Event Blog #2

            

Background information on Ciemence Pinel

The event that I attended was a presentation titled, “The Environment in Epigenetics Enabling research Entrepreneurship” by Ciémence Pinel a doctoral student who was researching the effects and processes of research funding and collaboration in the laboratory setting. At first, I was a bit intimidated due to the fact that the conference room was only big enough to sit 20 people and there was over 30 DESMA students who had showed up for the presentation. They weren’t expecting so many people to show up to the event. Once the whole situation was figured out, the presentation began. At first, I was a bit confused as to the whole idea and research results being discussed. After she stated her main conclusion which was that researchers are entrepreneurs, it all made sense. The reason for conducting this study was to show how many research labs work together with various other labs in order to maximize their profits from the research. (Pinel, 5/9/2018).  She conducted an ethnographic study which consisted of two laboratories which were labeled lab A and B.  Lab A main focus was Breast Cancer research and Lab B main focus was Computational Biology (Pinel. 5/9/2018). 

Comparison between Lab A and B

Despite these labs having completely different areas of study, they both shared data when it was needed to help in their research. This experiment reminded me of the last event I attended with Dr. Navon and how he used other people’s research as samples and a way to see correlations within his mutation organization groups. (Navon, 4/13/2018). Another thing that stood out to me from the presentation was that, researchers have three main characteristics which are, profitability, mobility, and versatility. Researchers like entrepreneurs have these characteristics in order to maximize their money, time, and outcome/results. 

One thing that really stood out and connected with the class concepts was the concept of robots used in the medical field and research (Robotics pt1). In some of the pictures, during her presentation there were robots being used in the research labs helping researchers during their studies. This field of robots being used in many medical/scientific environments is becoming more common now in days. After attending this presentation, it opened my eyes and gave me new ideas to be able to add to my final project. Since my midterm proposal was related to robots within the medical field, I will be able to add onto my proposal allowing me to make my final much more supportive having great examples of robots in the laboratory setting. I definitely would have recommended this event for my fellow classmates due to the fact the research conducted was different from regular research studies in science. This research was qualitative and was focused more around peoples thought not statistics. It gave a different perspective into medical research. All and all I really enjoyed this presentation. It gave a variety of perspective which all related to the same field and at the same time also gave me ideas for my final project.

My DESMA9 classmates and I 

References 

Uconlineprogram. Robotics pt1. YouTube. April 15, 2012. Length. 14:31. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRw9_v6w0ew

NAVON, Daniel PhD. “The gene didn’t get the memo”. The Social Genome Knowledge & Politics in a Postgenomic Society, 13 April 2018, La Kretz Garden Pavilion, room 1101, Los Angeles, CA. Presentation

Pinel Ciémence. “The Environment in Epigenetics Enabling research Entrepreneurship” The Social Genome Knowledge & Politics in a Postgenomic Society, 9 May 2018, Life Sciences Building room 3314, Los Angeles, CA. Presentation.