∫Biology dz/dt

Time to Apply for Summer Internships!

2012-01-12T15:18:00.003-06:00

So we are halfway through the academic year, it is freezing cold...err...pleasantly cool outside, and the snow rises eight...zero inches above the ground. Sounds like you should be working on those internship applications!
So why would you want an internship experience?
Well, you don’t plan on going to school forever, do you (MD-PhD people please don’t answer that)? Of course not! Which means you’ll need a job after you finish college.
An internship allows you to put your foot in a company’s door without needing to commit a number of years after graduating. The great thing about an internship is that a company will usually choose from one of its own meaning that prior experience with the company means a greater shot of being employed with that company after graduation.
The experience will also allow you broaden your knowledge in a way that a classroom never will. Not only will you apply your classroom knowledge, but you will be learning a number of new techniques in related fields. Furthermore, a classroom necessarily allows room for error in techniques. That is, you do not need to completely master a technique in order to pass the class. During your internship experience, you’ll have no way out.
The level of mastery you gain will give you a lot of confidence. Not only have you mastered a number of complicated laboratory techniques, but you can confidently build your resume and show future employers/grad schools that you have the research experience they’re looking for.
Speaking of which, you might want to continue going to school after you’re done with your BS. An internship opportunity is also a networking opportunity. Your mentor at whatever institution/company you’re working for already finished their MA/PhD! They’ll probably have a lot of good advice on where to apply (and can probably write a good recommendation letter)!
So how do I find an internship that fits me?
Well, to start, you either belong in the category of people who know (or think they know) what they want to do or you belong in the “I don’t know what I want to do with my life” category. I’ll address the former first.
So you think you know what you want to do, eh? Well, half the work is done then. All you have to do is either visit your advisor or Google internship opportunities with whatever it is you want to do. For me, I knew I wanted to do something related with the origin of life or early evolution of the planet. Before long, I found that NASA does a lot of research in that sort of stuff and that NASA Ames was the place to go.
And now, for the rest of you…the best I can do is to recommend some internships that sound interesting. I always contemplated on applying for a REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates). Just Google REU and have at it. There are a number of different experiences available in a number of fields. If you’re unsure on what to do with your life, this may be the perfect place to start.
The government manages several national laboratories (but perhaps, not for long *coughronpaulcough*). These labs do research in everything from agriculture and ecology to biophysics and molecular biology. You can probably find something you’ll like there. The website to go to is science.gov.
If all else fails, talk (and listen…more on that in the future “how to NOT get into grad school” blog) to your academic or honors advisor. :-)

How to Get Into Grad School for Bio (Matt Grobis)

2011-11-29T20:46:00.002-06:00

Hello all,

At this point in the year, with grad applications closing and the waiting process beginning (or continuing for some of us), this post might not seem all that relevant to the seniors who have hopefully figured out how to apply for graduate schools. This post may seem early for juniors who are interested in grad school but figure they have time before they apply. Maybe the occasional freshman or sophomore who stumbles across this blog will think that grad school is so far in the distance it's not even worth thinking about right now. However, the following advice I'll share is to help you figure out what about biology interests you, a good thing to know for grad school or not, but will also help you get in if you want to go there. Also, some of these points have applications for grant writing and collaborations for those of us who have already sent our applications in and are nervously checking admissions websites too many times a day (or is that just me?).

1. Skim articles

There's a lot of research going on out there. The awesome thing about biology is how diverse it is: on one end of the size spectrum, we have DNA sequences and neurotransmitters; on the other, we have global ecological processes and evolutionary time scales. A surprisingly small number of people research cute mammals; fascinating biological questions can frequently be more easily answered by looking at fish, invertebrates, plants, fungi, microbes, and/or viruses. Even with the organism and field of interest set, the amount of radically different questions you can ask is astonishing.

If you're a freshman or sophomore, most of the literature (the body of scientific articles on the web and in textbooks) might seem pretty dense. Pick up Scientific American or browse online journals (e.g. the Journal of Young Investigators, www.jyi.org). What interests you? Are you gung ho about curing diseases? Are mangrove trees the coolest and weirdest thing? Are all the most interesting animals the ones that have been dead for millions of years? Figure out what your general interests are and read as much as you can.

2. E-mail a professor at your university to help with their research

Browse faculty web pages to see what kind of research is going on at your school. If you find something that seems pretty cool, send them an e-mail. Here's the format I always use when sending "hello" e-mails:

Dear Dr. ______,

My name is _____. I am a (your year in school) in (your major) and am very interested in (specific area within the general area the professor researches). I would like to help with (specific project the lab is working on) and am able to dedicate ___ hours a week to the project. Would you be free to meet with me sometime this week?

Best,

(Your name)

Details are crucial. Professors get lots of e-mails from students and a lot of them say, "I'd like to help out in the lab." This tells the professor nothing about your interests and makes them have to take more time out of their day to dig and find out what you're interested in before helping you get into a project. Make it easy for them! My advisor, Dr. Alison Bell, studies three-spine stickleback personality. Saying "I'm interested in animal personality" in an e-mail to her is like going up to someone at a party and saying, "I like rock music." In both cases, the answer is technically okay but... you could do so much better! Be specific. Most professors' websites list the projects they're working on, so find one that sounds cool and mention it in the e-mail. You might be redirected to a graduate student, which is fine. The point is to start helping out with actual research.

You'd be amazed at how things change when you actually start doing research. Dr. Cheeseman, the former head of IB Honors, once said that finding the research you like the most is all about finding the research you dislike the least. :-) Everyone loves the big results that get published and advance our understanding of science. To find that big result, though, many hours were spent hunched over a microscope late at night in a windowless room, monotonously counting the number of ants in Petri dishes in scorching weather, and/or fiddling with statistical programs and Excel. In every case, the amount of failure before that result probably led to some very frustrating days. If you don't like research, I don't blame you! And yet, in the middle of all that, you sometimes get a result that, if you're lucky, no one in the world but you knows yet. When you publish that result and people around the world read about it, they have you to thank for discovering it. That's prestige! Of course, don't get a big head if you happen to find a cool result... all we're doing is discovering patterns that already exist in nature. Yet, you get to live with the fact that you contributed to one of humanity's biggest drives: our desire to understand how the world around us works.

3. Do consistent work

Back to reality. If you've made it this far, you're probably helping a graduate student with his or her project. Sure, this part of research might not be that exciting (but remember that last paragraph!). Stick with it, though. Look at yourself from the professor's perspective. Your professor wants you to do well. They're where they are at in life right now because one of their professor's kindness however many years ago. However, there are lots of students who want to be famous researchers one day. 1-10 students e-mail your professor every month asking to do research with them (minor side note: it took me three tries over the course of two years before I got to work in the Bell lab!). Your professor wants students to do well (and of course help with the lab), but a lot of students will drop out once they realize the research doesn't interest them, they become too busy, etc. If you stick around, you're showing the professor that you're investing in the lab for, right now, minimal return. If you're with the lab for longer than a semester, you'll start to get sweeter deals thrown your way. This means authoring a poster at a research conference, being included on a paper, or eventually getting a project of your own. Keep it up! Even if you don't get published by the time you graduate, your professor won't forget how much you've invested into the lab. For someone who's writing you a letter of recommendation, that's pretty important!

4. Read!

Once you start doing research, ask your graduate student or professor for articles that pertain to what you're doing. This will put your work in context and save you a lot of time in looking for/through articles. Talk to a grad student or post-doc (preferably not your professor... they're busy people!) if you don't understand something in an article.

Outside of lab, set aside a little time every week to read an article on your own. It can seem intimidating to think how you can contribute to science when everyone seems so smart. Well, the best thing to do is just read as much as you can. Push through it, even if you don't understand everything. When I started reading scientific articles, it would take over an hour to chew through a few pages. The authors always referenced so much that I'd never heard of, or had perhaps heard once in a class but wasn't sure I knew all that well. I kept it up, though, and over time the concepts had popped up frequently enough that I'd learned a good number of them. When I first started reading behavioral literature, for example, I had a hard time remembering what the word "latency" (similar to "delay," usually before the onset of a behavior) meant. Every few behavioral articles I read, though, the authors mentioned latency to shoal, or latency to approach a novel stimulus, or latency to eat. Slowly but surely, I felt like I learned another language.

You'll find some articles a lot easier to read than others. The articles that come easiest to you probably cover topics you'd be interested doing research in! Check out what else the authors have written. If you come across a cool section in the article, look up the articles the authors cite and read those too. Over time, you'll get ideas for projects you think would be pretty cool. Look for gaps in the literature you could potentially fill with some of your own research. These gaps are usually manifested with the phrases, "...is not well-documented," "... poorly understood," or "... yet to be shown." Future Directions sections of articles are goldmines for potential research.

5. Do your own project

Once you've found something that looks pretty cool, run it by your graduate student. There might be a way for him or her to help you with your own project, or for you to use the research you've already helped with. Once he/she gives you the green light, bring it up to your professor. If you've shown that you're committed to the lab, the professor should be willing to set aside some resources for you. Be thankful! Hammer out a protocol (reading articles is also good for getting ideas on this), check it with a few people, and then start! Even if you don't get significant results, the experience of doing your own project will prove invaluable for later. Again... if you find that you liked working for someone else but you're getting lost or don't like doing independent work... that's completely fine. Industry research is less independent than academia (i.e. someone's probably telling you what to do) but usually pays a lot better :-)

6. Start looking for researchers to work with

By now, you're probably a junior or senior and have a decent idea if you're interested in graduate school. Before you run off to Harvard's faculty page to find a potential advisor, remember that in graduate school you'll be spending most of your day in your lab space working with your professor and the other students in the lab. Getting into an Ivy League school will look great for your CV, sure, but if you're working with someone whose work doesn't really interest you, or you just don't get along with anybody around you, you're in for a miserable 5-7 years (if you don't change your mind and drop before then). Consider your potential advisor as a potential parent. Is this person so busy that he or she can't devote time to you? Is the lab so big you're lucky if you ever see your advisor? It's easy to brush those things aside for the thought of working in a prestigious university or a big-name researcher's lab, but when you're in year 3 of your studies and desperately running experiments and preparing for upcoming preliminary examinations, you don't want to be left on your own.

7. Introduce yourself via e-mail

This is a crucial step a lot of applicants to graduate school skip. Place yourself in the head of a professor at a lab who gets an e-mail from graduate admissions about Applicant A who has applied to work in your lab. You've never heard of Applicant A. Maybe he's qualified enough to get into the university. But what if he's a total psycho? What if you let him into the lab and he just creates problems with everyone around him and hinders, instead of helps, the lab's research? Applying to someone's lab without contacting them first is like asking someone who doesn't know you on a date through one of their friends. Sure, it could work out... but probably not. Here's a template I adhered to when sending out my e-mails:

Dear Dr. _____,

My name is _____. I am a (your year) at (your university) studying (your major. Throw in 'honors' here if you've got it). I work with (head of your lab), researching (what you've been doing). I am very interested in (specific project the professor you're e-mailing is working on), specifically (specific details. Referencing papers the professor has published will look awesome here and shows that you're serious about this).

I was curious if you are taking on graduate students for the following year. I am currently applying for the NSF-GRFP and have included my CV and transcript for your convenience.

Best,

(your name)

I'll explain the bit about the NSF-GRFP in a bit. Anyway, be specific. You want them to be able to perfectly visualize you working in the lab and how awesome that would be. Some professors won't respond to your e-mail... that's fine, just move on. Some will say right away that they don't have openings for grad students. Oh well. Some, though, will e-mail you back fairly soon and will want to hear more about your ideas for a project. You have your foot in the door! Keep pushing. Read more articles, and feel out what the professor thinks is reasonable. One professor I e-mailed wanted me to have essentially an entire proposal by our next e-mail. Another took the approach of "so you're interested in this general topic. Here are some ideas about potential projects based on what resources the lab has. What do you think?" and had a bigger hand in helping me get to our final agreement. If you're not camera shy, I'd recommend requesting a Skype interview. Don't dress up, but look presentable. Come with plenty of questions about the lab (how big is it? Can the professor meet with you one hour per week? What resources does the lab have? Does the lab collaborate with anyone else at the university?). Remember, a good connection with a lab is a two-way street; maybe the lab isn't right for you! Attaching a face to the applicant, and really talking through your ideas in real time, can make the professor much more interested in getting you into his/her lab.

8. Apply to the graduate school and apply for funding

Science majors are pretty lucky when it comes to grad school. Humanities majors have to pay for the knowledge they acquire in these extra years of schooling, while science majors usually don't have to pay. There are a few reasons for this. In grad school, a huge chunk of your time will be spent doing research, and usually that research contributes to the lab and helps your advisor. When advisors write grants, they include asking for money for graduate students. Sometimes an advisor can pay for you to work in their lab, which is great. Other times, the university will let you be a TA for a class and will consider that as your payment.

But, sometimes an advisor would love to have you work with them but he/she doesn't have money. Or, the university doesn't let you be a TA (*cough cough* the Ivies). Or, even better, you don't want to be a TA and instead just want to focus on your research (and get out 1-2 years earlier). In any case, you should apply for external funding. Not only does it give you the possibility of coming into grad school with lots of money and the ability to focus on the research that interests you, it shows potential advisors that you have initiative and want to pull your own weight. The NSF-GRFP and EPA STAR fellowships are two big ones to keep an eye out for.

9. E-mail other potential advisors, apply

Self-explanatory. Don't put all your eggs in one basket! Applying to 4-6 schools is usually a good idea.

10. (Optional) Consider one-year alternative programs

Do you have to go to grad school right away? One great option to consider is the Fulbright, a one-year scholarship to do research or teach English in any non-US country in the world. The Fulbright has to be done with a "local" university, research institution, or NGO. Here's more information on that: http://us.fulbrightonline.org/home.html. The application process is similar to graduate school. You e-mail researchers you're interested in working with (though navigating web pages in another language can get tricky!). Tell them that you're applying for a scholarship that would pay for essentially everything. Over half of your e-mails won't get responses. That's fine, you wouldn't want to work with them anyway. Be nice to those who do respond... they're taking a chance! Be humble, upfront, and enthusiastic. Talk about the research you would like to do, how it fits with what they do, and hopefully you'll come to an agreement on a cool project. This advisor has to write a letter of affiliation for you, essentially saying, "This person and I have talked, it would be great for him/her to come here, he/she just needs the money." Then... apply for the Fulbright. If you're interested, e-mail David Schug (dschug@illinois.edu) or Laura Hastings (lhasting@ad.uiuc.edu) for more information.

