The Useful Powers of Office Hours

College can be a confusing time, especially when there’s no clear path towards success. When I was given the freedom to pick my own major, classes, and extracurricular activities, I felt overwhelmed. I entered UCSB as an Environmental Studies major, but I actually had no specific direction for my academic or professional future in mind. In fact, I had applied to other schools as different majors, because I really had no idea where I wanted my life to go during or after college.

I started college worried that I would be unable to do well in school without a larger plan to motivate me, so I decided to go to office hours to hopefully get advice from someone who might have been in my position before. I went to my TA for my Introduction to Environmental Studies class because it was the only class I had that was in my major department, so it would be likely that someone teaching the class would have advice most relevant to me.

I thought that things would be awkward and I wouldn’t learn anything, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my TA, Zoe Welch (pictured with me above this post’s title), was incredibly understanding and insightful. She helped me understand that I can’t really ask someone else what the “right” thing to do is, because that’s something that only I can answer in time.

Looking back, meeting and talking with Zoe was one of the most pivotal things that happened to me in my first year here. The majority of my successes in undergraduate research so far can be traced back to my interactions with her, as she helped me navigate college life, research, and even the majors that UCSB offers.

Zoe also told me about her experiences in graduate school and research, which made me feel much more comfortable about trying to get involved in undergraduate research. This confidence brought me to applying for an internship with the Burkepile Lab at the end of my first quarter, and I’ve worked as an undergraduate research assistant for them for the last six months. That position led me to apply for the EUREKA scholarship and my current work in the McCauley Lab, as I only learned about the scholarship’s existence from a graduate student in the Burkepile Lab. Zoe even wrote the recommendation letter that got me the scholarship, and we keep in touch regularly.

Some of the people working in the Burkepile Lab during Winter Quarter 2017.

Over the last year, I’ve had the luck to to speak with an assortment of graduate students and professors through office hours, lab work, and even mentorship programs. Multiple graduate students here have told me that they started their PhD programs with the intention of pursuing research, then changed gears to focus more on teaching after getting a taste of the ins and outs of academia. I’ve met people who obtained their master’s degrees, then decided they didn’t really love what they were studying and chose a very different for their PhD topic. All of this came to me as a surprise, as I had been under the impression that a person had to be completely assured and confident to succeed in research and academia. It’s really never too late to change when it comes to school, and it’s absolutely normal to be unsure.

The first step is to talk to people you want to learn from; if you’re interested in a certain subject within your field, look up professors and graduate students who study it and send them an email. Professors and teaching assistants are people who exist outside of lecture halls and discussion sections, and many of them are more than happy to help students sharpen their interests and share what they know. Not everyone will be able to assist you, but there are plenty of people at this university who are happy to help, as long as you ask and are willing to listen to what they have to say. You never know what you might find or learn from getting out there and asking questions, so take advantage of being here at this university and talk to people!

Ultimately, you don’t need to have every aspect of your professional future planned out to be successful, even when working in research. It is all but impossible to know exactly where your life will be in a few years, and your interests are likely to change and evolve as you become more aware of possibilities you never could have imagined.

Even after my experiences finishing my first year of college and working in the Burkepile and McCauley Labs, I still lack certainty on what I want to do after college or study for the next three years. But for now, I’m enjoying working in research and being part of a team where we get to use our heads to collaborate and do something that feels like it matters.

EUREKA  Posted by 23 Aug 2017 / 0 comments

My First Lab Meeting

When I walked into my first lab meeting there seemed to be almost an unspoken hierarchy amongst the researchers in the lab. The PhD’s sat at the conference table in the center of the room, the graduate students sat in chairs along the sides of the room, and the undergraduates sat in the back. There was no seating chart; this was just the natural order of things. The lab meeting consisted of one presentation given by one researcher about the research he and his fellow PhD’s had been working on. It contained so much complex, dense material that I couldn’t even understand the entirety of the title with its acronyms and fancy scientific language. To me, this presentation was a blur of advanced terminology, intricate methods, and scientific acronyms. There were some parts I understood the general concepts of, but for the most part the research being presented was very confusing to me. I sat in my chair in the back of the room with the section of my notebook I labeled “Lab Meeting Notes” sitting on my lap completely empty, feeling ignorant, and a little discouraged. I was use to sitting in my classes and knowing what was going on while being able to give active participation. The only aspect of this research meeting I was able to participate in was the devouring of the macaroons that were provided as refreshments. Meanwhile, at the conference table the PhDs and the PI were asking questions, giving input, and collaborating with each other as well as the presenter.

As I looked around the room I saw other undergraduates looking as clueless as I was and felt a sense of comfort. I felt assured that it wasn’t just me who felt this way. I wasn’t expected to walk into the room and suddenly be an expert on someone else’s research and it completely was okay to be a little confused. Once I got over my feelings of stupidity and discouragement, I simply started to watch the PhDs collaborate and felt inspired by the way they had so much knowledge and were able to work together to come up with new ideas and solve problems. Watching them made me want to work harder, do more reading, and learn more about the other research happening in the lab. I wanted to be like the researchers sitting at the conference table and this motivated me to want to learn more. With this experience, my advice to my peers and other new first time undergraduate researchers is to not let your lack of knowledge discourage you but to instead let it motivate you to work harder. Do this and maybe one day you’ll find yourself sitting in the center of the room at the conference table at the weekly lab meetings.

