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The Finale
Last week marked the end of the master’s program Experimental & Medical Biosciences. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were filled with our thesis presentations and many interesting discussions. Same as the first year project, we present to an audience and we have 2 student opponents, an expert reviewer and an examiner (the student mentor). Both my presentation and my oppositions went very well, so it was a huge relief. Now, there only some corrections need to be done, before submitting the final version of the thesis and be officially finished, but that’s some minor stuff. A few thoughts about the program:
Overall I am very pleased with the entire program. Would definitely recommend it. What I liked when i first saw the program was it is a general master, covering multiple subjects (immunology, neurobiology, microbiology – all these can make a specific, individual master) and at the same time specific, since we get to do our thesis and a project in a very focused area, alongside with very good researchers. A very brief recap on the schedule I took and the things i remember:
Laboratory techniques: Basic course, I liked that we had to design our own experimental plan.
Analytical techniques: It’s one of those things that you just have to go through.
I then did my 1st year project in an epigenetics group. I didnt have the slightest idea about what epigenetics is and truth to be told, I just ended up in this group, which turned out to be the best part of the master’s. I learned and I’m still learning (since I’ll be staying for a while) a ton of stuff and got to work with cut of the edge lab techniques (hint: read my thesis title below). In addition, a small part of my project ended up as a teeny-tiny contribution to a very big paper that our group is publishing now (Nature Methods, on July). I also got to stay during the summer in the group, with a scholarship by the pediatrics department.
Neurobiology: I honestly can’t remember much about it. Just a few really good lecturers, why meths works better than heroin and that I decided neurobiology is not for me.
Infectious biology: One my favorites. I always liked microbiology and this course was not disappointing. Good lecturers also!
The 2nd year started with
Stem cells: Probably my favorite course, with really, really good lecturers from LiU and other swedish unis. I also liked the assignments, where we had to come up with experimental stell-cell based treatments for some diseases. The exam was a bit tricky, but hopefully it will be improved next year.
Virology: Although I like virology, this is very focused on the molecular level and has almost nothing to do with clinical stuff. Which is kinda expected, since the course title is “Molecular Virology”. I did learn a lot of new stuff, but it just didn’t feel exciting. I have to give props to the course coordinator though; I would give the award for “best organized course of the program (in terms of scheduling etc), plus we had a ton of invited lectures from all across Sweden, which is really cool because a) they were experts in the field b) you can make new connections.
Immunology: Toughest course I took, but very interesting. Due to high number of students the lab work was very meh, but still interesting. Moment to remember: From all the groups that did the lab (can’t remember how many, but not a lot), it was only my group that identified correctly the allergic patients!
Animal course: A lot of basic and interesting stuff about handling animals. We also get to handle the rats and mice from the animal facility an practice some techniques [on a voluntary basis]. Moment to remember: The course coordinators laugh when a student read a part of our report that had something like “In case of emergency, the veterinarian will be called and euthanized” and reminded us not to kill the veterinarian.
Thesis: I did it in the same group as my project, so the same things apply. In short, we successfully generated knockout cell line, using CRISPR-Cas9. I will also be staying again for the summer (and maybe more) with the same scholarship as last year, and we’ll see what will come next!
I think an interesting question would be what happens to the graduates of the program after it has ended? Well, to start with, we were about 30 people in the program. I haven’t talked with most of them about the next part, but from the people that I spoke with:
- Â 3 people will be continuing as PhDs in the university
- 2 people found a job in the industry
- A few people have found at least summer jobs, some of them in the groups where they did their thesis.
- 2 persons haven’t found something yet
Best of luck to all new and prospective students!
During my thesis presentation, entitled                                                                “A CRISPR-Cas9 engineered isoform specific TET1 knockout cell line for investigation the role of TET1 in T-cell biology“
