BME Summer Immersion 2023

 This summer has gone by so fast! This week was mostly just wrapping up the summer. I went and saw a little bit more of the mouse gait analysis and acclimation. Learning how to acclimate the mice for the gait analysis is super important for the consistency of the data, as mice that haven’t been acclimatized to the treadmill have a much wider spread and learning curve over the experiment. We learned how the mice get tire after about a minute of running, even if you spread that minute out over a couple bouts of running, which was super important for the next couple days of acclimation.  I also got the opportunity this week to shadow in the Gait and Motion Analysis lab for a case. I have never seen the human gait analysis before, so I was immensely grateful for this opportunity! I spent the afternoon learning about the cameras and the calibration, watching a full PT exam, and then watching a gait analysis videotaping. There are 14 cameras, 4 force plates, and so many reflective s...

 The last week of the program felt a bit more relaxed. I worked on my final presentations for the immersion term. I found it very difficult to cut down the content of my presentation to fit in the 4 minute time limit while still giving enough context for the research and also talking about my clinical immersion experience. I also presented at the pathology weekly academic meeting a longer version of my presentation which was surprisingly much easier to prepare since there was no strict time limit. I was initially intimidated by the idea of presenting to pathologists and MD/PhDs that have so much more knowledge and experience than I, however, I got some really good feedback from most of the doctors present as well as the lab technicians and clinical genomics bioinformaticians. It was fun to see a discussion stem from this presentation and be able to offer some of the knowledge I gained working here throughout the summer. Lastly, I shared my R script and python code that I have worke...

 This was the final week of the Immersion program. On Monday, I shadowed Dr. Strickland in the OR for the last time where she performed two tibial tubercle osteotomy distalizations. I also got to help my labmate, Salman Matan, collect healthy articular cartilage samples. On Tuesday, it was my last day helping in the biomechanics lab. On top of helping Kalle with the usual testing and calibration, I watched how they tested a PVA meniscus in the joint simulator. It was interesting to see how the PVA meniscus could be used as a replacement and how testing is done to verify its mechanical compliance. On Wednesday, I shadowed Dr. Strickland in the clinic where again I got to see the patient-clinician interaction and the imaging diagnostic process. On Thursday, I presented about the immersion program to the HSS group and got to talk about how the research I did during the summer connects back to my research project in Ithaca. Finally on Friday, due to my presentation, Dr. Scott Rodeo inv...