Endings and New Beginnings
It’s hard to believe that my two years as a Clare Boothe Luce Scholar have already come to an end. Working on this research project was the most challenging and rewarding experience of my time at GW. I learned many valuable technical skills, drastically improved my presentation skills, and had the opportunity to attend 4 conferences. The Clare Boothe Luce program gave me the resources I needed to develop a solid foundation as a researcher and I’m incredibly thankful that I had this opportunity as an undergraduate. While it’s upsetting that my time physically working on my project was cut short by COVID-19, I know this is only the beginning of my research career and can’t wait to see what the future holds.
This coming fall, I will be heading to UC San Diego to begin my graduate studies in bioengineering. There I will be working in a soft electronics lab to help develop a wearable ultrasound transducer for focusing an ultrasonic beam inside the skull. I’m excited to expand my knowledge of ultrasound and further develop my research skills. I know this will be a huge change and there are so many new things to learn. However, I’m confident that my undergraduate research experience has prepared me to take on this new project.
Impact
Last week I had the opportunity to participate in the SEAS R&D Showcase, where I presented everything I’ve been working on for almost two years. Poster presentations are almost always the same. You stand by your poster for hours hoping someone finds your work interesting enough to stop and ask you to explain it to them. Most of the time they say something along the lines “Good work!” or “Interesting...” and move on. If you’re lucky, they’ll stay and ask a few questions. However, this time things were a bit different.
A man come up to me who sought out my poster specifically and enthusiastically asked me to explain my project. He then shared his own experience with corneal disease and how his condition has been misdiagnosed several times ultimately leading to multiple corneal transplants. He had experienced many of the issues my project aims to eliminate and had even been misdiagnosed once with the disease I work with. Before leaving, he told me how incredible this research is and encouraged me to keep up with it so it can be used clinically one day.
It was amazing to see the direct impact of my research. When running experiments for hours on end, it becomes easy to feel disconnected from the issues at hand and their impact on real people. People often get into biomedical research with the intent to improve the world. Getting wrapped up in all the technical details of your work can diminish that drive. But being able to interact with someone whose life can be changed by my field brought back that connection to improving people’s lives. It was a powerful exchange that won’t leave my mind as I continue my research.
Progress
Fall 2018 semester was an incredibly busy time for me. Not only was it one of the most academically rigorous semesters for my major, but I was also able to fully dive into experimentation. The tissue we work with for my project can only be delivered on Thursday mornings and is only usable for approximately 48 hours. Unfortunately, Thursdays were my busiest days. I would always be in back to back classes and meetings until 5pm and then run experiments late into the evening and return the next morning to continue. I often found myself exhausted and stressed, but kept working towards my goal of collecting enough data to be able submit an abstract to a conference. It felt like there was never enough time for anything and there always seemed to be a major deadline approaching. However, through a combination of effective time management, prioritizing my activities, and tackling things one task at a time I made it through the semester.
While these past few months were frantic, in the end everything turned out okay. It was so rewarding to reflect on the semester over winter break and realize that even though things seemed overwhelming in the moment, I made a lot of progress on my project while simultaneously doing well in my classes. Overall, I was able to collect enough statistically significant data to submit an abstract to an American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine conference (which I was recently notified was accepted).
I’m excited to see what this coming semester will bring. My spring semester course load is not quite as demanding as last semester’s, so I will have more time to devote to working in lab.
Fear of Failure
Independence has been one of the most terrifying and rewarding aspects of my research project thus far. I started working with Dr. Zderic my sophomore year shortly before I applied to the Clare Boothe Luce Scholars program. By the time I was able to start on my project this past summer, all of the graduate students in the lab had left to temporarily work other places. I did have the opportunity to shadow a few students towards the end of the school year, but for the most part I had to figure things out on my own.
Everything felt a bit overwhelming at times. There was no one telling me which buttons I should or shouldn’t be pressing when using a piece of equipment for the first time or explaining how ultrasonic waves propagate through tissue. I had to teach myself everything through a combination of user manuals, textbooks, academic papers, and online resources. The right answers to all the questions I had were not always easy to find. Because most of what I was doing was self-taught, I was constantly paranoid I was doing something wrong.
I think the most important thing I learned this summer was how to be confident in myself, but also knowing when to reach out for help. I had to trust myself to read carefully and pay attention to small details to ensure that I thoroughly understood the topics I was studying and didn’t damage any laboratory equipment. I knew I couldn't let my hesitation hold me back from moving forward on my project. Now that the summer has come to an end and classes are starting, I’m moving on from extensive background research and small preliminary experiments to actual experimentation and data collection. I know it will be difficult to balance my classes and research, but it’s entirely up to me to stay on top of everything. I’ll just have to continue to trust myself and face the challenges ahead of me with an open mind. When starting on a new project, never let the fear of failure prevent you from achieving your goals.
Bio
Bianca is researching ultrasound-enhanced drug delivery for parasitic and fungal eye diseases with the goal of contributing to the development of an inexpensive, effective, and minimally invasive treatment. Eye diseases can often lead to vision loss because most of the necessary treatments do not effectively permeate through the eye. Many are administered through eye drops or risky injections. Bianca will study how different combinations of frequency and intensity can increase corneal permeability. She is working on this project under her faculty mentor, Vesna Zderic, an associate SEAS professor.