ETH ALIVE doctoral fellow

Completed Master's thesis research in the MICROBS laboratory at EPFL

Working as part of the Precision Diagnostics Group, supervised by Dr. Govind Kaigala, on developing a light-addressable array for microscale flow patterningPart of the work presented by Vesna Bacheva at 2022 MEMS Conference, "Photoconductive Switching of a High-Voltage Actuator Array", doi: 10.1109/MEMS51670.2022.9699795

Responsible for conducting technical and intellectual property assessments of chemistry, chemical engineering, pharmaceutical, and drug delivery topics.

I am conducting research in the lab of Professor Maria Santore on the effect of shape on particle surface interactions in flow, which has implications in drug delivery. This involves the synthesis of rod shaped silica particles and Stober synthesis of silica spheres. I run the particles through a flow cell, over various types of surfaces, and observe their behavior. I process images and conduct image analysis using Image J and statistical analysis in Excel.Work is published as Shave, M. K.; Balciunaite, A.; Xu, Z.; Santore, M. M. “Rapid Electrostatic Capture of Rod-Shaped Particles on Planar Surfaces: Standing up to Shear” Langmuir doi: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.9b01871

I was part of a group of 10 undergraduate research assistants for a class of approximately 150 people. I worked closely with the professor and the other teaching assistants to provide students the best possible experience in genetics and make sure that everyone was understanding the topics covered in class. I held weekly TA sessions, where I would help students who had questions understand the material better. I was also responsible for grading homework and exams, alongside the other teaching assistants.

I conducted bioinformatics research in the lab of Professor Michele Markstein. The Markstein lab uses Drosophila to study stem cell chemical interactions in vivo. My first project was to create a heat map from published whole-genome RNAseq data in order to visualize highly expressed drug resistance genes. These heat maps are used in both grants and public presentations. The current project is to quantify the fluorescence intensity in confocal microscope images using Nikon NIS-Elements software, in order to determine the relative concentrations of a dye in wild type and mutant stem cells in the fly intestine. This involves work with large data sets in Excel, statistical analysis, and data visualization. These results will be included in a manuscript being prepared for publication.

As a supplemental instructor, I attended calculus I lectures and led 2 75 minute review sessions a week for students, as well as 3 2-hour exam review sessions. I was responsible for preparing worksheets and lesson plans for all of my sessions.

As part of the investigations group, my project is to evaluate the potential use of a new technique, Raman spectroscopy as a way to identify foreign particulates. I use the Raman method of the Rap.ID Single Particle Explorer to run samples. I am responsible for understanding how the technique & instrument work through extensive literature searches and using trial-and-error experimentation methods to determine the best methods for particle identification. I change instrument parameters to optimize the resulting spectra, and then interpret the spectra by graphing as well as conducting thorough literature searches. The internship culminates in a poster presentation of my work at the Intern Expo, and a PowerPoint presentation for the QC Analytical Sciences department as well as the Vice President for QC. During the program, I volunteered as part of the committee to plan the Intern Expo, which allowed me to see the other side of poster sessions.

I conducted a state of the art patent search in the porous carbon catalyst industry and wrote a report to help evaluate the viability of an investment.- Gained experience searching for and reading patent literature- Gained understanding of current carbon catalyst technologies

I worked on a project in Dr. Michael Pack's molecular biology laboratory to create a transgenic zebrafish.- Used Gateway Cloning techniques to construct plasmid for injection- Successfully conducted preliminary microinjections to test construct- Gained experience with molecular biology techniques (DNA extraction, PCR, gel electrophoresis, restriction enzyme digest, zebrafish microinjections)