TRIP EP 1: Introduction by Austin Choi

Hi all!  My name is Austin Choi and I am 16 years old.  I am a junior at Council Rock North High School in Newtown, PA.  I am so grateful to be welcomed into the TRIP family and beyond excited to continue my research and learning with TRIP.  I applied to TRIP to enhance my growth as a young scientist and my journey toward a career in healthcare.  Because TRIP offers an immersive, hands-on research experience, I felt that by entering TRIP, I would be able to emulate the world of medicine, where theory alone falls short of bridging challenges.  Moreover, being able to create my own experiment and undergo a rigorous path of trial and error will develop an elevated level of critical thinking and problem-solving that is not cultivated through the traditional education path.  I also look forward to connecting with my peers of like-minded scientists at TRIP.

In school, I am part of the track and field team.  The thing I love about track is the nonlinear and often fluctuating pattern of growth, giving the sport a level of depth and requiring powerful dedication to improve.  However, last spring, due to a recurring injury in my hips, I played volleyball for a season to give my hips time to heal.  I am also a leader at the Christian Fellowship Club at my school.  As for Honors Societies, I am in NEHS and Rho Kappa.  In NEHS, I am a leader of a team project that is working on running a Reading Olympics Escape Room in elementary schools as a means of fostering literacy and nurturing curiosity among elementary school children. For Rho Kappa, I am pioneering another project that honors our nation’s veterans with a short film that includes interviews with veterans who attended my school and their families.

Outside of school, I volunteered at a Chinese school I had grown up in to teach Chinese and coach badminton.  I serve also as a worship leader at my church, utilizing my skills in guitar, drum set, vocals, and audio mixing.  I bore these responsibilities to reciprocate the love and guidance that these communities had provided me in years crucial to my development into the person I am now.  Moreover, my service nurtures a distinct sense of kindness and purpose, aligning with my aspirations of providing clinical healthcare in the medical field. The empathy and compassion I gain from helping different communities emphasize my desire to provide love and aid to a society often dusted with hurt and cynicism.

Alright, about today’s TRIP, it was SO fun and SO engaging.  The icebreaker at the beginning was helpful for, well, breaking the ice, and it got pretty funny/embarrassing when I had to ask the same person like 5 times if a random fact on the icebreaker sheet was true or not.  I’m glad I got to meet a wonderful community of like-minded peers who are passionate and curious about science and research.  I’m also glad I met our kind and resourceful instructors Dr. Leystra, Dr. Purdy, Mr. Cozonne, and Anoosha.  All of them were more than happy to help me whenever I had questions. ​

As for what we learned today, we were taught how to make solutions with a micropipette, which I had never used before.  We were also taught the math required to calculate the varying concentrations and amounts of solutions.  I found this exercise to be interesting as it was new but built on a lot of the math I had already learned in Honors and AP Chemistry.  In addition, the mix of theory and hands-on activity was readily apparent and made the experience so much more fun and so much more different than school.  Lastly, we were taught to make food for the flies, which I thought was the most fun as it marked the start of the kickoff experiment.  I chose to investigate the effect of soap-induced intestinal inflammation on fly motility and the possible protective effect of Vitamin D3.

 To set up the experiment, I made four vials of fly food (control, drug only, stressor only, and drug and stressor).  This type of hands-on lab research also struck me as very different from the research I had done over the summer investigating antimicrobial resistance in pathogens found in American cattle, in which using complex mathematical models, namely principal component analysis, hierarchical clustering, dendrograms, etc., I analyzed NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) Pathogen Detection Isolates Browser (NPDIB) data to discover trends of resistance.  Offering a view on a whole new facet of research, TRIP really hooked me. Sadly, this was the conclusion of our first day of TRIP.  But on the bright side, I got to meet some cool people and experience new scientific techniques.  I can just tell that this TRIP will be a fun, stimulating, and enriching experience.

Until next time.