11. Wait unbearably long for decisions to come back. Keep reading.

Self-explanatory. In March or April, if the decisions that come back aren't exactly what you wanted, consider looking at job boards like the Texas A&M board (http://wfsc.tamu.edu/jobboard/) to work as a field assistant for someone. You'll get experience, money, a better idea on what you're interested in, and hopefully get to travel somewhere cool. Then... reapply to grad programs! Or try something else.

It's been a very long process and I haven't even gotten into graduate school yet, haha. Maybe all this advice will actually lead you astray and into academic disaster. Hopefully not. If you're earnest, upfront, and motivated, there's little doubt you will do well.

-Matt

Edit: It turns out I got into grad school the day after writing this. Woo hoo! Hopefully that adds a little legitimacy to everything I said.

Tattoos in Academia (Matt Grobis)

2011-10-11T18:11:00.010-05:00

Hi all,

A few science majors and I have been wondering about tattoos in academia. Is any tattoo a taboo for the workplace? Are some fields more accepting than others? Should all tattoos be easily concealable? I asked the Bell lab during lab meeting today and got some interesting answers.

Think about the dress code
Do you want to one day work in a laboratory where everyone wears collared shirts? Do people at conferences wear ties all and dress shoes all five days? Do people sometimes wear their field clothing to lab? You can extend this thinking to predict how people will view a visible tattoo. Ecologists generally don't care. One graduate student mentioned an entomology professor at an eastern university who has both arms completely covered with ink. If you want to do medical research, on the other hand, you might want to think twice about a wrist, forearm, neck, etc. tattoo.

Think about the type of research

If the work you do concerns potentially very ill patients, some of whom may be in serious pain, you want to be as strictly professional as possible. This means no visible tattoos. Also, will the tattoo get in the way of the research you want to do? If you are an anthropologist traveling across the world, will a tattoo interfere with communicating and being trusted by the people you research? If you're a biologist wanting to do fieldwork in a conservative country, will that forearm tattoo be worth having your sleeves always rolled down, regardless of the weather?

Think about where you want to do research
Want to work at a private university? Think carefully: private institutions can discriminate applicants based on criteria they set. A Christian university, for example, can preferentially hire a less-qualified Christian applicant than a more-qualified non-Christian one. Public universities, on the other hand, are obligated to weigh all applicants equally. That means a candidate with a skull tattoo on his face will legally have to be considered as equally as a visually-conservative candidate. Getting a face tattoo, though, should bring up some red flags on these other points, though, so don't get too excited about getting 56 stars tattooed on your face.

Think about the tattoo

While the design you get on yourself is (or should be!) primarily for yourself, you might want to think twice if a skull and crossbones, or a bleeding heart, are the right images to be flaunting in a workplace. Some jobs don't care. A job where you're competing with others for grants and need to be taken seriously at conferences and lectures probably will care. In all contexts, a discrete tattoo is probably better than a bold one, and an easily-concealable tattoo is best.

I've taken care to make sure these guidelines pertain to visible tattoos. If the ink you get won't ever see the fluorescent lighting of the office you work in, go ahead and be bold. The pre-graduate route in undergrad is all about investing in the future. Yet, you could get hit by a car next week. Have you done everything you've wanted? Maybe you're worried that you won't like your tattoo when you're older. If you make sure you choose something that holds meaning to you now and will hold meaning to you later, don't forget that an older you is still you. If something means a lot to you and getting a tattoo commemorates that, you should go for it.

To finish off, I want to share some pictures I found after googling "science tattoo ideas." All photos are taken from http://oddstuffmagazine.com/tattoo-ideas-for-science-lovers.html.

-Matt

Experiences with Research (Matt Grobis)

2011-10-08T13:30:00.006-05:00

Hello all,

When I entered U of I, I knew that biology fascinated me and I wanted to learn as much as I could about it. As a junior in high school, reading Biology by Campbell and Reese changed the way I viewed the world. Our cells have dozens of mechanisms in place to ensure the successful copying of our DNA from one generation to the next, for infinite generations, yet mistakes in copying allow for evolution, for morphological diversification and adaptation to whatever an environment can throw at us. Yet it is also mistakes in copying that can cause cancer, where the stop signs in cells have been cut down and they can't stop dividing. Somewhere in the three trillion cells in our body, one or two have just now mutated into cancer, but thanks to our immune systems the cells quickly get killed. Orders of magnitude away, on the other spectrum of biology, I learned that an organism dying in the forest dissolves back into the component atoms, into life-giving nitrogen and phosphorus that trees readily suck up, into the carbon components that a detritovore then invests into its babies, who are later born as a pseudo-reincarnate of what just died. Animals have elaborate mechanisms to ensure they don't mate with the wrong species; in a world where a predator can snatch your life away at any moment, you can't waste time reproducing with someone who won't let you pass on your genes. The species that weren't careful enough didn't make enough babies and are now extinct. Maybe we can find their fossils and learn about them that way. Yet, for every fossilized species, one million other species were never fossilized because the conditions weren't perfectly aligned to preserve them.

I was hooked. I felt anything that I ever wanted to know about the world, I could find with biology. Yet, I didn't know how to translate this passion into something productive. Sure, I could take biology classes, study, and do well on exams... but I wanted something more, something that extended beyond just me. I wanted to learn as much as I could but then spread it as far as I could. Being a professor sounded perfect: I would wake up every day, eat breakfast, bike past old buildings where famous discoveries had been made, enter my laboratory, and begin working on the questions that teased us today but would be in the textbooks tomorrow (figuratively. It usually takes a decade or two for that to happen!). I would have a super-team of passionate post-docs, graduate students, and undergrads who I'd hand-selected for the motivation to answer the most difficult questions, the keystones to the future, the ones whose answers spawned more questions in the effort to understand how life on Earth works.

And so, I tried getting into research. I made the mistake of e-mailing labs based on the animals they worked with. Mammals sound cool, so neuroscience is great, right? Evo-devo? It took a few tries to realize that it's the questions researchers ask that matter. The organism they study is their means of answering the question. People study evolution in fruit flies instead of primates because it's WAY easier (picture the costs of housing a hundred chimpanzees for the 400 years it would take to do a 10-generation experiment). For me, I realized animal behavior was what really got me. When a fish is born, it has an awful lot to learn in a short amount of time. What can I eat? What can eat me? Where is safe? Who do I mate with and when? Who should I surround myself with? If I can't find food, do I look somewhere else or wait it out? At the risk of anthropomorphizing (attributing human characteristics to a non-human), I liked putting myself in the head of an animal living its normal life, interacting with other animals, learning what plants to eat or to avoid, learning what to do if it gets sick. How does the other 99.9999999% of life on Earth work if you take humans out of the picture? It's beautiful when you think about it.

Finally at the point where I'm applying for graduate schools, I've had to think a lot about what I want to do with my life. Similar to my freshman year, I want to do something more. A lot of people become professors, do their research, and call it a day. I applaud them. But, for me, I feel that I need to spread biology both within and beyond the academic world. Sometimes it amazes me the misconceptions non-biology majors may have about the natural world. And these are college students! Only 1% of the world's population has a college education. There is a lot of knowledge we need to spread. I want to write books for non-scientists one day, telling them exactly why biology is so interesting. They don't need to become researchers hunched over microscopes by the time they reach the back cover, but I want them to think. As the human population continues growing, it becomes increasingly important that we make the correct decisions regarding resource use and coexistence with wildlife. We can start by at least making sure everyone's on the same page.

When I was in Costa Rica last semester, Jordan Karubian, a professor from Tulane, gave a few guest lectures. While his research was very interesting, what really stuck with me was his efforts for outreach in the Chocó, a hyper-diverse tropical ecosystem in Ecuador. Aside from doing research, he fights deforestation by promoting sustainable practices among the local people. Some links to his work:

http://karubian.tulane.edu/lab/Conservation.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wfN4dgc86U

I want to do something like Dr. Karubian once I'm doing research. Right now, I'm idealistic. I think I can change the world. It sometimes seems so obvious how we can make things better. Yet so many people enter the real world and get bogged down. They get a bad boss, or their roommates never do the dishes, or they encounter a lot of administrative red tape when they want to do something more. They deflate. Someday they look back on college and chuckle at how idealistic they were, when in reality they just didn't know what the real world was like because they didn't have to pay taxes or work forty hours a week yet. Now, sure, some of this may be true. But it's at this point, bogged down and already working hard, that you can change the world. Yes, you can. Anyone can. The people who do are just the ones who believe it.

So, with that in mind... come to the IB Honors reading group on Fridays at the Union! Bring an article and friends, or just come to listen to some cool research. And then go change the world. :-)

-Matt

Preparing for the Next Step (Matt Grobis)

2011-09-20T00:07:00.005-05:00

Hi all!

With a fresh new class of IBHers learning how to transfer nematodes, reading their first scientific articles, and beginning to truly stretch the science part of their brains, I've been reflecting a lot on the past three years. It's hard to comprehend how much I've changed from a freshman excited but naive about biology to someone who discusses articles every week with friends (Fridays at noon at the Courtyard Cafe! Come!), presented a poster at a conference, is working on a senior thesis, and is preparing for graduate schools. I changed from an English major to someone whose 2011 has entirely consisted of biology. I'm finally reaching the point that when friends ask me random questions about biology, I can come up with an answer that isn't, "Check Wikipedia."

Entering senior year and looking at what's ahead, I feel... prepared. Completely. I'm nervous and occasionally doubt myself, but when I look at what IB Honors has given me, it's like taking a deep breath and closing your eyes for a moment. It's a building block I can push off from. Thinking of the current IBH students and alumni, I'm so inspired to do something with this world. IBHers have gone to receive Marshall scholarships, go to Harvard grad school, research primate conservation, give talks at conferences, found conservation RSOs, work at NASA, double major with engineering/anthropology/humanities, and so much more. I look up to the younger IBHers who start research as sophomores and are already geniuses. And I look up to the members of my class, who despite finishing the IBH core still find time to see each other several times a week.

Without going into too much detail, I'm currently applying for two fairly prestigious scholarships, the type that involve interviews at U of I and plenty of essay drafts. It's stressful, especially when seeing the accomplishments of past scholars. The last U of I student to receive a Gates scholarship (full ride for Cambridge graduate school) had a 4.0 in bio-engineering and seven publications by the time he graduated. Looking at his application, I turned to one of the academic advisors in the National and International Scholars Office and shook my head. "I have no chance," I said. She scolded me and said, "You're just as qualified as he is; you just don't know it yet." Heavy words, for sure. And now, staring at the scribbled comments on the fourth draft of my essays, wondering if they encourage every applicant even if they know they won't make it, wondering if I can do this, wondering if I should get my hopes up, glancing at the clock and thinking of the work for tomorrow, the immediate work versus the shot for my future....

It's stressful stuff, definitely. But at every step there's bits of encouragement. My potential advisor e-mailed me on Thursday and told me to send him my application before I submit it so he can make it better. After several months of revising my Fulbright application, I'm finally done and can help my friends with theirs. Every time I walk into my behavioral ecology class, I get that familiar rush that learning about animal behavior gives me. This feels right. I want to learn everything I can about it!

Outside of grad school applications, I'm considering non-profit conservation work. I did a work exchange for a few days in Costa Rica last semester, where I spent four hours a day composting, hacking Heliconia leaves with a machete, or digging dirt trails in exchange for a place to sleep at night. If a meal or two was thrown into the mix, I would very gladly spend a year or two volunteering with conservation. College is all about preparation for the future. Reaching the future and being able to draw from that preparation is an amazing feeling.

So, current and potential IB Honors students: hang in there! Keep working hard, push through orgo and engineering physics. When you reach the other side, you'll look at what you've gone through and feel amazing. The world is ahead of us... we just have to run through the darkness to claim it.

-Matt

Animal Behavior Society conference! (Matt Grobis)

2011-07-28T17:33:00.000-05:00

Hi all!

So right now I'm at the Animal Behavior Society conference in Indiana. It's been so amazing. A research conference is essentially like college in that there are a few buildings (5 for ABS) with lectures going on concurrently, each 15-30 minutes long. You hop between lectures, choosing the ones you want, and eventually start seeing a lot of the same faces. Each morning and night are plenary talks, which are the biggest names at the conference (ABS paid them to come, for example, as opposed to us paying to be able to present). Their talks are scheduled so they don't interfere with anything and everyone basically goes to them. The plenaries are surprisingly unbelievably friendly... I talked to Hopi Hoekstra from Harvard who has absolutely fascinating research about the genetics of burrowing behavior after talk, for example. My question was pretty small and not that interesting but when I got up to her, she was like "Hi! My name is Hopi" and shook my hand, smiling. I was thinking "oh mah gash of course I know who you are." I asked her the question and she was like "great question! That's such an interesting area of research that we've been thinking about and there's some really cool stuff with etc. etc." and I about melted in pleasure, haha. Another plenary was Shelley Adamo, who looks at immunology (immune system and disease research) and I asked her some questions and she was about bouncing around in enthusiasm and passion. One of the plenaries, though, I tried talking to and she kind of ignored me, which was lame. Oh well.

But basically, you've got a collection of like-minded people who are really passionate about what they're studying. They're also emotionally invested into their work, and so when you're talking with them, you can see how much they love what they're doing, and so all these conversations around you are just filled with excitement and passion, and there's this feeling of communal care and happiness. It's such a great feeling.

