seen from Türkiye
seen from Malaysia
seen from Türkiye
seen from Malaysia
seen from Hong Kong SAR China
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Netherlands
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Saudi Arabia
seen from Malaysia
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seen from Italy
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seen from Türkiye
Tuesday
more work on putting together layers 3+4 and filling cavities.
cmu tech thing
i’ll have 3.5 more batches to do and it’d be really nice to get them all done tmr but i need to remind myself im not getting paid and i only need them done by monday. either way done by tmr or thurs.
Tuesday
Monday | grrr autofocus
Thursday, Symposium
Thursday was the IBEC symposium which I went to. The majority of it was just sitting through presentations where I didn’t understand any of it. There were a handful longer presentations by guest speakers or important IBEC people, including one by a UPenn professor, and then a lot of 5 min “flash talks” by postdocs (and maybe PHD students?) outlining their work. Even though when I meet people I tell them I’m working on my Bachelor’s degree, realistically in terms of classes I am fresh out of high school. I can pretend take AP equivalents and through calculus C would be technically college level classes but I actually don’t know anything. Especially given the masters students already aren’t understanding… even if I was a junior in undergrad I’m not so sure how equipped I’d be. A lot of it was more biology focused too, though let’s be real even if it was mostly engineering I wouldn’t be comprehending more.
- Had an interesting conversation with ppl from B4B (biosensors for bioengineering, my research group) and a PHD student I met abt grants and internships and getting paid. Learned a lot from that and also international policies on research and paying researchers. Somewhat of a reoccurring conversation given my odd situation, seems like I perhaps I could’ve been applying for grants…?
- Met a girl working in my lab part time who’s actually remotely my age! Not sure I socialized that as best as possible given she actually lives here and isn’t like other international students desperate to make friends…. but nothing actually memorable abt me saying anything stupid, just nice to have another undergrad. She leaves before lunch so it ties into my thoughts abt working part time and establishing connections in the lab.
- Panel / round table on startups/entrepreneurship spin off situations from IBEC. Thought was a little odd given it’s a research symposium and we want more researchers advancing the studies, not trying to spin off and make private biotech companies. Both on research focused on research instead of money making and also that I don’t think we really need more entrepreneurs in the world. Audience is almost entirely researchers and I don’t think want to go into business, I don’t know.
— One of the panelists I believe had a failed startup thing or something which was interesting and during lunch we were talking about it. Honestly I’m not sure I was paying attention enough but I agree with my colleagues it’s nice they’re not showing just pure success stories and you can see some of the realness behind the industry.
- One thing I really appreciated about all the presentations was the emphasis on collaborators. A lot of the longer talks included little headshots and names of the researchers responsible for the work in the corner of each slide. Sometimes the presenter would call them out by name. Sometimes it was just the headshot which I thought was less useful given name recognition is important. All of the presentations ended with a picture of the researcher group and names of people involved. Science research systems and credits and authorship and networking is a weird thing often including some fighting over who gets to take credit for what. It was really nice to see so much appreciation for colleagues and giving kudos. On the other hand I suppose it also does make the speaker look better to show how many other people worked on their work and makes it more credible. Primary and secondary authorship is a weird thing.
- A lot of the flash presentations ended in talking about Gaza or Palestine. The whole issue and activism has been very visible my entire time in Spain which feels a little odd given a lot of the decision making power in current events the last couple months squarely falls on the US and UN veto power. I haven’t been staying incredibly up to date with the situations but I don’t see nearly as many organized protests, graffiti, and direct call outs like this at home. I suppose yes some of it could be where media and the gov instructs media to divert attention to, or how tense the culture is with the way the gov is handling several things, people loosing their jobs or wanting to stay out of politics etc. It is the case people have made statements like this etc at graduation ceremonies. I’m not sure, it just feels different here. Maybe because it also feels unanimous the call that’s being made? Perhaps because there isn’t as much of an antisemitism argument here? Maybe there just aren’t as many jews?
