Moin Khan
Hi, I am Moin, a dual degree student in Chemical Engineering, now entering my fourth year. I would like to share my internship experience at Mechanobiology Institute, National University of Singapore. The research which I did here has got very little to do with traditional Chemical Engineering, but biology as a subject has been amalgamating quickly with Chemical Engineering, and has opened up many new avenues for research. This is also evident by the fact that quite a lot of professors in our department work in bio related areas. This involves working with high end instruments and softwares, something which I believe created the initial enthusiasm of research within me, towards the end of my fourth semester.
I took a project under Prof Abhijit Majumder in my fourth semester, and continued it during the upcoming summers as well. To express the work in simple words, the lab studied the effects of external factors on the dynamics of a cell. Since cells in our body are subjected to various forces from surrounding tissues, experiments were done to mimic these conditions and observe the changes on varying the conditions. I liked what I did and later, and also received URA 01.
After entering the third year, I had made up my mind to do similar research in the upcoming summers. But the universities which opened up through PT cell did not suit my profile, as I had developed a flavour of mechanobiology and hardly any univ had a project to offer on this. I began to make a database of universities where I could find my work of interest, and Prof Majumder helped me a great deal in this. I finally got accepted into MBI, which in Prof Majumder’s list was among the favourites. In all, I had sent mails to around 10 professors across different universities, so the apping experience for me was quite light, unlike those who show a lot of perseverance in the whole process. This was mainly due to the fact that I was targeting very specific projects, which would be the next step for me after the experience gained in sophie year summer. Prior to sending my applications, I had worked extensively on preparing the cover letter, covering all details of my previous project.
At NUS, I am working on ‘Telomere Dynamics during Cell migration’ (Still 15 days left for my intern to be complete, as I write this!). Telomeres are parts of the chromosomes present in the nucleus of a cell, and in the long run, this project has implications in Cancer research. And the best part, I am quite sure of having my first Research Publication here :D. So you see, I have swayed quite too far from so called Chemical Engineering, but as far as it interests you, I don’t see any problem with it.
Research in this field calls for highly tremendous amount of investment, and I feel blessed to have used such state of the art facilities here. After experiments, you need to analyse the data using MATLAB and other high end image processing softwares, one of which requires at least 16 GB of RAM to run! So this project had a very good balance of experimental and computational work, something which I aimed for.
Miscellaneous
My lab group here is very helpful, especially my mentor, which is one of the prime reasons for me learning quite a lot of things here in the 2.5 month period. Speaking about NUS, it just took me a very short time to understand why is it ranked among the world’s top universities. Bring in any comparison parameter and NUS proves to be the best! People here have a drive for innovation, and couple this with excellent infrastructural facilities and other factors. There you have a great place to learn. Plus, getting Indian food here is never a problem and I had better food here than what my hostel mess serves :P
As this was my first trip abroad, I was mesmerised by the cleanliness, greenery and civic sense of the people in Singapore, with almost zero crime rate. We had a group of around 10 people, with a majority of them interning at NTU. We covered almost the whole of Singapore, which exhibits a beautiful combination of natural and man-made marvels. Though I didn’t get to explore the neighbouring countries much, apart from a 2 day visit to a nearby island in Indonesia.
I was not provided accommodation in the halls of NUS, so I managed it on my own. I shared my flat with a few other Chinese people, which also had a kitchen, so also got introduced to a bit of cooking over here. I received sufficient stipend to cover my expenses of food, travel and accommodation. Singapore being quite an expensive city, I had to manage the funds properly, but overall I didn’t had any trouble financially.
As of now, I wish to pursue a PhD later on, and this internship has given me a very good insight about how it is like. I strongly believe that the work I did here will greatly help me in applying for PhD anywhere in the world. Living for 2.5 months among the Singaporeans here has taught me to be more humble, respectful and be helpful to everyone , something which I will cherish forever. It has made me more responsible and independent as an individual, and I certainly have had a great time of my life here, from the perspectives of both work and fun