Hey Everyone! I hope you all are staying safe and sanitized! Sending you all love from my living room. Since March ends the first quarter of the year, we wanted to update you all on our lives up to this point. So here's what's been going on with me so far this year.
COVID-19 Updates:
Columbus has pretty much closed everything but the essential locations. Some chained restaurants are still open with abbreviated hours and/or carry-out and delivery only services. OSU has closed, which means I'm not allowed on campus unless it's something essential with one of our instruments. My lab is keeping our instruments on so I don't have to worry about turning off my babies (the instruments I'm in charge of). This also means we can't do research and that's huge. We're not too sure when we can get back in lab, but until then everything is happening via Zoom. My office hours for the class I'm a TA for and our group meetings are online until further notice. Being home is so interesting and I'm trying to stay busy, but everything goes back to "normal" next week, with classes starting back up, so I'll soon be back on some semblance of a real schedule.
Research Updates:
Good news! We're trying to get my second, first author paper published! So that's exciting. We're sending it to another journal this week (we got reject from the first two, which is normal and okay), so once it gets accepted I'll post it on social media for sure. That project was a side project initially, but turned out to be something I'm extremely proud of and something that can help a lot of people so keep your fingers crossed for me! I'm also a finalist for an award at OSU. The award is for the 2019 Next Generator Innovator of the Year and it's basically awarded to a grad/professional/post-doctoral student that's invented something that has a wide impact. I am extremely honored to have even been nominated and also to be named a finalist. They're going to interview me tomorrow over the phone and create a 1 minute introduction video about the work I'm doing with Nationwide Children's Hospital to create a skin patch to help detect potential biomarkers for patients with cystic fibrosis to help the development and monitoring of their treatment plans.
Personal Updates:
I turned 26 in February and had an amazing time! I had a "Devin Day" and pampered myself and also made sure I got lit with my friends. It was the perfect balance to my weekend. I'm also on recipe # 10 (will happen today when I make my lunch) of my 50 new recipes for 2020. So far, the crab cakes I made have been my FAVORITE! I'm also currently working on a service project to donate clothes and items to my local shelter in the midst of this COVID-19 outbreak. If you are interested in helping me out with that contact me. I'll definitely have updates about that on my social media as well.
How has the first quarter of 2020 treating you? Tweet me some responses!
-The Chemist
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