There were two poster sessions in the midst of the conference. Relatively big results get talks, smaller results get posters. You hang up your ~1m x 0.75m poster on a board and then you stand next to it while people walk around. My result wasn't that exciting but surprisingly I got like 10-11 people who came by and really wanted to hear about it! There were some stickleback researchers who started debating theory as I was standing there, and started including me and I was kind of blown away and felt dumb for being the one presenting and them being my audience when I had minimal idea what they were talking about, hah! But they were really nice about it and taught me a little. The next day was a bit annoying when, after hanging out with everyone and talking and making connections, they all headed out to the bars while I went back to my room (I turn 21 in a few days), but otherwise it was fine.

So... I'm meeting a lot of people and it's so awesome. I was getting dinner in the cafeteria downstairs with a friend when I saw someone who I'd seen around a few times so I invited her to eat with us. Turns out she's a professor at a university in Liverpool! She was very friendly and we talked about her research while we ate. I've been going up to people whose talks were cool and talking with them afterwards, also. I talked to this girl from Cambridge who had a sweet talk about social conflict in corvids (ravens, crows, rooks, jays) and she recommended I contact this one guy at Cambridge who's looking for grad students! I e-mailed him last night and after nervously waiting for an hour checked my e-mail and saw a response! The response was "Mail delivery failure, destination not reached." Ahhhhhhh! haha. So, I searched for a while and found another address and tried that one. Today, I saw I got a response from him and he was really open to the idea and wants me to send him a proposal for a potential PhD project, which he said we can then work on together to make it feasible and work out! Woooow. I'm so excited. Getting into Cambridge would be insanely hard, though, and even if I get in, I can't work in a lab unless I also get outside funding, so I better get on that. But outside of Cambridge, I found a lady doing social work with corvids at University of Washington near Seattle, and she's looking for grad students, so I introduced myself last night and we talked for half an hour. I don't really want to go to UWash so I wasn't really nervous while talking to her, but there came a moment in the conversation when I was like "holy crap, I could be talking to my future advisor right now" and it made me a lot more serious in what I was talking about. Cool stuff! Options are nice.

Anyway, I'm going to grab lunch now. There's some more cool talks coming up and the plenary for tonight actually works with corvids, so I'm going to try to make a good impression when I ask him questions after his talk. I've had trouble sleeping the first few nights because i've been so excited about meeting all these people and being surrounded by such nerdiness, but I'm starting to get really tired... I'm basically on from 8am until midnight every day! The conference ends tomorrow at lunch and I'll be a bit disappointed but relieved it's over (no more chances to make a fool of myself, lol).

Take care,
-Matt

To boldy go where no nematode has gone before!

2011-07-24T20:12:00.009-05:00

I first heard about NASA’s Microgravity University two years ago in the summer of ‘09. The program allows students to design a reduced gravity experiment to be flown on NASA’s Weightless Wonder (aka Vomit Comet). I thought to myself, “Surely, the University of Illinois has a team that competes in the program.” To my surprise, I found out the University hasn’t been represented in the program for several years now.

The original Illinois microgravity group, called the Float’n Illini, has performed numerous experiments in biology, chemistry, and physics in zero gravity. The group’s last experiment proposal dealt with Cerianthus membranaceus, also known as the brown tube anemone. Unfortunately, it does not seem that the proposal was accepted, most likely because the group could not find a connection between their suggested proposal and current NASA interests.

However, the Float’n Illini’s last proposal got me thinking. The group wanted to study C. membranaceus because they hypothesized that the anemone’s orientation in a gravitation field strongly influenced its behavior. I remembered reading that plant parasitic nematodes are thought to use geotaxis to find plants, the idea being that plants are on the surface of the Earth so these nematodes would have a higher chance of finding host plants by moving up. But how would one connect this to NASA’s goal of deep space exploration?

Well, if humans are ever to colonize the Moon or Mars, we will undoubtedly have to build giant space greenhouses. The most efficient way to do this would be to design a sort of closed system (not closed in the thermodynamic sense) in which elements cycle through an artificial ecosystem. This would limit costly resupply missions from Earth and allow the space colonies’ survival to be independent from Earth. One of the biggest justifications regarding human space travel is that it allows the continuation of Homo sapiens in the event of an Earth-wide disaster. Space colonists cannot continue for too long without an independent life support system so designing a closed system makes sense.

So what design parameters does such a system imply? Well, you probably would not want to sterilize the soil you are taking up to space as many of the microorganisms living there can help in the breakdown of wastes and help many plants in absorbing key nutrients. This could mean that plant parasitic nematodes could hitch a ride to a space colony. These nematodes cause billions of dollars in crop damage in the United States alone. The damage up in space might be more fatal; parasitic nematodes could threaten the survival of colonists by attacking the only source of food and replenishable air.

I’ve argued with myself about the probability of such an event…indeed, such an event is a low probability event, but the associated risk is very high. In any case, the justification for space research was there and studying these nematodes’ behavior in zero gravity might reveal some important information that could be used back on Earth (i.e. what other environmental cues influence the worms’ behavior).

The next step in the proposal process was finding members for the resurrected Float’n Illini and a couple of mentors. Dr. James Dalling, the current director of the Integrative Biology Honors program, agreed to volunteer his time and be a mentor. Dr. Soon-Jo Chung from the Department of Aerospace Engineering agreed to be the mentor for the engineers. Finding students for the project was actually a very difficult task. I ended up recruiting a lot my residents for the project (I was a resident advisor at Snyder Hall) and finding a couple of random folks through mass e-mails.

So great, we had a team. Now it was time to write a proposal. I was disappointed by my leadership skills with the proposal writing. Very little work seemed to be accomplished at the Engineering meetings. In fact, we did not have a final design until a day before the proposal was to be turned in. Needless to say, December came around and we found out that our proposal was rejected. Shucks, better luck next year I thought.

Fortunately, Space Grant was funding an additional flight week for Universities associated with their respective states’ Space Grant associations. The University of Illinois happens to lead our state’s Space Grant so we definitely qualified. We were required to write a new proposal. This proposal was taken much more seriously by the group. Certain leadership positions were changed and progress resulted. Initially, I feared for the new proposal since one of the engineer’s CADDing abilities seemed to have been overstated. Luckily, someone else was able to pull through. We spent an all-nighter writing and reworking the proposal. I kept working into the day (yes, I skipped class), submitted the proposal nearly last minute, and went to sleep. The next day I went to Kinko’s and got a printed copy of the proposal bound and sent off to Houston. We could only hope, pray, and wait from that point on.

March came along and we found out that the proposal was accepted! I was almost hoping that we would not get accepted as I was very busy already that spring semester, but once I found out that the proposal was accepted, I knew it’d be great if the University of Illinois was represented down in Houston. The Float’n Illini received funding from the College of Engineering and we built our experimental apparatus, essentially a giant centrifuge meant to replicate Lunar and Martian conditions.

As part of the process, our group had to complete a Test Equipment Data Package (TEDP) that was meant to prove that our experiment would not be a hazard on the plane. The most challenging aspect of the report was the structural analysis…which we did not finish until the day before our flight day. The structural aspect was definitely underestimated, but that’s a lesson learned for next year’s group.

Arriving to Houston was an adventure in itself. Finding the cheapest way of getting to Houston from Los Angeles meant leaving at 6pm, sleeping in Denver International, and ending up at Houston at about 8am. The entire week and half at Houston was a blur.

Our team of five was cramped up into one hotel room. The conditions were probably not unlike what current astronauts face in terms of personal space limitations. Tensions between members rose many times, but in the end, we all came to Houston to finish the experiment. A couple days before the first flight date, our nematodes arrived…dead. We had two species, Caenorhabditis elegans and Pratylenchus penetrans. C. elegans acted as our control species and P. penetrans was our plant parasitic species. I found it ridiculous that C. elegans was able to survive the disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia, but could not survive the Houston heat. I can’t help but wonder why Houston is America’s fourth largest city. Luckily, the Johnson Space Center was able to provide us with new nematodes.

Then came flight day (finally!). We were all issued flight suits as part of our Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Wearing a real flight suit was cool by itself, but NASA also gave us Velcro name-tags that we were able to attach to our suits (thank you American tax-payer). We got to keep the name-tags, but not the flight suits. Regardless, they made for pretty sweet souvenirs.

With the gold letters and NASA emblem sparkling in the Houston sun, we made our way to the briefing room. We got to watch a NASA motion sickness video and its attempt at humor. The anti-motion sickness meds came next, but because I was the only one old enough in our group to drive a rental car, I could not take the medications. What happened next is totally predictable.

We made our way to the aircraft. The flight team consisted of Rasheed, Ashley (our NASA mentor), and myself. What seemed like five minutes into the flight, we reached our “cruising altitude” of 10,000 feet. After getting a couple minutes to set up our experiments, the plane started climbing upward. We felt two times the force of Earth’s gravity as the plane climbed the sky. And then everything just started floating. At last, I finally knew how it feels like to be an astronaut.

The flight crew insisted we use the first two parabolas to get used to the new environment. But I came here to do science! I started our experiment on the first parabola. The experiment was largely automated so I was only required to flick a few switches. The second parabola came and went. It was at the third parabola that I felt safe enough to move around in. I floated up effortlessly towards the plane’s ceiling. Every small movement resulted in a large response. Touching anything would almost certainly send you flying off in the opposite direction.

Fourteen parabolas in and I start our centrifuge to start simulating Martian conditions. Another fourteen parabolas fly by and we start our Lunar and Martian parabolas. My body did not like that. Having been used to a 2G-0G-2G sequence, my body became very confused when we hit 0.16 G’s and not 0 G’s as it expected. I don’t know why the human brain thinks it’s a good idea to vomit when it is disoriented, but I do know that I lost my breakfast that day and that it tasted much better coming in than when it came out.

I nearly survived the entire flight without expelling my innards’ holdings, but I guess the experience would not have been complete without it. After all, the plane is called the vomit comet. The flight went by amazingly fast. I’m glad that I have made some worthwhile memories on this trip and I hope University of Illinois students continue representing the University down in Houston with the Reduced Gravity Office.

Culture Shock (Matt Grobis)

2011-05-16T14:42:00.004-05:00

I expected something akin to culture shock in January when I began my semester abroad in Costa Rica. The program was through the Organization for Tropical Studies and focused on tropical biology and conservation. We spent three and a half months at six research stations, frequently with no internet or hot water, doing fieldwork that required tall rubber boots to protect from snakes. We met farmers who work hard to produce goods like coffee or sugarcane and can only hope for favorable weather to make a profit that year. We got caught in the rain doing field research, watched sunsets on the ocean, spent hours identifying insects under microscopes and plants under hand lenses, picked cocoa fruit that would make the chocolate we later ate, and slept on long bus rides after nights full of dancing. Over those three and a half months, the twenty-eight of us were never apart for longer than a few hours; during our homestays in San José, the first thing we did with our free time was pile into a bus headed for San María de Dota to visit one of our Tico friends. The most privacy I had was when I showered; at all other times, there were six, ten people in a room with me.

I returned to the U.S. after a full day of flying, exhausted but happy to see my dad who picked me up from the airport. Driving home, I expected to feel something – joy, sadness, excitement – but I was too tired to react to the sights of the roads close to my home. My dog would have none of it, happily barking and whining when she saw me, running in with her eyes nearly shut from sleepiness, her tail hitting against kitchen cupboards. I closed the door to my room later and thought then I would feel something, but still, nothing. I smiled a little at the sound of frogs in the pond behind my house and then fell asleep.

The next day, my dad and I went to the mall to buy a cell phone for me because mine had broken right before Costa Rica. I immediately noticed how huge the mall was – three floors – and filled with anything you could want (except books, for some reason). There was even stuff you couldn’t possibly want but advertisements were everywhere, convincing you that you did. While I was buying the phone, the woman working there tried pushing all these extra accessories, most of which I didn’t need. Those I did, I noticed, were plastic-wrapped in a plastic box, handed to me in a plastic bag. On the drive back, I looked out the window at long empty fields devoid of trees next to the four-lane highway, the trees cut down to make room for more houses or stores. Today, I was walking my dog and stopped for the first time to look at one of the few trees on the walk. I saw simple opposite leaves with pinnate venation, as well as big interpetiolar stipules, and the thought that this far away from Costa Rica what I’d learned was still applicable made me smile. I passed big houses with huge lawns; meeting no one on my walk but being passed by numerous people in cars talking on their phones.

And now, finally back home after a long semester, I’ve finished most of the things I wanted to do when I got home. I’m sitting in a quiet room, listening to the frogs outside, looking at pictures of my last few nights in Costa Rica. I’m thinking about how different a lifestyle it was; today I asked my dad to buy vegetarian patties when he left for the supermarket. He came back with chicken patties and, when I asked him about it, gave me a look that seemed to say, “Why would anyone want vegetarian chicken?” My apple cores and banana peels are going into a garbage can heading for a landfill. There are so many bottles of water in my kitchen. My shower pumps at least twice as much water as anything I’d experienced the last four months. I feel I can’t live like I promised myself in Costa Rica, when I could walk through a rainforest that wasn’t yet cut down or admire an animal yet unaffected by climate change.

I’ll return to Costa Rica, undoubtedly, but until then, I have to find a way to merge these two lifestyles. Looking at the friendship bracelet Chesca made for me, I know I will see everyone again eventually. I miss you guys. See you soon.

-Matt

In search of tropical Christmas trees

2011-01-18T09:58:00.011-06:00

Trudging through the snow this week on my return to Urbana, campus seems a bit lifeless. Most students and faculty are still away, and the few sprigs of green are mostly yew hedges, the occasional juniper, and the odd Scots pine. It’s odd to think that further north from here, where broadleaves make way for coniferous forests, much of the landscape is still green.

I’m coming back from the other direction. When I arrived in Panama last month, stores were filled with Christmas trees – pines and firs shipped down from North America and a little the worse for their long journey. Some traditions though defy translation, and I admit to buying my own ‘Chinese spruce’ (random six inch pieces of green plastic accompanied by some unintelligible instructions on assembly).

