Please help Maria Attend UCI Summer Research Camp
Donation protected
Introduction:
Hi! My name is Maria Gagnon, I am 13 years old and currently in grade eight at Glashan Public School. I aspire to be a neurosurgeon and musician. The photo on my page is of my friend Colleen Fogarty and me after a violin performance at the nursing home.
I started this go fund me page in order to help pay for tuition in a summer research program. I am one of 20 high school students accepted as a Biotech Engineering AI Medicine (BEAM) fellow to a residential program at the Gifted and Talented Institute (GATI) at the University of Irvine, California this summer. This will include 4-weeks online engagement and remote research discussions, followed by 2-weeks of on-campus research at the university's lab.
The tuition is $5,495 USD plus airfare and I am so grateful to have received a $1,000 merit scholarship from Spirit of Math to put towards the tuition. In addition to my birthday money, money raised through selling homemade bath and beauty products, homemade won tons, busking at the farmer’s market, and scholarship money from music competitions, I am hoping to raise an additional $5,000 CAD through this campaign to help pay for the fees. Any excess money raised will go towards my future education fund.
While I do not have any formal science research experience, I have made some observations regarding the connection between music and the brain. This connection is important to me because I would like to be a neurosurgeon, and I am also working towards becoming a professional musician. I play both violin and piano, and I practice at my grandmother's nursing home almost every day. In fact, it’s like a second home to me. Often, relatives of the residents living at the nursing home will bring them to listen when I practice. I have observed a number of residents, including many who are unresponsive to external stimuli, react positively to music. Some will smile, tap their feet, nod their heads, while others will even clap in time to the music. It is always so rewarding to see!
I am in the process of planning my own field study to conduct at the nursing home, where I will be making formal observations regarding the effect of music on the elderly when combined with physiotherapy.
The research project I will be working on is the Dielectrophoretic Separation of two Sub-populations of Latex beads from Homogeneous Mixture, led by Dr. Lawrence Kulinsky, Biomedical Engineering / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
Project Description:
"Dielectrophoresis (DEP) is a powerful non-contact handling technique for biotechnology and micro manufacturing applications. In the presented project, students will gain theoretical understanding and hands-on experience to model and perform experiments involving dielectrophoretic separation of different types of latex microbeads. These experiments model separation of different types of cells, such as cancerous cells from liquid biopsy samples, or living cells from the dead cells. Students will be assigned background reading on the topics of dielectrophoresis, they will model dielectrophoresis separation, they will then perform DEP experiments to measure the crossover frequency of each type of the microbeads, then they will perform the experiments to separate two sub-populations of microbeads from the homogeneous mixture".
In other words, we will be using microbeads to mimic cells, study them, and then try to separate the microbeads from a mixture. We will conduct experiments using this technique. The end goal is to separate two different types of (models of) cells from a mixture of both. With some further research, this technique may be used to separate tumor cells and cancerous cells from healthy ones, and perhaps one day cure cancer.
I am interested in pursuing medicine and the connection between music and the brain so I could help people. This course will supply me with the tools necessary to begin my research, and pursue my dream of being a neurosurgeon. In the meantime, I will use what I learn to hopefully help brighten the day of the residents of the nursing home.
Thank you very much for your generosity. Any amount you would like to contribute is greatly appreciated. If you aren’t able to contribute, that’s ok too. Thanks for taking the time to share my dream.
Sincerely,
Maria
Hi! My name is Maria Gagnon, I am 13 years old and currently in grade eight at Glashan Public School. I aspire to be a neurosurgeon and musician. The photo on my page is of my friend Colleen Fogarty and me after a violin performance at the nursing home.
I started this go fund me page in order to help pay for tuition in a summer research program. I am one of 20 high school students accepted as a Biotech Engineering AI Medicine (BEAM) fellow to a residential program at the Gifted and Talented Institute (GATI) at the University of Irvine, California this summer. This will include 4-weeks online engagement and remote research discussions, followed by 2-weeks of on-campus research at the university's lab.
The tuition is $5,495 USD plus airfare and I am so grateful to have received a $1,000 merit scholarship from Spirit of Math to put towards the tuition. In addition to my birthday money, money raised through selling homemade bath and beauty products, homemade won tons, busking at the farmer’s market, and scholarship money from music competitions, I am hoping to raise an additional $5,000 CAD through this campaign to help pay for the fees. Any excess money raised will go towards my future education fund.
While I do not have any formal science research experience, I have made some observations regarding the connection between music and the brain. This connection is important to me because I would like to be a neurosurgeon, and I am also working towards becoming a professional musician. I play both violin and piano, and I practice at my grandmother's nursing home almost every day. In fact, it’s like a second home to me. Often, relatives of the residents living at the nursing home will bring them to listen when I practice. I have observed a number of residents, including many who are unresponsive to external stimuli, react positively to music. Some will smile, tap their feet, nod their heads, while others will even clap in time to the music. It is always so rewarding to see!
I am in the process of planning my own field study to conduct at the nursing home, where I will be making formal observations regarding the effect of music on the elderly when combined with physiotherapy.
The research project I will be working on is the Dielectrophoretic Separation of two Sub-populations of Latex beads from Homogeneous Mixture, led by Dr. Lawrence Kulinsky, Biomedical Engineering / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
Project Description:
"Dielectrophoresis (DEP) is a powerful non-contact handling technique for biotechnology and micro manufacturing applications. In the presented project, students will gain theoretical understanding and hands-on experience to model and perform experiments involving dielectrophoretic separation of different types of latex microbeads. These experiments model separation of different types of cells, such as cancerous cells from liquid biopsy samples, or living cells from the dead cells. Students will be assigned background reading on the topics of dielectrophoresis, they will model dielectrophoresis separation, they will then perform DEP experiments to measure the crossover frequency of each type of the microbeads, then they will perform the experiments to separate two sub-populations of microbeads from the homogeneous mixture".
In other words, we will be using microbeads to mimic cells, study them, and then try to separate the microbeads from a mixture. We will conduct experiments using this technique. The end goal is to separate two different types of (models of) cells from a mixture of both. With some further research, this technique may be used to separate tumor cells and cancerous cells from healthy ones, and perhaps one day cure cancer.
I am interested in pursuing medicine and the connection between music and the brain so I could help people. This course will supply me with the tools necessary to begin my research, and pursue my dream of being a neurosurgeon. In the meantime, I will use what I learn to hopefully help brighten the day of the residents of the nursing home.
Thank you very much for your generosity. Any amount you would like to contribute is greatly appreciated. If you aren’t able to contribute, that’s ok too. Thanks for taking the time to share my dream.
Sincerely,
Maria
Organizer
Paul Gagnon
Organizer
Ottawa, ON