Official First Week!

So much has happened since I last posted! I've been out and about so much, have seen and done so many things, and probably most importantly, the Amgen program has officially started and I've started in lab. This will also be an exciting post because I should hopefully have lots of pictures!

On Sunday (wow, that was forever ago!) was the 75th Anniversary Festival of the Golden Gate Bridge! A lot of us went into San Francisco for the festival. I missed that city so much! We basically just walked around one of the parks by the waterfront near the bridge and froze because no one dressed warmly enough. We ended up coming back to Berkeley before the fireworks and just watching them from our balcony because we were so cold. Probably a good thing because we heard the busses back were awful and super crowded. Here are some photos:

At the festival

Alcatraz Island

Mountains between Alcatraz (right) and the bridge (left)

Golden Gate Bridge looking very not golden from the sun glare

A mouse I found and befriended!

Golden Gate at sunset

Fireworks over the Golden Gate as seen from our lounge balcony

Later that night, several other girls and I ended up at King Pin Donuts, a little donut shop down the street from the dorm. Anytime you go, they always have fresh, hot glazed donuts that you can get. They're warm and gooey and delicious and wonderful. They also have lots of other flavors. I don't have photos of this because I didn't think to take any in between stuffing my face with the most delicious donuts I've ever had.

Monday, the day before the program started, was relaxed. I took my practice GRE diagnostic test for the prep course which starts next week (that took all morning). In the afternoon I played Settlers of Catan with some of the other girls, and later in the evening most of the girls got together and made doortags (since when we got here the doors were just labeled with Amgen 2012. Now we actually know who's in what room!). Afterwards, we played several games of mafia before breaking to go read all of the papers our lab had sent us as prereadings.

Tuesday was orientation day and the first official day in the program. We got to meet the program heads and got a thick binder full of all of the information we'll need while here. During the course of the morning we learned about lab and program expectations, housing and safety info, social activity info, and various other campus information. Our binder has lots of useful information like copies of all of the powerpoints, our program schedule, maps of the local area and list of things to do, list of resources Berkeley offers or web resources that are good for science research, etc. During the afternoon, we split up into GA groups to walk around campus and briefly get to see our research labs. I got to meet my lab PI (Principal Investigator, the head of the lab) who was really welcoming and I got a wonderful first impression of him! My building is really pretty and has a really cute tree grove behind it.  There are three other scholars besides me who work in my building, which is called the Life Science Addition. On my area of campus, there are a bunch of other science buildings, and I learned generally where they are. It's nice because I always have the chance of running into another Amgen Scholar when I'm going to lunch in the area, and it's just nice to know that people I know are close by. In between lab visits, my group went up the Campanile (or Sather Tower, the bell tower I can see from my room), which was absolutely incredible! Here are some photos from around campus (I'll label what I can but I'm still pretty bad with finding my way around, minus to and from lab!)

A large field of grass.
We don't have this at BU and it's so foreign
to me to see so much grass in one place!

Berkeley's LIBRARY! I've yet to go inside.
I must do that soon as the pictures I see online
 are absolutely beautiful.

Buildings in front of the library 

A seal marking the field in front of the library.
I avoided stepping on it like it was BU.

Valley Life Science Building, from the back. 

Life Science Addition, my building!

Sather Gate and Sproul Plaza 

Fountain in Sproul Plaza and the Cal Student Store

The Golden Gate (once again not looking very golden!)
as seen from the Campanile

Unzoomed view of San Francisco area.
If you look on the right side of the picture,
you can see Valley Life Science and Life Science addition.
They're essentially directly to the left of the field
on the right side of the photo

Bells inside the Campanile 

Me with the San Francisco area in the background,
from the top of the Campanile  

A cute bench outside the Campanile entrance

Funky little trees in the plaza outside the Campanile 

The front of Valley Life Sciences

Campanile agan

ONLY AT BERKELEY

I also have a new cover photo to reflect the fact that I'm at Berkeley! You'll recognize it as the view of the Campanile from the grassy area in front of the library! What better to represent my stay at Berkeley than the famous belltower! Sorry, San Francisco, I know you're right next door, but you're just not Berkeley!