This year though, I’ve been in Panama on the trail of the true native tropical conifers. Most of the conifers we see in Illinois belong to families restricted to temperate regions – the pines (Pinaceae), junipers (Cupressaceae) and yews (Taxaceae), don’t occur in tropical forests. Conifers, in general, are successful at high latitudes because their needles are resistant to freezing and winter drought (when the soil is frozen), and because their narrow water-conducting tracheids are less vulnerable to freeze-thaw damage than the wider vessels found in most angiosperm wood. Tracheids though, have their own disadvantages. For the most part, conifers have needles or small scale-like leaves – their tracheid-based plumbing system simply precludes the development of broad, flattened leaves limiting their ability to array leaf surfaces to capture light in shady habitats, and limiting their capacity to match the fastest photosynthetic rates of rapidly transpiring sun-lit angiosperm leaves.

So, not surprisingly, conifers have been muscled out of much of the tropics. Pines still take a stand on cold mountain-tops in northern Central America and a few Caribbean islands, but once you reach the humid lowlands, conifers all but disappear. One family however makes an intriguing exception. A Gondwanian family of conifers, the Podocarpaceae, originated in the Jurassic (200 million years ago) and migrated into the tropics 50 million years ago, long after the rise of flowering plants. Podocarps can now be found in the peat swamp forests of SE Asia, lowland and montane forests of eastern Africa and all across South America and as far North as central Mexico.

So, how do they do it? We have a few ideas. For one thing, podocarps are never common. Instead, they seem to appear unexpectedly, in patches of otherwise rather open, scruffy forest. Our working hypothesis is that podocarps can only compete where soils are so infertile that the growth advantage of competing angiosperms is greatly reduced. Perhaps podocarps are especially good at either getting hold of scarce nutrients, or of making the most of the nutrients they have (a concept called ‘nutrient-use efficiency’). One trait that is particularly obvious is their peculiarly nodulated roots (seen here in a wet montane forest in western Panama, where podocarp roots grow out of the soil and up into the air).

We know the nodules don’t fix nitrogen, but the source of any other advantage they provide remains unclear.

This year I’ve set up some experiments on the ecophysiology of podocarps with colleagues Ben Turner and Klaus Winter at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Our first challenge was to find a source of podocarp seedlings. As we want to compare the growth of podocarps with angiosperm trees of lowland forest we needed to find a population of podocarps growing at sea-level (as opposed to a colder mountain climate). Curiously, it turns out the only two lowland populations of podocarps in Panama grow on isolated islands – one Escudo de Veraguas, a tiny island miles from shore in the Caribbean. The other, the island of Coiba out in the Pacific and almost as remote

Travelling to Coiba is an Avatar-like experience. First, you leave the high rises of Panama City, a place of Miami-like excess. Then there’s the long hot drive along the Pan-American highway and finally a potholed trail through endless eroded hills and cattle pastures to the small coastal town of Santa Catalina. From there, Coiba is a two hour ride by panga – the fibreglass open boat and outboard motor found everywhere in the tropics. An hour down the coast the pastures disappear – there are no roads in this part of Panama – replaced by a wall of forest clinging to hills and cliffs and almost touching the ocean. We see humpback whales breaching in the deep channel between Coiba and the mainland, schools of tuna and bonito rippling the surface, and groups of leopard rays leaping to impossible heights before splashing back into the water.

Coiba is the largest island in Central America. Until a few years ago it was a notorious prison – much like Devil’s Island in French Guyana made famous by the book Papillon. For close to a century Coiba’s prisoners were left to roam the island and incarcerated only at night. Not surprisingly, locals steered clear of Coiba. As a result, its forests and surrounding marine environment remained in near-pristine condition. Nowadays, Coiba and its surrounding waters are a National Park – visits to the island are tightly regulated. Fishing has been banned within a mile of the island. The results are spectacular – Coiba’s reefs are filled with the fish life that has mostly disappeared elsewhere in the Pacific – white tipped reef sharks abound along with turtles, and schools of huge red snapper and jack.

Coiba is surrounded by hundreds of smaller islands. One of them – Coibita – is home to a small and rustic (make that exceedingly rustic) field station managed by the Smithsonian and seldom visited. After hauling out our food and water, we made our way to Playa Hermosa on the far side of Coiba, the location of the only patch of podocarps on the island. Why the podocarps grow here, and not elsewhere on the island remains unclear. The podocarp patch is on the edge of a fault line and it’s possible that the geology is unusual here. We’ll have to wait for results of our soil analyses. Arriving on a small stony beach its short climb up a steep embankment to a broad plateau. After a few minutes of searching we spot our first podocarp trees, and soon after discover carpets of recently germinated seedlings. It doesn’t take long to gather enough to take home.

Back at Gamboa (close to Panama City) our seedlings are now in Klaus Winter’s controlled environment greenhouses. Our first experiment is comparing podocarp responses to both reduced and elevated CO₂ with responses of similar sized angiosperm seedlings and another conifer species Norfolk Island Pine (Araucaria heterophylla) – a Pacific Island endemic. Back in the Jurassic, when conifers ruled the world, atmospheric CO₂ concentrations were four times current values, then steadily declined over the last 150 million years concurrent with the rise of Angiosperms. Could this decline in CO₂ have altered the competitive balance between angiosperms and conifers? Stay tuned for our results.

Greetings from Josie Chambers in La Esperanza Peru!

2010-12-23T21:15:00.015-06:00

Hola! I am working here for the year as sustainable development coordinator for Neotropical Primate Conservation (NPC), an organization working to conserve the remaining habitat of the critically endangered yellow tailed woolly monkey.

I first arrived in the capital, Lima, over 2 months ago, and began the long journey to the village I have been working in. It was a 27 hours bus ride from Lima to Moyobamba, but the bus was really comfortable and as soon as the Peruvian couple sitting across the aisle and I realized we were each carrying a guitar and wearing New Balance shoes, I had good company for the long ride! Once in Moyobamba, I met up with the directors of NPC, as they were in town to give a presentation on wildlife trafficking. Coincidentally, the staff of the hostel we stayed at found a pet baby woolly monkey in one of the rooms the following morning. The trafficking of primates is unfortunately very common in the region. We transported the baby to a primate sanctuary in town, where it will be rehabilitated and hopefully released back into the wild at some point.

After first arriving in the village, La Esperanza – a few hours from Moyobamba – I met my housemate, a biologist from Lima who has been working with NPC for the past year. We set off to the forest that evening to monitor the Andean owl monkey, a nocturnal [meaning no photos - Ed.] primate species endemic to this region of Peru. We regularly observe a family of six that live in a small forest fragment near the village. They are extremely quiet travelers, and can be quite difficult to find, but luckily we found them and I spent my first night out in the forest!

After a few nights of monitoring the night monkeys, we set off with two Peruvian guides to find yellow tailed woolly monkeys in a forest area located a few hours walk from the village. The walk is a mixture of extreme downhills, uphills, and a lot of mud – although this turned out to be nothing compared to the challenging terrain at the actual site! The yellow tailed woolly monkey is also endemic to this region of Peru and is actually on the list of the 25 most endangered primates species in the world. We spent two full days searching the steep mountainsides for signs of monkey life, and finally found a group at the end of the second day. They are magnificent animals, with a thick reddish brown coat to cope with the relatively high altitude (1500-2100 m) and corresponding chilly climate. We are following groups in the area to gain a sense of behavioral patterns for this largely unstudied species, and NPC has been mapping out all remaining populations in Peru.

Another 3 hour hike back to La Esperanza and much needed shower later, and we were ready to set off again, but this time to the town of Chachapoyas. The University of Cajamarca had organized a Sustainable Development Conference, and we were scheduled to run half of the practical field course day. I met a few Peruvians working for a different conservation organization, focused on conserving Titi monkey habitat in the same region. We learned from experts who talked (of course all in Spanish!) about the economic valuation of nature, relationship between nature and indigenous cultures in the region, applications of GIS technology, diversity of bird species in Peru – to name a few things. On the final day, I helped the co–director of NPC run part of the field skills course, where we taught census methods, distance estimation, and GPS and binocular use in a forest reserve two hours away.

After the conference ended, I headed off with three new Peruvian friends to visit Kuelap, an archaeological site where the Chachapoyas (People of the Clouds) used to live before the Incas conquered the region. I traveled back to Tarapoto with one of my companions, an anthropologist, and stayed at her house before briefly returning to the States for my scholarship interviews.

Now that I have been back in Peru for almost a month, I am already finding myself busy splitting my time between the forest to monitor primate groups, villages to visit schools for environmental education activities, and the office to apply for grants to support community driven sustainable development opportunities. I had several highlights my first week back: realizing that I still have some volleyball skill left while playing with some local women while staying with a friend in Tarapoto, having amazing meals because a friend of one of the directors – a professional chef – visited for the week, and coincidentally meeting a good friend of the couple with the guitars I met on my first trip out. Now I have to visit all of them in Rioja at some point so we can all play guitar/sing together!

I actually had my first "mini concert" three weeks ago at a graduation ceremony for 5 year olds, where they all dressed up in suits and prom-esque gowns to celebrate the end of their first two years of school and official entrance into primary school. I was disappointed that I didn't have time to learn any Spanish songs beforehand, but at least they understood the word hallelujah that repeatedly came up in one of the songs! I’m currently developing lyrics and guitar chords to a yellow tailed woolly monkey (well, mono choro cola amarillo) song, which I hope to sing with kids in schools!

My second week back, we went out to the forest for my second 5-day spree with the yellow tailed woolly monkeys. Unfortunately this time they were acting more like wily monkeys; we found them on the morning of the very last day, but they managed to lose us after our 4-hour pursuit up steep mountain terrain!

Last week we traveled to a few different villages– some which can only be reached on foot – to carry out censuses of wildlife with Peruvian specialists and do environmental education activities at the schools. In one of these activities, the kids colored in different masks of animals that live in Peru, and we discussed where the animals live, what they eat, interesting behavior, and why it’s important to protect their forest habitat.

Now that I’ve been back to La Esperanza for a few days now, I’ve had chance to finally focus more on my main role with the organization – to promote opportunities for sustainable development in the region. This means searching for funding to support community projects growing Sacha inchi, producing dry fruits, making handicrafts, and developing ecotourism, as well as establishing contacts within and outside Peru to help develop such programs. I am focusing my initial efforts on developing the production of Sacha Inchi, as the variety in this region has high market potential and naturally grows well alongside reforestation efforts. Progress was challenging this past weekend with just one hour of power/internet per day; however, the heavy Monday night rains assured that we will have solid hydroelectric power for the next few days at least. This has allowed me to finish an executive summary of Sacha Inchi production in the region, begin setting up meetings in Lima for mid-January, and start contacting foundations for funding opportunities.

Of course there have been quite a few challenges along the way - 14 eggs in 3 days (and the 25 last week) isn't exactly making me feel the healthiest, my nearly 100 bites from a combination of mosquitoes and using a flea infested sleeping bag for a few days in the forest is getting a bit tiresome, my far from perfect Spanish sometimes makes communication difficult, and I've certainly had many difficult extremely steep and muddy hikes (and naturally accompanying bruises, blisters, and lots of laundry)! It keeps me on my toes though, and is a tiny price to pay for the many positive experiences I’ve had working here.

I've already had the opportunity to make so many valuable connections with people working towards environmental justice in villages and through organizations. Last week, I stayed with a family for a night in a remote village called La Primavera to do environmental education activities in the school. The father Eugenio produces coffee in a cooperative and they direct much of their additional effort to planting native tree species in their village. They're up to over 2,500 new trees now. His brother José, who came over for dinner, has developed a society for the defense of nature in the village in response to the tragic clashes between police and indigenous communities in Bagua last year over the economic development of their land. José’s group does environmental education and reforestation activities in the village and surrounding area. It's truly inspiring to meet such dedicated people, and lights even more of a fire underneath me to search for opportunities that can provide support for such efforts.

In the coming days, I will be continuing with internet work and night monkey monitoring, and celebrating the holidays with the other volunteers here by playing with kids in the village and eating Panetón, a traditional Peruvian Christmas cake!

Best wishes for a wonderful new year and happy holidays!
Josie

[Editor's note: Josie is a 2010 IBHonors grad, currently taking a "gap year" before beginning a two year Marshall Scholarship at Edinburgh and Cambridge Universities]

Reflections (Matt Grobis)

2010-11-09T22:36:00.003-06:00

Hi again, after an extended hiatus...

IB Honors is almost over. Well, the core is at least. It's weird to say that... I feel like college didn't really start until IBH did. It's been a rocky road but I'm so happy with the results. I view it as a shaping process - we were put out of our comfort zone and had to change who we were to manage in the new environment. It was really hard at first but being on this side of the hurdle, with only a few requirements and some relatively easy 400-level IB classes left to take, I can't help but feel like I'm ready to take on whatever I launch myself into after college, be it grad school, volunteering, or some avenue completely unrelated. If I can get through IB Honors, I feel I can handle whatever is thrown at me.

Speaking of what's on the horizon, I'm not really sure (though I doubt anyone is, especially at this point of our lives). I switched from the Sears lab to the Bell lab and have found an area of biology I really love - behavior - and I can't wait to work on my own research. I'm interested in social behavior (e.g. how can an ant colony consisting of potentially thousands of individuals operate without a true central intelligence?), tool use (what combination of genes allow crows the mental capacity to use tools but not other species?), and learning (one study Dr. Suarez told me about involved teaching one crow how to use a particular tool and then watching how long it took for other crows in the vicinity to learn how to use the tool just by watching). Working in the Bell lab is interesting enough, but to be in charge of my own project, with my own species of interest and exact project framework I want... well, let's just say I've already browsed my fair share of grad schools' biology faculty and started rehearsing the 50 most common vocab words on the GRE.

