The TRIP has come to a End by Mia Perez

Hello everyone, I can’t believe this will be the last time I report to you all on my journey at TRIP. I have learned so much from this program and have become a part of a greater community. Looking back from day one of TRIP, I realize that the growth I made still has me in disbelief. I went from learning about solutions and dilutions to learning to collect and turn pictures into data, performing assays, handling fruit flies, executing the kickoff project, and fully operating my research project. This was possible all thanks to the help of Dr. Purdy, Dr. Austria, Dr. Valdes, Mr. Cozzone, my wonderful TAs, and everyone else in TRIP who made my experience an enjoyable journey. Throughout this program, I learned how to recover from hiccups while doing experiments, slowly using the unexpected bumps along the way to better my research.

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Being in the lab each Saturday morning was truly an experience I will deeply miss. Starting with lectures every morning, teaching us new, valuable lessons and better ways to improve our research, and how everyone was always excited to go on and work on their project. Following the topic of sleep disruption in my kickoff experiment, for my research, I decided to test how lack of sleep can affect memory in teens and if diet could improve some of the effects. To do this, I sorted flies, set up food vials, made stocks, made agar and sugar plates, and performed the larva memory assay! Based on the outcomes of my experiment, I found that ginkgo biloba can reverse the effect of light-induced sleep disruption. ​

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I am so grateful for this program and glad you all saw me through my trip at TRIP.