I completed my scholars practicum at the Paleoclimate CoLaboratory. This lab is found in the chemistry building room 1212, but it is a part of the Department of Geology. Despite the designation, the lab is very interdisciplinary. I am a bioengineering major, but I found a lot of my skills and knowledge were applicable. The lab’s supervisor is Dr. Michael Evans (mnevans@umd.edu). He is a professor in the geology department at the University of Maryland. The lab’s work focuses on stable isotope research. The overall goal of lab work is to find out if El Nino Southern Oscillation is affected by anthropogenic forcing, a subset of climate change.
Dr. Evans is a very understanding and welcoming supervisor. He always strives to maintain an active communication network with lab members and stresses the importance of asking questions and learning from experiences. This can lead him to be quite opinionated however. Getting on his good side is very easy but it is hard to gain his trust if you don’t maintain your word. In this way, he is a good disciplinary force in the lab as well. But further than this, he is a very warm person when it comes to teaching and ensuring an assistant has all the knowledge they need to do good work in the lab. He is quick to answer questions and will always congratulate hard work. He often brings chocolate to the lab and is quick to offer advice and connections to other colleagues when asked. The main drawback of working in this lab can be the quantity of work. If one is not used to conducting research activities that can be repetitive and frustrating at times, it might be very difficult to get started.
Most of the work was focused on preparing samples for the mass spectrometer and running them. This includes dating the tree cores, microtoming the cores, extracting the microtomed samples, wrapping the extracted cellulose in silver capsules, overseeing the run, and analyzing the isotope values In addition, several of my tasks involved maintaining the lab and its instruments. This includes assisting in mass spec source repair, moving gas tanks, receiving deliveries from the Geology building, and running experiments to confirm the effectiveness of equipment. Again, while this is a very steep learning curve initially, Dr. Evans and the other lab assistants are always happy to walk a new assistant through any procedure they struggle with.
During this experience, I have learned about the application of scientific knowledge in a practical lab setting. In particular, I learned how the knowledge I have is best used on an interdisciplinary project. As I am a bioengineering major and the lab is in the department of geology, I was slightly worried about not being knowledgeable enough to effectively relate to the work I was doing. This could not be further from what happened. I was able to apply my bioengineering knowledge into new methods for the lab while learning more about geology, atmospheric science, and statistical analysis. My only wish is that I could have spent more time preparing to enter the lab, as it has a very steep learning curve. I plan to work at this lab at least through the summer while I grow my network base through meetings and events Dr. Evans introduces me to.
This project has given me a new appreciation for interdisciplinary studies. Many science classes have taught me about how the boundaries of the sciences are blurred when research is conducted, but to witness it firsthand was something else.