Speaking of that photo, I have a fun fact of the day : despite there being many photos out there of the things I've posted (SF skyline, the belltower, buildings on campus, etc), I take all my own pictures that I post here. Take my old cover photo, for example. I've posted it below.

I actually took this photo from Coit Tower when I visited San Francisco in the summer of 2008. If you look at the building right next to the bridge, you'll see that it's actually yellow. That's a reflection of my dad in the window! You can see the reflections of the other windows if you look closely in the sky. 

And then the fun ends (but not really, because I'm here to do work and I'm with a bunch of scientists, and so we all think that being in lab is fun!). Wednesday was my first day in lab. My PI was just as nice as he seemed the previous day. First we talked about the projects I'll be working on this summer. I'm really excited to be working in a neuroscience lab because I'll be exposed to so many new techniques that will be necessary for my future career especially to focus on these techniques in the context of a sensory system, my main interest in neuroscience. My PI then set me up at my desk, gave me all of my safety training, and introduced me to the two main people who I will be working with. I did some background reading for a little while, and then he gave me an assignment. Before I explain that, I'll talk a bit about my projects. Currently in neuroscience, a lot of work is done using fluorescent staining for something (a specific protein, or general things like axons). The brain is then sliced and the stains are visualized. This is useful in looking at things like where a certain main area (like the somatosensory cortex, which is what my lab studies) projects to. It helps answer questions like "what other parts of the brain may be important in the somatosensory system?" However, 2-D models can only tell you so much. My first project is to inject the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) with a fluorescent labeler, which will travel to all the places S1 projects to, and then use a technique which MAKES THE BRAIN TRANSPARENT to then look at the fluorescent labeled projections in 3-D. HOW COOL IS THAT? My second project will be looking at the changes to S1 as a result of sensory experiences. I'll be doing immuno - staining for a protein expressed in a specific type of neuron in S1 whose expression may change in response to a changing sensory stimulation. The initial pre-project assignment I was given was to look at the Allen Brain Map website and make a list of slides of the places that S1 projects to. They already have some 2-D data of labeled projections from S1 with photos of all the brain slices. So, I had to sift through all of those photos, plus those photos in a reference atlas, to figure out all the different brain regions that had been labeled. It's actually really useful to help me familiarize myself with terminology and brain areas that I could potentially see in my research!

To celebrate our first day in lab, most of the scholars took a field trip to a local ice cream and cookie place called CREAM.

At CREAM, you can either get fresh, warm cookies, ice cream, or combine them for a warm-cookie ice cream sandwich. I got white pistachio ice cream on white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies. SO DELICIOUS!

Today, my second day in lab, I watched/kind of helped one of my mentors slice brains for staining, which I believe I'll be helping to do tomorrow. I was supposed to also start the transparent brain procedure, but I ended up getting really into my S1 projection powerpoint, which I ended up finishing in the late afternoon (and I was told to have it done by "sometime next week"). My PI said that he would arrange a meeting between him, me, and other members of the lab to check my work for accuracy, which is really great of him to make sure that I'm on the right track and to be so involved in my learning process and be interested in what I'm doing. It's also great that my unspoken fear was instantly corrected - I thought that he might want me to present what I did at lab meeting (which of course I wouldn't have minded doing), but I was unsure of some of my work and would have been really nervous to present without having it thoroughly checked by someone who knows more about the field than I do. Now I will be able to present with confidence if I'm asked to present what I've done during lab meeting.

This weekend, the GAs are hosting two social events. On Saturday there will be a walking tour of San Francisco. I've been to most of the places we're going on the tour, but I still want to go because I love the city and haven't been to all of those places in years! Sunday will be a hike through Tilden Park, which is right near Berkeley's campus. Everything has been wonderful so far and I'm really looking forward to continuing in lab and getting to explore the area more starting this weekend!