Week 1 - Moni

My first week at HSS has been a great start to Immersion. My clinical mentor is Dr. Scott Rodeo, who has appointments in orthopedic surgery and sports medicine. This fits well with my research interests back in Ithaca, since I work in a tendon biomechanics lab led by Dr. Nelly Andarawis-Puri. Dr. Rodeo is on vacation this week, but this has allowed me to settle into his research lab and learn about the very exciting projects here.

On Monday, I met all of the researchers in the lab. I was surprised and impressed by the range of backgrounds in the lab; there are surgical fellows, research technicians, medical doctors, undergraduates, and medical students. This allows for many different perspectives on the research projects. I also learnt more about the specific research projects that I'll be involved in here. One is a patellar tendinopathy model, and I'll be involved on utilizing multiphoton microscopy to quantify collagen degeneration using second harmonic generation imaging. The second project is development and evaluation of a rotator cuff injury model. I hope to gain IACUC clearance to start animal work soon.

On Tuesday, the lab had their weekly lab meeting. Here I learnt more about the day-to-day experiments for the lab members and the research difficulties. Later, one of the lab members, who was a former surgeon, taught the students some surgical techniques, such as proper use of surgical instrumentation and suture technique, which is critical for animal work.

On Wednesday and Thursday I spent some time reading about the theory of multiphoton microscopy, and its applications to second harmonic imaging. I also did some gene expression data analysis for one of the researchers in the lab. Thursday morning there was a research update from Dr. Miguel Otero's lab that most of the HSS research labs attended. I find this type of weekly research update is a great way for the labs to get input from researchers in a similar field.

Friday morning was our program's first weekly meeting and gave me the opportunity to meet Drs. Min and Prince, as well as catch up with my cohort about how their experience has been going. Afterwards, Patrick, who works in Nelly's lab with me in Ithaca, showed me around the MRI facility where he is shadowing Dr. Hollis Potter. Back in lab, I shadowed an X-ray session of mice that had undergone a surgical procedure to induce tendinopathy 4 weeks ago to evaluate the success of the procedure. I also received training to use the cell culture facilities in the lab for my project.

Outside of research, I've taken the opportunity to explore the city and different neighborhoods. I'm impressed by the sheer number of food options, and really enjoy my nightly dessert treks. Tonight I'm going to a Yankees game and I'm really excited for that! I'm also still trying to win Hamilton lottery tickets....maybe/hopefully next week I'll have an update on that.

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