At the same time, though, I entered U of I an English major and still have a dream to publish a novel. Free from hours of classes, homework, and labwork, why not explore avenues of my life that I turned down for biology? What about taking a year, volunteering for part of it, and then getting a one-bedroom apartment in Seattle or some other place far from home, working at Starbucks during the day and then at night cranking out this novel I've had in my head for the last year (and am trying to write every day)? In other words... why do I have to start the rest of my life now? Grad school is a tremendous commitment and doesn't allow much time for outside interests (i.e. writing a novel). And call me paranoid, but I don't think I've met a single person in grad school who isn't in a committed relationship or married. Trying to explain to my significant other that I "just want to work at Starbucks in California and work on this story I've been writing... you know?" when she wants to settle down doesn't seem like it'll work out very well.

Taking a year off might be the hardest thing I've ever done but I feel like I won't be completely satisfied if I don't. I love biology and can't wait to dedicate my life to trying to unravel its mysteries, but what about everything else? Maybe this is a hippie thought, but I've had this desire to... give thanks to what has been given to me. Karate changed my life - it gave me the tools to defend myeslf but more importantly it gave me self confidence, discipline, and taught me respect. Part of me wants to go to Okinawa, the birthplace of Shotokan karate, and... I don't know. Pay my respects. Say thank you. I feel the same way about Poland. I'm 100% Polish - I consider myself American but in the end I am completely Polish - but I have done nothing to Poland besides visit family there. I want to get a job there for a little while, basically give something back to Poland. And even considering what biology has taught me, I want to give back to the Earth by volunteering with conservation or helping underpriviledged children in other countries. I'm not saying I'll definitely go to Okinawa, Poland, or a country in South America or Africa, but taking a year off at least gives me the opportunity to give back in some way, whatever it may be.

And then, of course, grad school. :-)

I'll keep writing in this... part of me wishes I could just see an entry in this blog from two years down the road, where I'll be halfway through this potentially crazy gap year. But then again... with everything I could cram into a whole year, maybe the real excitement lies in the unknown.

-Matt

Field Trips and Evolution! (Matt Grobis)

2010-09-04T17:55:00.005-05:00

Hello!

The year is off to a good start. Last weekend was the IB 372 field trip to southern Illinois for fieldwork and it was a blast. The trip started on Friday at 5pm, when the class met outside Morrill and divided into three vans that soon headed south on I-57. I knew I'd be hungry but figured I would just wait until we stopped at a McDonalds or something; my friend Cally, on the other hand, nonchalantly pulled out two enormous loaves of bread from her bag and offered them to us. To make it even more random, her neighbors had just handed the bread to her right before she left for Morrill. The food was delicious and the drive full of jokes, stories about Africa, singing along to the radio, and intellectual exploration. Gotta love IBH.

We slept at a research station (basically a log cabin) and spent most of Saturday and Sunday outside. On Saturday, we got up at 8am to begin the first part of the day - insect collection. We wanted to analyze insect diversity in three different environments - a soybean field, grassland, and woodland. With huge butterfly nets (just like you'd picture one), we walked through waist-high soybeans, grasses, or bushes while swiping the net back and forth. You couldn't see anything in the greenery so it was really surprising emptying a seemingly empty net into a plastic bag and seeing dozens of flies, spiders, ticks, caterpillars, grasshoppers, beetles, moths, midges, and more. Speaking of ticks, we all had a lovely time combing our legs for them afterwards and finding an uncomfortably high number of them, especially baby ones that look like tiny dots.

Anyway, the picture on the right is from the soybean field. We went to the grassland and then woodland after that before returning to the station for lunch and then heading out again for the second part of the day - soil analysis. After a small hike in the woods, we found a bog where the ground sloped upwards away from it so we decided to do our research here. We took soil samples to look at the amounts of water and organic carbon in relation to distance from the bog and we looked at the number and diameter of trees in each corresponding area. We also took fish-eye photographs of the tree canopy (by pointing a nice camera straight up and crouching to avoid being in picture) to look at amount of sunlight. When we finally got back to the station, we began sorting the insects into morphospecies (basically, what does this individual look like it could be?) before a delicious dinner of chili courtesy of Dr. Dalling. After more insect sorting, we headed to a campfire and had s'mores while Dr. Berlocher played guitar and we sang (or, as in my case, listened while those who could sing chose to do so) oldies.

Sunday was much more relaxed, with a hike, lunch, and then drive back to U of I to finally start homework for other classes. It's a good idea to have this field trip during the first weekend because fortunately I didn't have very much. Speaking of classes, though, I get to the second part of the title of this entry: evolution. Evolution fascinates me and I hope to some day do work that incorporates it. One of the biggest debates among evolutionary biologists right now is what level of organization does evolution occur. Is it at the gene, like Dawkins argued, the organism, or the group, which Wynne-Edwards believed? Last year, I took a class called PSYC 433 - Evolutionary Neuroscience, with Dr. Justin Rhodes. He showed us support for the group selection argument and hammered it into our heads that selection can occur at this stage (we're talking exam questions where the correct answer is 'group selection'). He made some really interesting points and I could see the logic in his arguments.

Then on Friday, in my IB 429 - Animal Behavior class, Dr. Andrew Suarez spent at least ten minutes stressing that group selection does not occur and it's a mental fallacy. He showed us the problems with group selection models and argued that kin selection, which is a form of selection at the individual level, can frequently be used to explain group selection arguments. We talked for fifteen minutes after class about this dichotomy between individual and group selection theories and he said he had a history of debating the topic with Dr. Rhodes.

I think this is fascinating. Here we are, at the very edge of scientific knowledge, trying to figure out which way is correct (or perhaps if there is a third way that combines the two or a fourth way completely unrelated). Two reputable, extremely intelligent scientists are confronting the same problem and arriving at conflicting answers. Fifty years from now, maybe the problem will be resolved and it'll just be a bullet point on a powerpoint slide (or a program you input into a chip in your brain? Crazy...). But right now, we're pushing at that boundary. What sort of questions will we be asking in fifty years?

Heading into the future with an open mind,
-Matt

p.s: as to where I fall on the evolution question (as if I have any credibility at all), I think there might be a little of both factoring into the answer. Do the options have to be mutually exclusive? I'm thinking of meeting with Dr. Rhodes again and seeing what he has to say again.

Enjoying Summer (Matt Grobis)

2010-08-17T11:56:00.003-05:00

Hi all,

It's definitely nice being on this side of calc III... I finished summer classes, which included calc 3 and creative writing, last week and have finally had what I could call a "real" summer vacation. Calc 3 was a pretty nasty hurdle and I actually questioned IB Honors towards the end of the class... if I wanted to go to a good graduate school, wouldn't a better GPA help more than a mediocre grade in advanced calculus? Why was I stressing myself out learning about Green's Theorem, triple integrals, and partial derivative chain rules if I wanted to work with conservation in the future? In theory, taking all these hard classes would make us smarter but in reality, wasn't it just another hoop to jump through?

Having finished Calc 3, I'm a lot more ambivalent about its inclusion in the IBH curriculum. Sure, it was stressful, but education is about broadening your horizons and better understanding the world, and learning all about calculations with multiple variables does that... right? At any rate, maybe I'll be using something similar in the future. I was dead-set on being an English major from when I was nine until senior year in high school, and now I'm on the pre-graduate path for science. If I had never taken AP Bio in high school, there's a good chance I wouldn't have discovered that I love biology. Take a chance, then... maybe you'll find something you wouldn't have otherwise.

I do have one suggestion for the IBH curriculum, though. Instead of automatically gearing towards receiving a chemistry minor, it would be cool if students could have a choice between two or three different "minor concentrations" they could choose. For example, I find astrobiology fascinating. Having the opportunity to IBH minor in physics or astronomy, I may have preferred choosing that over chemistry. Chemistry is probably the most practical and relevant to biology, but if IBH stresses that it prepares students for any field (according to the program description), wouldn't it be cool if students had a little more say in how they handled this education given to them? Just a thought.

My dog is whining at me so I'm going to walk her now. See you all in a week!
-Matt

Back from Africa! (Matt Grobis)

2010-06-15T15:01:00.035-05:00

Hello all!

This has been quite an intense summer so far... I had a week at home before I went to South Africa for three weeks. Came back on Thursday, at U of I on Sunday, started classes and work on Monday. I could talk plenty about what's happened post-Africa, or I could share my experiences and include lots of pictures :-)

Africa was amazing, of course. Everything was so raw and real... all of the wildlife we saw was right there, not separated from us through a TV screen or textbook (except, perhaps, for our camera lenses). I was surprised at how large lions are - they're huge, bigger than a person. Elephants, too, took me by surprise at the variance in what I could call personality; some were afraid of our Land Rover, others ambivalent, some easily angered, and others curious.

We spent the first week camping in Phelwana game lodge, a reserve with no large predatory animals. This served as a good introduction to Africa, as I doubt any of us would have been able to fall asleep with the knowledge that something could eat us during the night. We camped next to a lake with hippos, which was very interesting. Hippos are the most dangerous animal in Africa because they are very protective of their young and are territorial. Many unfortunate boaters get killed each year by passing by too closely. Looking at the hippos, though, it was hard to see them as being dangerous - they were just two eyes barely above the water that stared at us constantly, wondering what we were doing on the grass they liked to eat. Every now and then one would raise its head out of the water and we saw how truly huge they are. Their calls to one another sound like a scary mix of horse followed by really deep laughter. The picture on the right is when one wandered to a shallow part of the lake and was eyeing us.

We drove to an animal rehabilitation center called Moholoholo on one of the first days of the trip. This was one of the best days of my life, probably... the amount of wildlife we saw up close and even got to touch was incredible. I'll just let the photos do the talking for now:

Bateleur eagle. The "sunset" beak is beautiful. We saw one of these later in the trip perched in a tree... smaller birds didn't enjoy its presence.

Hippo skull. You can tell they're herbivores by the teeth - they grind their food, as opposed to carnivores, which tear it and swallow whole. The front tusks are for defense. Below: baby black rhino. 3 months old and 200 pounds. Wow. The woman here is feeding it milk.

African wild dogs on the left. They're the rarest carnivore in Africa. For example, in Kruger National Park, there are approximately 14,000 elephants, 130,000 impala (a species of antelope) and only ~150 wild dogs. Below is a leopard, which can be distinguished from a cheetah by its spots, which have brown in them, its lack of black "tear" lines running from the eyes, and the fact that it is much bulkier. These cats frequently climb trees while holding their prey, which can be several hundred pounds, in their jaws.

Cheetah on the left. They are actually not in the genus Panthera with lions and leopards; they're more closely related to dogs. One trait they don't share with the other big cats is retractable claws - their claws are always extended. Below is a massive hyena. Hyenas are really interesting because the females have the same external genitalia as males. Females are dominant in clans and have more testosterone than males.

And finally, 8-week old cheetah cubs. Absolutely adorable. Cubs have the "mohawk" but lose it at adolescence, I think.

We went to Kruger National Park the next day, a heavy tourist area but still awesome. The park is ~3600 km^2 and full of wildlife. Visitors are not allowed to leave their cars but we still saw and learned a lot. The next few days were spent primarily in Phelwana, doing walks around the area and learning about tracks that animals make in the sand. In the second half of the trip, we stayed at Sabi Sands, a private game reserve next to Kruger. The lodge we stayed at was in the middle of the reserve... we literally drove for 20 minutes after going through the gate before we reached the campground. The lodge has several bungalos, or one-room houses with a bathroom, and our group divided into 2's and 3's and each took one. A typical day at Sabi Sands included waking up at 6am and leaving for a 4-hour drive in a specially-designed Land Rover around the reserve. One person would have to sit on the seat up front with nothing but a small handle on the right to hold onto and a small metal plate for his or her feet. This was pretty intimidating, given the fact that we saw lions, elephants attempting to charge us, hyenas, and more. I was up front on a night drive (holding on with my right hand and in my left shining a spotlight) when we saw a leopard. We stopped the LR ahead of the leopard and turned towards it as it made its way to us... when it got to within ten feet of the front of the LR, it looked me in the eye. I could tell this animal has such strength and no fear of anything. It gave new meaning to the phrase "piercing glare," hah.

The trip has given me a really strong desire to do something with conservation in the future. After seeing such beautiful wildlife and environment, it's hard to ignore the world's biodiversity problems. I want to help somehow, in any way I can. Climate change, human population growth, habitat destruction, and more threaten to ruin not only the animals on this planet but us as well. If we don't work to keep Earth clean and manage our impact on it, we may lose the only home we have.

Now that it's over... (Matt Grobis)

2010-05-17T14:29:00.007-05:00

Now what? haha. Summer vacation is lovely... get up when you want, sleep how much you want, no work, just fun... interestingly enough, I'm glad this will only last about a week. It's nice to get out the Xbox and play games I haven't played in months, sleep 9-10 hours a day, and not have the stress of always having to do something on my mind, but I can't help but feel like I should be doing something... more. I suppose in the end it really is all about balance; in the midst of paper-writing and studying for finals last week, I gladly welcomed days with absolutely nothing on the planner. Now, though, once I've blown up a good share of mutated monsters' heads in Fallout 3 I can't help but desire some sort of structure to my days.

Like I said, though, things are good. I'm leaving for South Africa this Thursday and I'll be there for three weeks. It's a program through U of I about wildlife conservation and management along with learning about the various ecosystems in the region. We'll mainly be in national parks and the last six days or so will be spent hiking and camping... very excited for that. Apparently the trip starts with looking at animals through bars (in an animal rescue center, for example), then looking at them through the Jeep windows, and then seeing them while actually walking around. There's something called the "titanic seat" on the Jeep, which is a seat at the very front of the car, actually on top of the engine area. All of us on the trip (~10) are fortunate enough to get a turn on that seat (:-\)! When we're driving around and passing leopards and elephants, I wouldn't be surprised to feel like I was about to get mauled at any moment. No casualties so far, though, they've said. I won't be taking antimalarial medication because we're going during Africa's winter and mosquitoes aren't active at this time. I did get a hepatitis A shot and am taking an oral typhoid fever vaccine from McKinley, however.

