Friday, May 30, 2014

Blog 7

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday:
I began this week by finishing off the protocol I have been working on for my drug encapsulation project. I found that it was difficult to write because I don’t yet know what equipment I have access to yet. To get a better understanding of how I should proceed with my projects, I talked to Dr. Sing. He will be advising me on my work after Professor Xu goes back to OSU at the end of the month. Dr. Sing explained to me that the next step in my project should be to get in the lab for some hands on experience. I made plans to shadow another student, Yuan Shuai, in the lab on Tuesday so that I could get a better understanding of where everything is.
On Monday afternoon, Shen Shuwei and I went to the lab that has 3D printers so that we could print off an object that is about the same dimensions as a human eye. We printed off 3 models that have different thicknesses so that we could determine if the 3D printer could print layers as thin as we want them. The photo below shows the SolidWorks drawing of what we printed.

Printing all three models required 15 hours to complete.
On Tuesday morning I shadowed Yuan Shuai for his experiment. He encapsulated curcurmin in a PLGA microsphere. It was so beneficial for me to get into the lab and see where everything is. I am hoping to do my own experiment later on this week. The first time I try the experiment on my own I will need Yuan Shuai there to make sure I am doing the right thing. We have planned to try again on Friday! Before I can try to encapsulate Avastin, I need to build my skills with encapsulating other drugs. Avastin is much more expensive than curcurmin, so I will be practicing with curcurmin. Eventually I will need to build my own micro/nanosphere fabrication setup. Until then, Yuan Shaui is letting me use the set up that he built. For dinner on Tuesday night, Dr. Sing was kind enough to take all of the students in my lab out to a nice dinner. I really enjoy these kinds of dinners because I can try so many different dishes in one meal. Back in the United States everyone orders and eats their own meal. I have noticed that in China people share multiple entrees when at a restaurant. I love the change and I am hoping I can eat like this more when I go back to the United States as well! Below are a couple of photos of our dinner.
There was some trouble getting a good photo with everyone in it!




 
The far left in the photo above is Jiaqi. She has helped me out so much on my trip by showing me around and translating for me! This photo also shows Dr. Sing, his wife, and his adorable daughter!
 
After dinner we had to go back to the lab because there was a large group meeting. The meeting lasted a couple of hours. We didn’t get out until about 10:30 p.m. and other students had to stay later!
On Wednesday I devoted my time to preparing for my presentation on Friday. This week I will be presenting on paragraph structure and writing an introduction. This presentation was more difficult to create because the examples are much longer than they were for chapters 1 and 2. My goal for this presentation is to make it more interactive with the members of the lab. I am hoping I can get some good participation!
In the afternoon, Shen Shuwei brought me the 3D printed eye models. Below are 2 photos of the preliminary eye model:
 
 
 
 


 

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