My name is Andrea Gonzalez (she/her/hers). I am currently an uprising sophomore hoping to major in Latina/o Studies and Higher Education. I am from the Metro Detroit area of Michigan with Mexican Roots. I am working at the Nör Lab with Dr. Justine Moe. My project is focused on oral cancer in nonsmokers and its outcomes.
Currently, I have spent time doing cell culture and feeding cells, which has been fun and very challenging when seeing unexpected growth results in cells. For this project, I hope to be able to conduct experiments and collect data. I am hoping that with a lot of practice and time dedicated to working with pipettes, I will be able to become better at working with loading lysis. Some of my skills that I bring to this project include being personable. Since I have the privilege of working in a lab with diverse scholars, it has allowed me to communicate with people from all over the world.
So far, I have learned to become an early morning person who wakes up by 5:00am, which is something I didn’t have to do since high school! I am looking forward to being able to overcome my fear of thinking I’ll screw up (I’m very scared to accidentally kill my cancer cells lol). However, from this experience, I hope to gain more confidence and be able to do many things independently because, in the future, I would like to pursue the PhD track in hopes of being a graduate student researcher. As someone passionate about social change and public health, I hope to be able to find help for those who are fighting cancer and other deadly diseases!
Thanks for sharing a bit about yourself, I am so excited to work with you this summer.
Emily