Speaking of Africa's winter, I feel compelled to share something. When I tell people I'm packing for my trip to Africa, they're usually like "oh, so you're bringing lots of shirts and shorts and sun screen, right?" Then I tell them we'll be there during Africa's winter and they say, "oh, so you're bringing lots of sweatshirts and pants and stuff, right?" Turns out that both sun screen and a heavy winter coat are on the packing list. Winter in Africa means the temperature is a little below freezing at night and then over 100F during the day. Yeah. That's insane. Layers, they keep reminding us. I'm really curious about the resilience and determination of life in this climate at such an intense temperature range. These parts of Africa are extremely diverse despite the seemingly unfavorable conditions. If the conditions are predictable and regular, though, it makes sense that something out there found a way to survive in them.

When I get back, I've got a few days to myself and then I'm off to U of I again to take some classes and continue research in my lab. Some of my IBH friends will be around so I'm looking forward to hanging out with them in a non-stressed setting :-) It's looking to be a good summer.

Finally getting some sleep and about to go play some more Xbox (while I still can!),
-Matt

Keeping a Good Lab Journal (Matt Grobis)

2010-04-19T18:48:00.004-05:00

I feel like I learned a lesson today that IBH has been trying to drill into our heads from day one.

I came into the Sears lab today with instructions to set up some opossum matings + tapes and then prepare some primers for PCR. The opossum matings went fine; I've been doing this every Monday since the start of the semester and lately it's been going really well. I got back upstairs, hung up the lab coat, put away the keys and i-card (I'm still not authorized downstairs) and got to my lab bench and...

Now what? I stared at the two boxes of primers for a moment before rifling through my bag to look at the notes I had taken from two weeks ago, when the P.I. (Dr. Sears, the head of the lab) and I did this for the first time. They were brief and scattered but had immense holes in them - did I add the ddH2O directly to the capsules, did I centrifuge first (and for how long?) and then add the water, did I add 10x the mass of the sample as uL or nL, was DEPC H2O ok if ddH2O wasn't available? I actually got scared, holding hundreds (thousands?) of dollars of technology in my hands and not knowing what to do. Dr. Sears was gone and the other students in the lab were busy doing their own projects. I've felt guilty making them take time out of their day to bring me up to speed, the new kid who's just a weight on the lab until he starts pulling his own weight. I looked at my notes again but didn't know where to start.

Fortunately, one of the other members of the lab saw me struggling and came over to help. She gave me her notes (much better ones, I might add) and gave me some advice on what to do before getting back to her work. After a question or two for clarification, I started prepping the samples and in a matter of minutes messed up because I hadn't read my notes (and hers) carefully enough. This happened again twenty minutes later, probably because I was a little tired as well (sorry Dr. Cheeseman, I know I know).

When I finally put the solutions into the PCR machine and hit "Start," I knew that I needed to really get serious about the notes I took during lab. In IB 270 and 271, it's important that we take notes so that we can know what we did when it comes time to write the lab report or (in 271) do the experiment again. But in those cases, I was with other students, working together in something that at most will cost me a few points in the long run with the semester. Now I was in the same situtation but with the trust of a professor, where my work is really an extension of her work, her career. I was handed something worth enough money that messing up would make me look pretty bad. And I almost couldn't do it.

Dr. Cheeseman keeps telling us that everything in IB Honors happens for a reason (wow, replace "IB Honors" with "life" and you have something philosophical going on). Jokes aside, I understand what he means now... the lab journals, the sleep. It's easy to brush the advice aside when we're working late into the night on something we put off, but in reality the man's right. I don't want what happened today to happen again.

Off to Walgreens to buy a fresh lab notebook,
-Matt

IBH Barbeque! (Matt Grobis)

2010-04-11T01:13:00.003-05:00

Hello all!

So finally an entry that isn't about how much work we've had or how stressed I am. Today was the IBH barbeque that Dr. Cheeseman promised at the start of the year (don't worry - the reason it was today was because we forgot for a few months :-P). I walked to ISR to meet Darcy and saw Jess on the way. We walked together and met with three juniors in IBH when we got close. A few minutes later, we entered Dr. Cheeseman's back yard. It was awesome. His backyard has a big variety of different plants and the food was great. I've never been to a barbeque with such a diversity of food. Most of it was stuff I had never had, either, like Greek spinach pie or this type of plant that tastes like licorice. We had delicious liquid nitrogen ice cream, too, which was a necessity at such a science-y get-together. Everything was great... it was beautiful out, Dr. Cheeseman's wife was really nice, and everyone was just in a great mood.

It was really nice hanging out with these people I've stressed out with and worked all hours of the day with. We all swapped nerdy bio jokes and talked about our summer plans, what we were doing later that day, and just about anything really. I can tell that these are folks I'll be talking to years from now... Cally bought pizza Thursday evening / Friday morning and I couldn't break a $5 so I told her I'd pay for the IBH get-together in 20 years. We pinky-swore on it so I guess it's undeniably happening. I'm looking forward to saying "oh yeah, I knew so and so. We were in IBH together." Some day, some day...

Here's to more events like these :-)

-Matt

April's Here! (Matt Grobis)

2010-04-02T13:14:00.004-05:00

Hi!

Phew, what a hard week... and right after the typical "tough week before spring break," too. The week before spring break, we had two lab reports due in IB 271 in addition to a lab report due in CHEM 237. I got some last-minute Sears lab work and had stuff in my other classes, too, so it was a loooong week. I slept like ten hours a day during break just catching up :-) (it was glorious). We came back to an open-note take-home exam that I figured wouldn't be too bad because I had studied over break. Yeah right! Every time I underestimate IBH I generally get my butt kicked... that exam took a cumulative nine hours. When that was finally finished, it was 5:00am Wednesday morning and I scraped together a few hours of sleep before my 10am.

Then in bio lab, while most of us are brain-dead and exhausted, Dr. Cheeseman announces that in this lab, we have to design our own procedure to answer a question on differential GAPDH activity in green and not-green sections of leaves. We knew we'd be re-doing the first experiment of the semester as a way to check how well we took notes in our lab journals, but the "design your own procedure" made me want to put my head in my hands and sleep/cry/etc. It was tough. But, my group collaborated, we pushed each other, and we got it done. Then that night I slaved at a chem lab report and designing a procedure for a final project synthesis. I was so tired. But I got through it.

The week's over and I'm looking forward to some beautiful sleep, watching season 2 LOST (I'm getting caught up!), writing creatively a bit, and just relaxing. Oh yeah, and doing plenty of homework of course.

On a non-homework-related note, I'm pretty happy with stuff. Classes are interesting, warm weather is lovely, karate yesterday was really fun, I have a sub-lease for this summer pretty much set up, I won $1100 scholarship for my 3-week study abroad in Africa this summer, things are good with the girlfriend... it's all good. All the work may be tough, but I'm learning a lot and feel I'm getting a lot smarter. With sophomore year drawing to a close, I'm comparing myself to who I was in that car going home at the end of freshman year and I wonder how I could say I knew much about biology at all... especially the experiment side of it. Yay IBH. Well now I'm really tired so I'm going to lie down... then Chipotle at 3:00 with the other karate instructors. Can't wait!

-Matt

New IBH Kids Coming In (Matt Grobis)

2010-02-27T13:12:00.007-06:00

Hello!

So interviews for IB Honors are this week and I'm excited to see some fresh faces excited about biology :-) . This semester's been going well; I'm working in the Sears research lab and taking IBH and orgo labs so pretty much any day of the week 1-5pm I'm in some lab, haha. It's good though. At yesterday's lab meeting, the post-doc Lisa talked about this really interesting project idea she has regarding the evolution of mammalian hearing. Depending on the type of work she'd be doing, there's a chance I'll be joining her soon. I'm really excited... besides that, though, I'm learning lab techniques like in-situ hybridizations to analyze the opossum embryos and I'm learning to manage the opossum colony in the basement. That's one on the right if you're curious.

The longer I'm in IBH, the more I love it. The small class size can't be stressed enough. It's amazing. U of I is a huge place and it's hard to feel connected to the people around you when you see them for one semester in one of your classes and then never see them again. In IB Honors, though, I see the same people MWF every week for hours, and the core is extensive enough that I see them in pretty much all my other classes too. It makes U of I feel much smaller when you're working on that tough orgo problem set with your lab partners or comparing labs that look interesting or just seeing these people on the Quad. You can't help but become close because of all the time you end up spending with them. And everyone in IBH is so interesting... you don't leap into this major without loving biology (hopefully!), and so everyone has something interesting to add to a conversation. During last Wednesday's lab, some IBHers and I got into a discussion on the global warming "debate" (more so why some people - particularly those receiving funding from companies who would suffer from stricter emissions regulations - are taking such measures to deny global warming), possible evolutionary explanations for a belief in God, and even just our favorite books. For a school as enormous as U of I, this keeps me sane.

Well, I better get going. And to any students interested in IBH that are reading this before next week's interviews: good luck! Just relax and let your love for biology shine through.

-Matt

Into a new semester... (Matt Grobis)

2010-02-04T01:06:00.002-06:00

Hi prospective IBH students!

After a long winter break to digest everything that had happened last semester, and after almost three weeks into this semester, I finally feel ready to contribute something meaningful here.

IB Honors is amazing. I'm in the perfect major. It's a huge challenge but you're in an environment that will help you achieve your goals. I've learned that IBH makes scientists. In other biology classes, you learn a lot about a certain topic. You go to lecture, listen, memorize facts and learn theories that coordinate those facts, and then you get tested and hopefully walk away with some of that information sticking around. In IBH, though, you're not only taught the facts - you're taught to evaluate them for yourself and to think critically. We read scientific articles last semester not just to learn something but to look at what we had previously learned and evaluate the information in a new context. And this semester, we learned about glycolysis and the kreb's cycle over two days in a really thought-provoking, step-by-step analysis of WHY this is happening, not just what was happening. We had to really think about every step of the process and not just memorize them. This, I feel, is how biology should be taught - not memorized from a book, but processed, challenged, and then finally laid to rest.

One bit of advice, though: IB Honors is amazing, no doubt. But as is the case with any time commitment, make sure you have the time to devote to it. IB, Orgo, and calc II last semester was really, really hard. I had a long and painful semester with those 12 credit hours alone (not including the psych class I took, which was minimal work compared to those behemoths) and I couldn't fully devote myself to orgo or calc. This semester, I cut it back quite a bit and I am much happier. I'm finding time to write creatively, devote myself to the lab I recently joined, and write meaningful lesson plans for the karate classes I help teach. Just having some breathing room makes a big difference. If you can handle a tough schedule, by all means go for it. Just know that IBH is going to take up quite some time outside of the 11-12 MWF and 1-5W :-)

Well, I better get going. In 7.5 hours I'm expected at Morrill to get trained to handle animals so I can start taking care of the possum colonies for my lab. Hope things are well with you, whoever is reading this. Good night!

-Matt

New Semester, New Tactics

2010-01-18T16:13:00.015-06:00

Hi! This is the first post of Darcy Ross, a sophomore in the IB Honors program. To the left is a picture of an owl in flight, effortlessly gliding through the winter air. I find it inspiring, when all I want to do is hibernate through the winter.

Let me start out by saying that over one semester, IBH has shifted my course in life quite drastically and pointed me toward opportunities previously unfathomable. Perhaps even more significantly, the people in this program, both faculty and students, have served to fuel my enthusiasm about biology and the places it is taking me. IBH is a place where ideas take wing to the promised land of reality, and I am ever grateful for it.

That said, IB 270 rocked my world. The amount of work I put into that class, especially when it came to the Discovery Project, was orders of magnitude more than anything I had previously ŭndertaken. This was partly because of the challenges it inherently presented, and partly because I loved it so much that I would rather spend time on IB than on my Japanese or Orgo classes. Organic Chemistry in particular is a selfish beast, and retaliated against my neglect quite fiercely.

This semester, I seek a more balanced schedule. I decided to push physics back a semester, leaving me with only 13 credit hours (gasp!). I wanted to excel in my courses and spend more time in a lab (gaining some more credits, thankfully) so that I could start work on an independent project soon. That's what I told my parents, at least. It is all true, but I am also exploring a philosophy that I've often enjoyed reading about from the Study Hacks blog. Study Hacks is written by Cal Newport, MIT student and now post-doc, who investigated the study habits of straight-A students.

The main idea I'm trying to follow is his Zen Valedictorian philosophy. His summary of the philosophy:

If you understand…

your interests and values,
the psychology of impressiveness, and
how to be productive and study efficiently,

then you can construct a student lifestyle that is…

relaxed and free of chronic stress,
intellectually engaging,
wildly social and exciting, and
just as impressive as if you had followed the path of the grind.

We can sum this all up in the following pithy motto:

Do Less. Live More. Get Ahead.

By purposely underscheduling my coursework, I will focus on other things that are fulfilling to me and often still productive in my career as a student: my Esperanto club; writing for the Journal of Young Investigators; writing bad poetry; doing yoga; having chats with some of the amazing, influential people just wandering nonchalantly on this campus; finding a topic for my senior thesis that truly interests me; reading; and in general exploring who I am and who I want to be. Now doesn't that sound fun?

As long as I strike the right balance, my GPA will benefit as well. I don't for one moment plan on slacking off--I am setting the goals higher this semester. I should be able to do better in my classes without just spending more time on them. I have much anecdotal evidence that a rested, happy mind is a smarter one, an example being: One night last semester, I accidentally got a full night's rest before my 8 AM Japanese class. My new-found comprehension, participation, and alertness startled me. I wonder which exams and other projects from last semester could have benefited from such a remedy. I want this state to be the norm, and I see no reason it won't be.

What are your goals this semester? Do you have any advice for other students?

The Discovery Projects are done and we are on break!

2009-12-23T16:31:00.005-06:00

Hello, everyone! This one's from Cassie, class of 2012...
As the fall semester transitions into winter break, I am really glad to have found time to post to our IBH blog!

The presentations of the IB 270 Discovery Projects were given the week before finals, and they were all very impressive. First off, it was really comforting to know that people outside of our class came to see our presentations. A group of similarly interested people all gathering to see the culmination of our semester's work with the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans really made the presentations fun to give. Since this was also a pizza party/presentation hybrid, it was double the fun! From the infection rate of pseudomonas in C. elegans to the chemotaxis of C. elegans in the presence of different alcohols, our Discovery Projects explored a whole range of interesting topics regarding the effects of RNA interference in C. elegans.

