When we were brainstorming ideas for our iGEM project, I didn't really have much to contribute to the conversation. Coming up with a project in a field I knew little about (synbio) with the proper scope (about one summer's worth of wet-lab research) without my having any lab experience was paralyzingly impossible.
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Thank god for teammates. When the initial idea of creating a diagnostic for endometriosis was pitched, I hopped on the bandwagon. It was a cool project and I grew increasingly passionate about the topic.
You think the experience of brainstorming and fleshing out a project pitch would make this research proposal a breeze.
Not the case.
Cue the same agony over coming up with something novel and interesting and feasible and important and ....you get the point.
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I was fully planning on just hopping on board with whatever idea David proposed. We both were interested in something with medical applications, so I figured I would be cool with whatever.
And then, a miracle occurred – I got invested in a topic. I initially felt sheepish about proposing doing something related to concussions. After spending Nov. 2014 - Aug. 2016 dealing with concussion symptoms, I was going to spend part of my first concussion-free semester at MIT researching the very thing that made me miserable for almost 2 years.
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But man, we don't understand anything about concussions and that's ridiculous. I fell down a very sad research rabbit hole that basically yielded nothing.
We don't know a whole lot about endometriosis either, and miRNAs turned out to be a super cool biomarker that can be used to determine the diseased state. And guess what, it seems like specific miRNA changes are present in patients with concussions.
Back down the rabbit hole, but with renewed optimism.
So an aspect of the work I did this summer + a very unfortunate injury = a research proposal.
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