Major: Mathematics with emphasis in Statistics Research
Research Department: Biophysics
Graduation Date: May 2019
Abstract: Mounting evidence suggests that the dynamic organization of receptors in the plasma membrane; e.g. their mobility and clustering, is crucial for ligand binding and downstream signaling. The actin cortex is thought to play an influential role in cell surface receptor organization, although its role has been almost exclusively deduced via cell-wide actin perturbation experiments which might pose undesirable side-effects. The Jaqaman lab aims to learn and determine quantitative relationships through explicit anlysis of diffusivity, mobility and other properties of receptors together with the underlying actin cortex turnover kinetics and filament movement via single molecule imaging and fluorescent speckle microscopy.
What does research mean to you? To me, the meaning of research is to upend apparent truths through the suggestive results achieved by curious mental capacity. By sparking ingenuity through this outlet, I think that these apparent truths have potential to shine light on current and future mysteries. Specifically with a passionate self-desire to unshroud scientific mysteries, the Green Fellowship provided me with a means to explore a multidisciplinary field using data analysis and statistics. In conjunction to researching at a medical center, the experience is designed to apply these research techniques to illuminate biological mysteries. Not only does this perspective bring meaning to my work, but to many others that also research at UT Southwestern.
Tell us about your journey. Throughout my journey, I’ve always enjoyed understanding numbers as a language and an art, operating on them, and translating meaning to them in various contexts. On the road to attaining my Bachelors, excelling in math pushed me to explore several avenues of abstract thinking and problem solving to many contexts. By my Junior year, I applied and was accepted into the University of Texas Southwestern’s Green Fellowship program with plans to join the Jaqaman lab as a data analyst in biophysics research. I would be joining a team and beginning a project of investigating the relationships of cell surface receptors and the actin cortex underlying endothelial cells. Specifically, it was my role in the lab to analyze experimental data to investigate relationships between kinetic and diffusive data of cell surface receptors and the treadmilling and turnover data of the underlying actin. To observe this, code would need to be written to compute the lab’s data into useful information. This often involved carrying out many thought experiments for both code structure and integrating the current body of research to my thoughts. As a result, developing a directional sense when a wealth of possibilities swarmed about was a trait that took months to build. However, this is a standard haze which is blinding to a lot of young and first-time researchers. I chose to never be discouraged and find a steady pace to proceed in the project that would allow for time to experiment with thoughts. Later, I applied supervised and unsupervised statistical learning techniques to examine the data, which are methods that have contributed to the explanation of some recent biophysical results. Along the seven months, I was able to gather many interesting results that was able to push the understanding of the project, but there is still plenty of work to reconcile and discover new mysteries.
Advice for Future Green Fellows
If the Green Fellowship notices you as a candidate to pursue through the program, then it will be an immersion into a renowned research environment at a medical institution. This comes with many responsibilities and sacrifices that should be understood before the start date. With this, take care to the time preparing for the start of the semester and be ready to soak into a unique culture—especially for first-time researchers.
If you’re passionate about your control of the state of your project, then it is crucial to ask questions, stay motivated, have a healthy state of mind, get plenty of sleep, a proven diet, and anything else that is necessary to perform at your best. Your functionality will be critical for this fellowship—be sure to come with it!
Enjoy and have fun learning and engaging with an exciting opportunity and life at UTSW. Do what you need to do in order to bring out all of your best qualities :)