This summer I worked with Valles Labs in the Physics Department at Brown University. I researched force sensing capabilities of Paramecium Caudatum, a type of single celled organism found in places like fresh water ponds. I was responsible for creating cell cultures and subcultures as well as collecting cells to experiment on. I designed and ran the experiments. This involved assembling a tube structure to place the cells in, rewiring an electronic device to increase its utility, and setting up microscope cameras to using for recording data. After collecting data, I wrote several programs in Matlab to analyze it. Then, I summarized my findings. Apart from my hands-on work, I also spent a lot of time reading academic articles about experiments other biophysicists had done using paramecium. I used the information from what I had read to help me focus my own experiments.
