DIY Diagnostics: A New Perspective on Scientific Research
Adjusting to college is tough. A new city, a new home, new classmates, and tougher classes can definitely be a shock. Attending a college like the University of Texas, where a large number of students are involved in research, it is easy to feel like you are falling behind if you are not working in a lab yourself. That being said, you have made an excellent choice by becoming a part of the Freshman Research Initiative!
Before even coming to UT I had heard a lot about FRI, and I knew that I wanted to get involved in research. However, I knew that I wasn’t very interested in the traditional “wet lab” research that most CNS students seemed to get involved in. Rather, I had an interest in the broader, public health aspects of scientific research. For this reason, I committed to the DIY Diagnostics Lab.
The beauty of DIY Diagnostics (or at least, what primarily appealed to me) was that the lab provided an excellent middle ground between wet lab research and what I saw myself doing. Our lab teaches students various wet lab techniques that can later be applied to design affordable, point of care diagnostic tools for various diseases, which have important impacts outside of the laboratory setting. Therefore, DIY Diagnostics offered me the best of both worlds – I have learned a lot about conducting wet lab research, and I am also in the process of applying what I learned at the lab bench to a broader public health setting.
Though I do not see myself working in a wet lab in the future, DIY Diagnostics has been an amazing learning opportunity. It has exposed me to a side of lab research that I had not really experienced before. I have learned how to run PCR and LAMP reactions, how to 3D print, and how to code. Perhaps most importantly, however, this lab has taught me how to think creatively, how to properly conduct original research that contributes to the scientific community, and overall, how to be a better scientist.