I can’t believe this internship is almost over! I guess you can never get enough of beautiful views, friendly people, and great research experiences. During the preparation for my final presentation, when i put everything together i just realized how much I’ve learnt during this intership. I’ve been working in the O’Malley lab in chemical engineering department, there are alot of biology related stuff going on and i havn’t even taken any biology classes in my community college. But now, after finishing those experiments and doing extra readings, i really think i’ve learnt so much than i can ever imagine. I even felt i’m so much better prepared for my incoming fall semester in berkely. After experiencing the actual researches in the lab, I felt like I really enjoyed it and now I want to attend grad school better.

Thank you INSET for giving me this awesome opportunity of exploring my field and meeting so many friends!

This is the first summer that i don’t have any classes and i was gladly chosen to participate in this awesome INSET program for my first research experience.  So far I have been working in a chemical engineering research lab at UCSB for three weeks, and I have to say I’m still very excited about I’m doing! My research project is engineering anaerobic gut fungi for lignocellulose break down. Because nonrenewable energy reserve is being decreasing every single second, scientists from various field have been dedicate themselves to the developing of bio-fuel. Lignocellulose, largely stored in the plant cell wall, although is the perfect raw material for the production of bio-fuel, it is significantly harder to break down to smaller sugar molecule due to its complex structure. But luckily, Mother Nature has her own way to work things out. Anaerobic Gut Fungi are among the most efficient degrader for lignocellulose because of the mysterious enzyme they produced.  So my project mainly involves the study of those enzyme. As i mentioned, this is the first time i work in a university research lab so when i first walked into that lab, almost everything is new to me. We had some very basic equipment back in my community college chemistry lab but they were pretty old and i rarely had chances to operate them, so i felt thrilled about the idea that i finally could have the opportunities to learn how to use those fancy and high-tech equipment and be able to use them.  Before the program started, I thought doing research was got to be boring, but it turns out to be really interesting and rewarding especially when i get the satisfying result i expected. In addition, i really enjoy the environment and atmosphere inside the lab, everyone is so focus on their experiment and i just feel so quiet and peaceful when i’m doing mine. Every experiment is like a piece of waltz between just you and your brain. But there was struggle too, my lab involves a lot of technical biology terms and method but i haven’t taken any college biology class yet, so i really have to do some researches at home before i go to the lab, but luckily i have a great mentor who’s really wise and super patient with me, he leads me through every procedure once and let me do it on my own, so thanks to him i learned a ton and my experiment is making great process. Now i’m just really looking forward to the following weeks!