sure how they will address. I have never really used Skype/WebEx/Zoom before, so this remote work/school has been a learning moment for me which I think will be helpful for the future.
I am also signed up to take two courses on Data Mining and an Artificial Intelligence through UC for IBM certification this summer. I know the one area the lab is looking at is using machine learning to come up with predictive models to improve lung and heart transplant outcomes, and machine learning in general is a growing field, so these courses should be helpful (I saw the syllabus and one of the labs for the Data Mining course is actually predicting heart failure...I'm excited for the courses).