Research is interesting

Updated: 11 Dec 2025

I joined a lab in chemistry

I spent a semester shadowing a combined physical and analytical chemistry research group, and I ended up getting a lot of experience working on optical instrumentation. Although the experience taught me a lot more about physics concepts than chemistry, I actually really enjoyed the topics, and I’m thinking of specializing in bioanalytical or physical chemistry. Bioanalytical chemistry would be quite applicable to my career goals in the pharmaceutical industry, even though I was unsure momentarily about what I wanted to do in the future (because I enjoyed learning physics so much more than chemistry). I’m planning on posting the slides I made presenting what I learned on this website soon. I’ll be putting the slides here!

From the work I did in this semester, I was able to get enough of a background in optics and physics that I got another research position! I will be starting it next semester.

So, next semester I’m joining a physics lab!

They’re using nanomaterials and a technique called Optically Detected Magnetic Resonance (ODMR). It’s sort of similar to how an MRI works, but we’re going to use it to measure the electrical potential gradients inside cells. Overall, the project is technically in biomedical engineering, but it is heavily based on quantum physics principles, as well as electromagnetism. Over the next semester, I’ll most likely be helping out with simpler procedures in cell culturing, but I’m definitely going to work on learning the underlying theory behind this research!