EUREKA  Posted by 22 Aug 2017 / 0 comments

Blackouts, Space, and Roly Polies

I once heard a story about a blackout that occurred in the 1990’s in Los Angeles. When the residents of Los Angeles looked up at the sky they were shaken by what they saw. With fear in their minds, many called their local police department to report the extraterrestrial attack that was occurring. In reality however, they were just looking at the Milky Way Galaxy for the first time. The extensive light pollution that surrounds Los Angeles obstructs the LA residents from experiencing this wondrous world. A blackout of this magnitude hasn’t occurred since so my father and I have been constrained to looking at the universe through books. We spent many hours throughout my childhood reading astronomy books and discussing them with each other, hoping that one day I would make a discovery. My dreams of discovery weren’t limited to the stars however. When I wasn’t with my dad, I spent most of my time outside in my backyard trying to discover. My main targets for research were roly polies. I spent hours searching for them in the grass and dirt and many more trying to create a suitable habitat for them in sandwich bags. I made many habitats for them in the bags, filling them with different combinations of dirt, grass, water, leaves, branches, and other natural objects that I found in my backyard. Each time a combination didn’t work, I spent time considering what might be wrong and would proceed to formulate a new combination, but every attempt resulted in a failure. What I didn’t know was that I was suffocating them, each time closing the bag to keep all its contents in. When my father finally told me why my roly polies weren’t surviving I wasn’t deterred but instead more motivated. This motivation never faded and when I met my mentor, Professor Joel Rothman, and was told about his new project: researching the effects long term space travel has on living organisms, I thought back to the days I spent with my father talking about space and the time I spent with my roly polies. Professor Rothman spoke with the same passion that my father and I once did and I was ecstatic when I was able to join his lab.

My first few days were filled with counting worms and trying to learn everything about them. It was the first week of summer so the lab was basically empty and I resorted to listening to audiobooks to help the days pass. It didn’t feel like I was doing much but it’s important to note that everything, no matter how simple it may seem, is important when it comes to research. What seemed like just counting and learning through simple experiments wasn’t that, it was important research that was teaching me about worm interactions. The most applicable discovery I made however was that cough drops make hiccups go away. This was able to be tested many times thanks to my body’s great need to randomly hiccup.

MARC  Posted by 17 Aug 2017 / 0 comments

My War with Protein Purification

I remember my first battles with protein purification—they were long, strenuous, and I never won. I couldn’t even get a few milligrams of pure, functioning protein. It became my least favorite lab activity. I began to cringe every time I heard the words “p53 tumor suppressor protein,” for it reminded me of my never-ending failures associated with protein purification.

 

This experience characterized most of my first full-time undergraduate summer research experience. It left me with a sour perspective toward research, because spending five weeks on failed purifications caused me to get no real work done on my actual project. I couldn’t start my project until I had pure, functioning protein. I never did get the protein I needed, so I finished up my final presentation for my summer program in agony.

 

I know what I’m saying right now must sound melancholy, but I assure you it will get better. In research, you will often be plagued with situations in which your experiments/procedures do not work for weeks or months on end. However, this is all for good reason, because it is how you learn.

 

Recently, in my second undergraduate research experience, I have come back to protein purification. I carried out four purifications over my first two weeks, and I have never been more successful. On one of my purifications, I obtained 22 mg of pure protein. This may not sound like much, but in the world of proteins it is quite a bit.

 

My first experiences taught me that you should never let your first pass on any subject—school or research—define how you feel about it for the rest of your life. It takes training and perseverance to become good at something, so you should always be willing to give it another try before you decide it’s not for you. Just like how protein purification became easier and more successful for me in my second experience, chances are, you will find the same successes in your own endeavors.

MARC  Posted by 16 Aug 2017 / 0 comments

Personal FAQ

What am I working on and why is it important?

The arrival of the internet has fundamentally changed so many aspects of our lives whether it be through business, communication, education, or entertainment, just to list a few. And in order to support such a huge amount of internet traffic, we rely heavily on data centers. Data centers are facilities that contain many computers and other necessary hardware. These computers talk to each other and are responsible for data storage, analysis, and processing.

Unfortunately, data centers are power hungry and energy inefficient. However, the integration of optical circuit switches in data center interconnects has shown great promise in terms of improving energy efficiency. Optical circuit switches are made up of multiple copies of a subcomponent that directs how light travels. A subcomponent is made up of an optical ring and it’s corresponding heater. Optical rings are wavelength selective filters that shifts depending on the temperature generated by the heater, thereby acting as a reconfigurable switch. My job this summer is to simulate these optical ring and heater systems in order to determine which configuration yields the widest thermal tuning range at the lowest power.

What’s my impression of research?

Some days can feel frustrating. Sometimes I spend a day or two trying to figure out how to fix the newest problem I’ve run into and it turns out to just be another silly mistake. At times, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture and get really bummed out, but when something finally works it feels amazing! Food will taste that much better and my body will suddenly feel so much lighter.

It’s also really cool to see how all the things I’ve learned in the past three years have given me more confidence to approach new material. During junior year, I took a fabrication class that included clean room experience. I learned a lot about what goes on into actually making a chip from a bare silicon wafer. When I started doing research and reading papers, it was really cool when I was able to understand certain fabrication terms and procedures. It made the new material much less intimidating. I think my classes have definitely helped me get comfortable with that uneasy feeling of not knowing what in the world is going on and still having to plow through.

What are some cool perks of the AIM program?

I really love the career development seminars (every Monday) because professionals from different institutions are invited to present on their research and their careers. Also, we have workshops every Friday where professors teach how to successfully deliver an elevator pitch or nail a Powerpoint presentation. And even though I dread presenting in front of actual people, I really appreciate the emphasis they put on public speaking.

AIM  Posted by 15 Aug 2017 / 0 comments