Week 7: Wrapping Up Immersion

In the final week of this immersion experience, it was a bit somber weather with the rain adding to a bittersweet moment. There were a lot of ups and downs to Immersion including a multitude of surgeries, projects, clinics, and exploring of the city. I wrapped up my project with Dr. Cunniff on Bloom’s Syndrome to the best of my ability with the data set given and I feel confident that I created a template for new data to be analyzed by whoever comes after me. Clinical data is far different than working with cells or imaging. You have valuable information of living people and thus brings a heavy amount of responsibility when handling such data. Luckily, my data had already been de-identified, but nevertheless I feel obligated to treat such information with care. I hope I was able to provide some answers or a path to one in this project. Time will only tell.

In review, I wanted to highlight some of the experiences I found extremely valuable or awestriking. Seeing an open heart from above made me appreciate the complexities of the muscles that work for us, especially as someone who studies muscle on the cellular level. Observing a grafting surgery gave me a visual into how engineering can be applied to the body in a clinical setting and inspired future work in tissue engineering. Working with a team of pediatric geneticists provide a clinical perspective on genetic disorders and how they arise. As someone who studies genetics only peripherally, I valued the human aspect of understanding phenotype to genotype and health supervision for those who are affected by such disorders.

New York City is without a doubt the city that never sleeps. To end the summer, I witnessed the city in its full splendor full of lights and wonder and I hope you’ll enjoy what I captured along the way as I have come full circle and am ready to head back home.