Final Reflections


I can’t believe that the semester is ending! It’s gone by so quickly!

Reflecting on my 20.109 experience, I feel that I’ve definitely learned a lot not only about different bioengineering techniques, but also about scientific writing and presentations. I’m sad that we weren’t able to carry out the lab experiments for Mod 2 and 3, but glad that we were able to make the most out of the situation by still analyzing the data and getting a sense of the protocols.

One part of the 20.109 experience I really enjoyed was working on the research proposal. It was initially really difficult for my partner and I to come up with a “novel” research idea; we didn’t even know where to start! I ended up just choosing a very broad research area, and started reading papers, especially reviews, to identify knowledge gaps. I learned a lot of cool things through this process, and I do think it helped us finally come up with a set of ideas. Having a lab partner was really helpful for this process, as she would frequently find some paper I didn’t come across that had already carried out the idea I came up with ☹. However, in the end, we came up with a proposal that I was quite happy with! The process of thinking through the specific experimental steps and techniques needed to accomplish our research goal was quite interesting, and really helped me better understand the research process. I really enjoyed the proposal presentations as well. The questions the instructors and fellow 20.109ers asked were actually really helpful in pointing out things I might have otherwise never though about! Hearing and learning about the research ideas other students had come up with was also really cool!

Overall, I’m really glad to have had this 20.109 experience with everyone!


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