A lot of the flashtalks mainly urged people to join an organization or recognize the issue. The last big longer presentation was an IBEC PI or professor who was Israeli and started (off scripted I think) by saying he and all the Israeli researchers too don’t want Palestine to suffer too, that they’re on the street and protesting too. Something about urging people to not hate Israelis and that they need to both exist; then urging the audience to NOT boycott the University of Israel. Some analogy about smt being the body and the University being the immune system, when you attack the research, the immune system you’re only making things worse. I couldn’t quite understand what he was getting at but I got the overall gist. I was kind of holding my breath on how he was wording things given the overwhelming Palestinian support. The PHD next to me that feels incredibly strongly about the issue and was urging to take more action walked out after this. Maybe she just needed to go to the bathroom, but I wouldn’t know.
In all this segment couldn’t have been longer than 5 min and he started it all by saying he didn’t like to mix science and politics. He had some interesting complicated stuff about DNA imaging with light spectrums. While politics certainly weren’t an overwhelming focus of the even its underlying presence was very clear and I think just generally clearer here in spain.
Wednesday
Open call research
Visa / housing info
More PDMS
Other side of layer 1+2 units
Freeze in eppendorfs
Work on resume / linkden / website formatting
Pictures + power point presentation for protocol
Tuesday
I took yesterday's layer 1 units out and sliced the PDMS--I think they look good. Maybe next time it would be even faster to just cover the entire back in tape to avoid having to peel PDMS off the bottom? But it was a thick enough layer it came off without any residue.
I put more PDMS on the silicon wafer and wrote the weight on top of the petri dish. I didn't turn the hotplate on as I am leaving
I put PDMS drops in four layer 1+2 units and put them in the oven for 1 hour; didn't have time to do the other side.
Leaving at 1pm today but missed the ball and leaving closer to 1:15. Really need to not be a workaholic when I'm not getting paid and I'm working so many hours anyway!! I just hate leaving in the middle of a project/step. Perhaps that's why I almost pulled an all nighter in updating my resume and CV.... Yikes...
Monday 13/10/25
Make more layer 1 (electrodes + PMMA + PDMS)
*see images*
Layer 3 + 4 work (adding double sided tape channels)
*see video*
Writing up procedure
Friday 10/10/25
Lab tour: finally got a lab coat that fit, saw some of the other lab spaces, a bit more of the building and online portal explained.
First week has gone by with very little free time. 40 hrs of work per week is a LOT of hours, especially when I'm not being paid... I think the first couple days were particularly bad because I was just sitting in the lab (sterile basement) reading pages on pages or research papers with stale scientific vernacular. I didn't mind because I understand how lab work goes and it's useful to catch myself up on the project I'm joining; especially because I'm trying to avoid bringing home work so getting it done in the lab is good. However, unsurprisingly, sitting for near 8 hours at a time reading papers with no natural light does not make me feel good afterwards. It's been better since starting research and I am interested in the project though.
The lab and field of research is very similar to Silklab (lab I interned at through high school with a very good experience). ✅ I'm not completely under-qualified and in the deep end, I understand some of the scientific procedure and PPE, etc. ❌ I want to make sure I'm learning new things (I am) and trying out different fields of research. I don't want to get shepherded into biotech just because that's what ends up already being on my resume. I also think especially in the first week I kept comparing it to Silklab (ex: no windows + in basement, workspace is not separate from lab benches, less community vibe/silly side projects). Ultimately I just know I won't aim for another lab based experience in my gap year and push harder on finding an industrial design / mechanical engineering position next. Nonetheless, it doesn't mean I'm not spending 200+ hours in this internship (unpaid!!). I absolutely will learn skills and gain knowledge from this experience. At the same time I keep getting told it's good experience to help me know if I'm interested in going into bioengineering, and as I've already done a bioengineering internship that's unfortunately not something I'm gaining from this. (Sure, yes, a little--but not in a very significant way). And moreover that I hadn't had much time to explore Barcelona, nonetheless get groceries or less fun tasks.
Planning on continuing to give brief daily updates or so and give longer paragraphs about once a week.