For the Discovery Projects, our lab groups had to develop a novel hypothesis regarding the effects of RNA Interference on a gene within the C. elegans genome. At the beginning of the semester, we researched scientific literature in order to formulate our hypotheses, methods, and expected results.Once we had created a solid proposal for the experiment, we started to see how our regular class labs were related to this independent project. With our Mendelian genetics lab, we learned the body morphology of C. elegans, their reproductive systems, and how to classify certain mutant phenotypes. Armed with our knowledge about these soil-dwelling organisms, we then moved onto a DNA lab where we learned molecular techniques such as PCR and DNA sequencing with the Sequencher program. After the completion of the RNA Interference Lab, we had successfully learned how to make NGM (nematode growth medium) plates and then seed those plates with bacteria. We then learned the intricate details of RNA Interference, and how it would be working to knock out the genes chosen for our respective Discovery Projects. These labs were crucial building blocks that guided our projects throughout the semester. Many thanks to Nick and Miranda (our teaching assistants) for preparing those labs for us, and to Professor Whitfield for teaching us everything about C. elegans, RNA Interference, and the research process!

I've never been through a class where everything culminates so fluidly to an important group project presentation. I really felt like I had invested the entire semester in this project. Not only was class time utilized, but time outside of class was a necessity for getting these projects done on time. All of us had the same common goal--to execute this experiment as best as we could, and that meant putting in a ton of extra time. This was perfectly fine with me considering all of the fun times that were had in NHB this semester.

It's the most gratifying feeling to know that all of our fun and hard work intertwined to fabricate our scientific aspirations into a tangible design. Plus, those presentations weren't so scary once I realized that we really were all in this together. I am sure that the rest of my class is as excited for the rest of what the IBH program has to offer for the upcoming semesters. From one semester alone, my outlook regarding a career in biology has evolved from a genuine interest into a sincere passion that I will undoubtedly follow for the rest of my life. With IB 270, we delved further into biological applications, previously unknown details of molecular biology, and a wealth of laboratory techniques. All of the knowledge gained from lecture, lab, our professor, teaching assistants, and each other accumulated into a reserve of inspiration to further explore the biological world. Joining IBH was the best decision that I made at UIUC so far, and I truly look forward to my future academic adventures with the program.

After a long winter break, here we come, IB 271!
Cassie

The Semester's Almost Over! (Matt Grobis)

2009-11-28T16:25:00.002-06:00

Hello!

With Thanksgiving over and preparations being made to return to U of I tomorrow, I'm realizing that there's a week and a half of classes left. Then finals and... it's over. Whoa, hold on a second. I remember several points during the semester when I'd look at an Allenotes in my dorm (Allen Hall) and see that it was week 8, or week 10. The semester was one enormously long stretch until about halfway through, and then the next few weeks flew by. Crazy...

This semester has changed me, I think. I feel a little burned out... I actually laughed a few days ago when I asked myself if I really want to go to graduate school. What would the other option be? Stay home and play video games? Try to make a rock band and play drums for a living? Sure, those are sources of immediate gratification, but what's down the line? Deprived of biology long enough, I'm sure I'd start itching to learn more about how the world works. This all reminds me of that concept from introductory psychology... it's like, people have "lists" of desired activities, and things that are normally low on the list can actually move up if one doesn't do them frequently. The opposite thing can happen for things that one does very frequently. People take for granted their health until it's jeopardized... then, it's the most important thing in the world to them.

Anyway, this is a tremendous deviation from the point of this post. I feel burnt out because I've tried so hard and met such resistance, especially from organic chemistry... I'll be glad when it's over. And I'll be glad when this semester is over, but not because I'll be done with my classes. I feel that I have learned so much this fall, maybe more so than the entire last year. Finishing this semester will put a cap on everything that I've done so far and let me finally get closure on the last few months. IB Honors has been intense but it's been a flood of information and experiences that I want and that have helped me understand the world.

It was nice to return home and be able to put the books aside and do whatever I wanted with no obligations for a few days. After a while, though, I started getting that familiar uncomfortable feeling like I should be doing something worthwhile. This, I feel, is the reason I want to go to graduate school. It's easy to get lost in the work, sleep deprivation, and occasional frustration. The whole point of why one is doing something can be hard to hold onto. I want to pave the way into unfamiliar territory, into concepts that are still unclear and the textbooks avoid. I want to do something that others will read about and say, "wow." When I was in high school, in my final reflective paper in English I wrote that I wanted to change the world. Coming to college, I see that changing the world is going to be a bit harder than I anticipated. But give me time.

-Matt

Late into October (Matt Grobis)

2009-10-24T12:58:00.005-05:00

Hello all!

I've gone home for the weekend and have finally found the time to write something here. This semester's been hard, much harder than the other two here. Science and math classes can be really time-intensive, so even if the material itself isn't hard, if it takes a few hours to do it, those few hours are going to be bumping shoulders with the time it takes to finish other homework. Result: very late nights if you don't time manage.

For example, our first lab report was due in IB 270. The lab, analyzing the relationship between two phenotypes in C. elegans, seemed like it would have a straightforward and simple lab report. My group took copious notes in our lab notebooks and the lab report rubric didn't seem too bad. BUT: it took time. A lot of it. I realized this at 4am Friday morning, when I took a quick break from writing to finish (ok... start) my orgo problem set due in five hours. How'd this happen?!

At no point that week had I purposely put off doing homework. I was busy doing other work, but the work was always just what was due the next day. There's this thing called "planning ahead" that you need to learn when you come to college, and if you don't do that, sleep deprivation awaits if you want to get any sort of decent grades.

I'm not trying to scare anybody thinking about IB Honors. Read the rest of this post if you want to get excited about it, because I'm really happy here. It's just a lot of work. You need to be really driven to get through math through calc III and organic chemistry in addition to tough bio classes. Physics, biochem, and statistics are probably going to be tough too. But the thing is: everyone in IBH is going through this. That night I was up late writing the lab report, I joked around a lot with the other students there and we had Jimmy John's together, making light of the situation. We're all stressed. We're all trying our best. You really bond after something like that.

Academics aside, let's get to the dorky intellectual stuff... I'm so happy! I'm realizing that one of my favorite parts of IB 270 is reading scientific articles every week. This week's article was "Massive Horizontal Gene Transfer in Bdelloid Rotifers," by some people at Harvard and the Marine Bio Lab in Woods Hole, MA. Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is where a change in the genome occurs during an organism's lifetime, as opposed to vertical gene transfer, where two parents produce an offspring with a different genome. HGT is very common in bacteria but very rare in animals. In this one type of animal, the rotifer, though, the team found dozens of genes from bacteria, plants, and fungi. How could this have possibly happened? The article goes into detail about where they found the genes and how they could have gotten there; they use the same BLAST procedure that my lab group did to compare genes in different species (more on that later!) and analyzed where in the genome these foreign genes were.

I absolutely love reading stuff like this because it's so new that it's not even in the textbooks yet. I've realized that a lot of textbooks can be thorough but not very deep. They can cover a lot of material at a certain level of depth but they have to compromise that depth to cover everything they need to cover. A research article, on the other hand, is the equivalent of a paragraph of the textbook gone into incredible detail; basically, that paragraph is expanded into a few pages. Very cool.

So, back to the BLAST thing I mentioned. BLAST is a button you press on a website after specifying a nucleotide/protein/etc. sequence that you want to find similarities for. Normally this sequence you have corresponds to something in an organism, and you're trying to find related genes in other organisms. My lab group did this for our Discovery Project (I think I talk about the Discovery Project in detail two posts ago; check it out). We wanted to analyze olfaction and chemotaxis in C. elegans: ideally, knocking out a gene related to olfaction would result in a loss of chemotaxis. We found a gene in mice that, when knocked out, resulted in impaired olfaction. We BLASTed that gene and lo and behold, a near identical gene is present in C. elegans! We looked into a few articles on it, and nobody's done our exact experiment yet. Our semester project has been formed!

Anyway, on to other subjects. Orgo and calculus are hard but I'm managing. In my PSYC 433 class, we watched this amazing National Geographic special on Robert Sapolsky, a neurobiologist at Stanford who works with baboons in Kenya. In the video, a comparison was made between his findings of stress levels in the baboons and the results of a correlational study conducted in England on stress levels in workers in particular businesses. Baboons make a good comparison because they spend only 3 hours a day on food; the other 9 are entirely social behavior. Baboon groups have strong hierarchies, and the study found that as you descend from the top, your stress levels keep increasing. Interestingly, the same result was found with the people working in the hierarchial businesses in England. The special then went into detail on the health effects of stress, how to manage it, why zebras don't get ulcers (that's the name, actually, of one of Sapolsky's books), and more, all intertwined with beautiful views of the savannah. Awesome.

I hope this thing hasn't dragged on too long. I'm going to eat some cereal and get started on orgo reading, which never ends... but at least it's good to be home :-)

-Matt

A Month into the Semester (Matt Grobis)

2009-09-19T19:33:00.006-05:00

Hello!

I'm writing this slightly sleep-deprived and sick but intellectually content. This semester has been pretty hard so far... IB Honors is a part of it but it's more so due to my schedule. Dr. Cheeseman was right when advising against the IB 270, CHEM 236, CHEM 237, and MATH 231 idea. I'm not taking CHEM 237 (I'm in a psychology class instead) and I'm already feeling the crunch of bio, chem, and calc. These 12 credit hours alone outcompete schedules with more credit hours last year. I think that the difference between intro-level and upper-level classes is that in intro-level classes, investing some time and studying will most likely push you to an A. In upper-level classes, you need to really grapple with the material before you can confidently say you've mastered it.

This isn't to say that this year is very hard; if I've learned anything in college, it's that it could always be much worse, haha. I've just had to put down a lot of time to get to the level of understanding of the material I want. Orgo's going well and is interesting because we're learning the answers to a lot of "why" questions: "why does a reaction occur the way it does?" for example. I have a hard TA for calculus but at least I'm understanding what's going on (I can't say that for the first few lectures this semester, though, haha). Psychology is very interesting, too, so I'm content there.

That leaves IB 270. The lecture material is still largely review but Professor Whitfield keeps it interesting by asking us questions that make us look at the material a different way instead of just memorizing it and moving on. I really like how we read a research article every week and discuss it on Friday. We're learning about the biomolecules and DNA replication and this week our article was a theory on the transition from a lifeless world to one where molecules were self-replicating (whether this constitutes life, however, was part of our discussion).

In lab my group has been planning how we'll do our crosses to test whether two genes in C. elegans are sex-linked, linked, or on different chromosomes (or more than 50 centiMorgans apart). For the discovery research project, my group is thinking about investigating chemotaxis... but it turns out that C. elegans has literally hundreds of genes for this. Looks we'll have to either choose a different topic or filter through the C. elegans genetic literature until we find a chemotaxis-related gene that doesn't need to be knocked out with 20 other genes to see a phenotypic effect.

I've got a lot of work but I'm very satisfied. I'm not wasting time with any of my classes and I'm happy with how much I've learned so far. I've gotten to know others in IB Honors better and it's cool seeing them outside of class, going through the same work I am but still joking around and being positive about everything. Being around people like that makes me realize I don't have much to complain about.

-Matt

First Impressions (Matt Grobis)

2009-08-30T13:05:00.003-05:00

Hello all! The conclusion of the first week of classes motivated me to write my thoughts here.

I'm working at some of the requirements for the IBH major, which include calculus II, organic chemistry, and of course the first IB Honors class: the evolution of molecules and cells. My first IB 270 class surprised me in how different the class was from any other I had taken before. Having about 18 students makes a surprising difference in that we're given options that just aren't possible for larger classes.

Take, for example, the fact that we were all given keys to the IBH rooms. I hadn't bought the textbook for the class by the time the first reading was assigned, so after dinner on Tuesday I walked to the Natural History Building, unlocked a door, and got to work using one of the textbooks present in the same room I would be lectured in the next day. As I was nearing the end of the reading, a girl called Phoebe joined me and got to work as well.

The next day, the lecture material wasn't as intimidating as I had thought it would be; it was review from previous biology classes I had taken but now there was a different approach: why is this important? I feel science majors sometimes get the label of just memorizing countless facts from their textbooks and regurgitating them for exams. Here, though, our lecture was placed in the context of the scientific thought of the time and how ideas progressed from Darwin's suggestion that "gemmules" accumulated in gametes and how phenotypes were blended to our current understanding of chromosomes and exceptions to Mendelian genetics. Ok, ok, so that wasn't all in one lecture but by the end of Friday's lecture I felt that I understood not only the material but also why it was important.

My intimidation, I suppose, was made up for with the research project we have for the semester. Producing novel, interesting, and important original genetics research seems quite scary for someone who not too long ago was one of the youngest students at the university (excluding those crazy-smart 8-year olds who go on to become doctors before they can drive). Original research always seemed so far away, like something I'd be doing during grad school or maybe even later. But maybe I feel this way only because I have nothing to base these ideas on. Maybe it's intimidating only because I've never really tried. We'll see.

Outside of the academics, though, I'm excited for the community feel that IBH has. On the first day, Dr. Cheeseman introduced us to the room we were in (and had keys to), pointing out things like the printer, the speakers that could play iPod music if someone was studying in the room, the projector that could technically play DVDs if we wanted.... I feel like IBH is much more than just classes. I'm looking forward to getting to know better the students who surround me during lecture and who I will very soon share a lab with. I know three people who are also in CHEM 236 with me, so IBH study sessions are imminent. The possibilities abound...

Looks like it'll be a good year.

-Matt

Greetings from Lake County, Illinois!

2009-08-17T08:03:00.006-05:00

OK, so the locale isn't as exotic as some of my previous bloggers, however I promise the experience is just as interesting. My work this summer was in the pharmaceutical industry, as a Quality Intern at Abbott Laboratories. For those of you that think you have never heard of Abbott Labs, if you have ever heard of the biologic rheumatoid arthritis medicine Humira, been prescribed erythromycin, seen Similac baby formula, eaten a zone bar, needed an IV bag, known someone that needed a heart stint; well then you have probably had contact in some form with Abbott Labs.

As a part of Abbott Pharmaceuticals Division I was in Global Pharmaceutical Regulatory Affairs, a department that is a member of Abbott International and deals with regulatory agencies in the more than 120 countries Abbott markets its products. The two agencies I had the most experience with are the two major regulatory agencies in the world; the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMEA).

My first and main project was a study on biosimilars, an extremely hot topic in the US and a sensitive one for innovator pharmaceutical companies. Biosimilars are an attempted generic medicine for biologics, which are any drug derived from living tissues. Because a different cell bank is used to create a biosimilar the protein is inherently different, and thus the biosimilar is a different medicine than the originator biological product. Currently in the US there is no approval pathway for biosimilars, however in Europe there is an established pathway with several guidelines and product-specific annexes. I examined four originator products and their totalled 13 approved biosimilars in Europe in terms of all the Phase I, II, and III clinical trials they needed for approval. (As a quick side note: Phase I trials involve healthy volunteers; Phase II a small group of the target population; and Phase III a large, randomized trial with the target population). I utilized EMEA approval documents, FDA approval documents, Package Inserts, and Perscribing Information to determine all of the trials conducted for each of these products and put them into tables. I then used these tables to create my six key Comparison Charts that condensed this wealth of data and allowed for the differences in the originator and biosimilar products to be observed side by side.

This document I presented to our Vice President, who presented it to Commercial and some of her superiors. I also did a twenty-five minute departmental presentation to everyone in Global Pharmaceutical Regulatory Affairs, which I was the most nervous about. These people work with these products daily, and I was presenting information that I was worried they may know more about. Interestingly enough, they did not. I finally completed an Intern Poster Presentation on this project as well, where I set up my poster with other Quality, Science, and Environmental Interns and the displays were open to everyone in Abbott to discuss our projects with us. Because of the sensitive nature of biosimilars, the Vice President of my group would not allow me to hand out any information at either the departmental presentation or the poster presentation, I had to have my poster board approved by the Vice President, and my board was destroyed after the project. I have to say that I am the only intern I know that had their board destroyed.

With half the summer gone on that project, I started my second of three assignments. This project involved monoclonal antibodies, and companies that had developed surrogate antibodies for preclinical toxicology testing. Monoclonal antibody products are very specific to human receptors, and in some cases cannot be tested in the rodent. For these products, a company may develop a surrogate antibody, i.e. an antibody that acts the same way as the product but is specific to the rodent. This process, however, is extremely expensive, and not all companies create a surrogate. For toxicology studies, however, it is important to have two species (usually a rodent and a non-human primate) for a full toxicology profile. Again turning to FDA and EMEA approval documents as well as scientific literature (studies are normally published), I examined all products that had developed a surrogate and their rationale for doing so. This topic is important because in a few cases, the FDA has asked a company to develop a surrogate before moving into clinical trials. I also examined a few experimental drugs for this study, but I cannot really talk about that ;)

Then, because my preceptor unexpectedly resigned to take a Deputy VP position at PhRMA, I was switched from the Central Nervous System and Pain group to Labeling. The 5 projects I conducted with this group involved internal label comparisons, i.e. the US, European, Canadian, South African, and Australian labels for a single drug and determining similarities and discrepancies; as well as external comparisons, where an Abbott product label was compared to the labels of its competitors. A label project like the latter I completed was presented to the CEO as part of a presentation in regards to changes requested by the FDA and in comparison to the competitors.

I feel as if this blog has become rather long, and I congratulate you for having read this far. There are some perks to being an Intern at a large company other than the chance to meet students from all over the US; we had dinner with the CEO of Abbott, social events such as Amazing Race Chicago, and the opportunity to learn a vast amount of both an industry and cutting-edge science. I could go into many of my lessons learned, but as stated this reflection is already a tad lengthy. I will leave you with this: Did you know that it is possible for one manufacturer to create a product and conduct clinical trials on that product, and then sell that product and the rights to the trials to different companies that market the same drug under several different names? And that each of the mentioned drugs has a different approval document, although the clinical trials are exactly the same? I did not.

I look forward to seeing everyone next week!

--Colleen

Greetings from Ireland!

2009-08-14T07:23:00.013-05:00

Greetings from Dublin, Ireland! It’s getting near the end of the summer (already!), so I thought it past time to fill you all in on my experiences abroad.

I’ve spent the duration of this summer at the University College Dublin (UCD) through a program known as CoBiD-UREKA. It’s a research-based program which accepts students from around the world for a 10 week, all expense-paid research internships. They tend to pick students who are about to enter their senior year – so current juniors, I’d look to see if they’re offering it again next summer!

This year the program accepted 11 students: 3 from Ireland, 6 scattered around the USA, 1 from Brazil, and 1 from Colombia. While we all arrived at UCD not knowing a single person, we quickly forged friendships and have had an amazing time together! Of course, a lot of our time Mon-Fri is spent working on our research projects. These projects span a wide range of topics, including plant genomics, limnology, paleobotany, vertebrate palaeontology, soil ecology, ecological modelling (that’s mine!), and BioControl. We’ve all gained valuable research experience, whether it was designing your own protocol for studying the setae of earthworms, going electrofishing to survey the fish of a certain region, creating a model of ocean currents, designing primers to study plant DNA, putting nylons (yep, women’s tights!) on plants to act as dust and study the effects, or creating pterosaur wing models and using a wind tunnel to test their aerodynamics.

My own research project has focused on the study of deep-sea chitons and habitat connectivity. We’re especially interested in the dispersal of these chitons, which mainly takes place during their free-floating larval life stage. We’ve been using Argo oceanography data and a program called Matlab to map out the ocean currents of the Central Indo-Pacific near our populations of interest. With this data, we have been able to model larval transport, to determine where larvae from our source populations would disperse to. Through this project we’ve determined how far the larvae are able to travel before metamorphosing into adults, allowing us to better understand the dynamics of chiton metapopulations – something which is heavily understudied as of yet.

Of course, it wasn’t ALL about the research! We’ve had the weekends to ourselves, and we’ve made the most of it. We’ve traveled throughout the country to see many famous and beautiful places, such as the Aran Islands, the Cliffs of Moher, the Blarney Castle, the Giant’s Causeway, and Killarney National Park (amongst many others). And of course, we’ve spent endless amounts of time exploring all that Dublin has to offer. Between the beautiful botanic gardens, the Dublin Zoo, the massive Phoenix Park, the theatre, the nearby markets, the gorgeous shoreline, the nightlife, and of course the friends, it has been a trip to never forget!

Dubliners tend to be friendly people in general, which was a big help in getting around the city at first. Even on our first bus ride, someone happily told us which stop we’d need to get off at, as well as narrated all of the local sites we were passing! Today Dublin is a fairly worldly city, so while it’s not as typically “Irish” as most of the other cities are, it’s still a great place to explore. It also has some killer Indian restaurants! And of course there’s also a great nightlife!

And for anyone who has seen the movies Once or P.S. I Love You (yep sappy romances but of course we all had to watch them after being here!)… yep we’ve been to a lot of those sites! Even more lovely in person than they appear in the movies!

This whole summer has just flown by, just like it has for Josie! I’m leaving a week from today, and it seems way too soon! There’s so much more I could still do and see here, my ten weeks was not enough to encompass it all. It’ll be a bittersweet homecoming, as all trips are. I’ll be glad to see my friends and share my experiences, but it will be hard parting from my new-found friends. Still, thanks to the wonders of the internet, we’ll all still be in close contact for years to come!

And if anyone wants a look at pictures - http://irishescapades2009.shutterfly.com/.

Cheers,
Katie
IBH class of 2010

Greetings from Kibale!

2009-08-11T23:50:00.012-05:00

[This summer, like last summer and the summer before that, IB Honors students can be found all around the world. Here, Josie Chambers, UI class of 2010, sends her greetings from Kibale, Uganda where she is spending the summer doing primate research...]

I am writing to let you know that I’m having a wonderful time in Uganda, and that the research project is going well. I am working closely with University of Illinois PhD candidate, Krista Milich, who has helped orient me to logged and unlogged forest regions of Kibale National Park and the red colobus monkey groups that inhabit them. She has been habituating [getting the monkeys used to having people around] and collecting data on six different study groups for the past 8 months. I spent my first month here becoming oriented with the red colobus groups while helping Krista prepare her field assistants for data collection geared towards female reproduction. I am working with all 14 of her Ugandan field assistants, collecting feeding tree information and group scan data to begin assessing how forest degradation impacts female red colobus feeding ecology.

I have additionally hired a field assistant to help me map out home ranges for each of the six groups using GIS technology. My knowledge of Ugandan forest trees is expanding vastly, as well as my ability to identify females based on subtle bends of the tail, and to keep track of behavior of these mid-to-high canopy dwelling monkeys. When I return, I will be analyzing feeding tree and group scan data across the six red colobus groups, as well as mapping out the size and land cover of their home ranges, and eventually submitting a report to Uganda Wildlife Authority. I have had a wonderful time in the field this summer, and I know that the experience I’ve gained will prove to be incredibly important for future research endeavors.

There are constant daily challenges in the forest, such as avoiding falling into deep swamp holes and pulling small biting ants out from underneath clothing; however, spending entire days under the forest canopy with the incredible diversity of Kibale is well worth it, and getting stuck in the swamp multiple times has proved to be quite humorous. The forest primate diversity is particularly remarkable, and I usually see many primate species besides red colobus every day, including chimpanzees, black and white colobus, red tails, blue monkeys, mangabeys, baboons, and L’ Hoests. I have even managed to see one nocturnal primate – a dying bushbaby that I spotted sitting on a trail in broad daylight. I also had the opportunity to track chimpanzees for a day in another region of Kibale forest. There are forest elephants around during certain times of the year that can be quite dangerous, but fortunately they have not been around recently, as they can be very disruptive to completing field work. However, I had the opportunity to see elephants, as well as hippos, lions, warthogs, crocodiles, buffalo, and several bird species when I visited the savanna of Queen Elizabeth National Park in south western Uganda last weekend.

Everyone here is given a ‘pet’ name, which is chosen from a list of 12 names that people are typically called instead of their official name. The name Amooti has been bestowed upon me, which means ‘king’ in the local language, Rutooro. I have picked up a number of Rutooro phrases I like to use in order to attempt to impress the field assistants I work with, but I’m still learning! The food here has been terrific, and generally consists of a wide variety of starchy items, vegetable based sauces, and fruit. My personal favorite is the samosa, a mixture of peas, carrots, and spices, wrapped up in a crispy dough outer layer. There is some interesting local music here, but the majority of songs on the radio come from abroad. In particular, Dolly Parton enjoys widespread popularity in Uganda; however, more understandable figures can be found on any number of decorated items, such as Obama’s face, which can be seen on anything from belt buckles to shoes! Football is by far the most popular leisure activity, and I have enjoyed attending some local matches to cheer on the field assistants.

The people here are wonderful, and I have spent quite a bit of time with the many Ugandan field assistants I work with, whose hard work and vast knowledge of plant species and complicated trail system continue to be essential to my ability to learn about red colobus feeding ecology at Kibale. I have also met a number of other well-established researchers carrying out interesting work at Kibale, including primatologist Dr. Richard Wrangham, director of the Chimpanzee project, and Dr. Colin Chapman, who has been involved in a broad range of conservation oriented research at Kibale for many years. I have had a great deal of companionship from other students staying at the field station for the summer as well, some gaining fieldwork experience and others working at the local clinic or school. Time really flies by here, as there always seems to be something going on, whether it’s a potluck among researchers, weekly trip to town for food and supplies, local football match, or even a Ugandan wedding! I will be sad to leave here in just a week, but I look forward to having the opportunity to share my experiences and pictures when I return!

Best wishes,
Josie

Rainy 4th of July (Matt Grobis)

2009-07-04T15:59:00.004-05:00

Greetings from rainy Vernon Hills, Illinois!

This is the first post in a blog that'll span the rest of this year and hopefully far into the future. My name is Matt Grobis; I'm going to be a sophomore next year ('09-'10) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. I'm entering the IB Honors program and can't wait to start!

I was an English major but decided I prefer biology early my freshman year. I saw the IB Honors posters in the Natural History Building and was interested so I contacted Dr. Cheeseman, the head of the program. We met a few days later and talked for over an hour about IB Honors and what I could do to prepare for it. Several months later, in February, I interviewed for the program and was accepted!

There's plenty to be excited about IBH. IB is "integrative" biology, which focuses to connect different areas of biology from the molecular to the ecological level, showing the very interconnectedness of nature itself. The IBH core does this in three steps, starting at the smallest aspect, molecules, and proceeding to enormous concepts like evolution. IBH classes have around 15 people, which allows for greater professor-student and even student-student interaction. I like big lectures, but I think smaller classes are better for grappling with ideas instead of just memorizing them. And I can't really comment on this, but according to the website, the IBH professors are pretty good too. Awesome.

IBH is going to be a lot of work but I'm looking forward to being surrounded by students who love biology. In a school of nearly 40,000 people, it's easy to feel lost in the crowd. Finding one's niche, though, really helps to make sense of it all. I'm not sure what I want to do with biology in the future, but being in the midst of biology professors and other passionate students, hopefully I'll get a better idea about how I can translate this excitement I have for the subject into something that can benefit the world.

-Matt Grobis

p.s: Happy 4th of July!!

p.p.s: I'm not trying to be a spokesperson for IB Honors, so if you want to get the full picture on everything the program has to offer, the classes, etc., look at these links:
Classes, specifics on major: http://sib.illinois.edu/honors.htm
FAQ: http://www.life.illinois.edu/ibhonors/FAQ/FAQ.html

IB Honors is on the move

2009-07-04T12:52:00.001-05:00

Ok, so basically this is a test posting, but it is true. IB Honors is moving out of 408 NHB and down to the less rarified atmosphere of the third floor.