Kevin Seo is the recipient for this year’s Peter Paré Studentship, an eight-week summer internship at HLI (valued at $4,690) for students who participate in High School Student Science Week. Kevin is working in Dr. Del Dorscheid’s lab until the end of August as he prepares to start his life as a student in UBC’s Faculty of Science.
What is your research project?
I’m researching senescence, which is a state of cell-cycle arrest in response to damage, in the airways of patients with COPD and asthma. The primary goal of my project is to find out if the state of senescence is elevated with respiratory disease. I’m also learning the basics of lab protocols, such as Western blotting, ELISA (Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay), and immunohistochemistry.
What is a typical day like for you at HLI?
I write down the protocol for whatever experiment I’ll be conducting on the day, which could utilize any of the three techniques I mentioned. I then prepare samples, antibodies, and run the experiment before I discuss my results with my mentors and supervisor.
What interested you about the High School Science Week?
It was a great opportunity to experience what it’d be like to work in a professional laboratory setting. Opportunities like these are rare, even for eager students, and I knew it would give me a better understanding of the current state of medicine first-hand.
What skills have you developed at HLI?
The biggest skill I’ve learned is the ability to adapt to mistakes and accepting them when they occur. It’s very easy to make mistakes in the lab; maybe you’ve added too many doses of something, loaded the wrong plate, didn’t freeze something properly and now the cells died… It’s about focusing on how you can recover. Even if something ends up being the opposite of my hypothesis, I’ve grown to not be discouraged and to use the data to find new meaning.
What do you enjoy most about working at HLI?
What I enjoy most is knowing that it’ll be challenging every day. I’m always learning something new, and I’m building knowledge to prepare for my future. There’s never a boring day here.
Do you have any advice for high school students pursuing a career in STEM?
Be prepared to start from scratch and expect failure. That sounds scary, but the lab challenges you in a different way. Overconfidence will trip you up, so you need to go into things with humility and expect to be humbled. I wouldn’t say I was overconfident at all, but I was still humbled, so that goes to show it’s a whole new challenge. Being organized and writing everything down will go a long way.
Is it a matter of the lab setting being more difficult to navigate?
I wouldn’t say it’s considerably harder, but very different. I think most people who want to go into STEM already have a strong understanding of the subject and their future responsibilities. It’s just a different style of learning than studying from textbooks and lectures, so being ready for that is important.
What do you like to do outside of research and school?
I love net sports, especially badminton and volleyball. I was also on my school’s gymnastics team, and would like to continue pursuing it in my free time when I’m in university.
Is there anything from your time on the gymnastics team that you believe applies to research?
My coach always told us “anything you don’t practice, you’ll lose”, but I didn’t believe him. I used to be able to do my vault in practice every time, no sweat, so I prioritized other moves. Thanks to that, I lost first place in the provincial championships because I messed up my vault. It’s the same in research, if you don’t plan your protocols properly, you’ll have to restart. Being meticulous is key.
What is your favourite movie?
Inside Out 2 was more emotional than I thought! I watched the first and second movies back-to-back, but I related to the main character more for the second. I think the exploration of anxiety was well done, and because she’s got a bit older, it was easier for me to relate to how I was when I was 13, 14.
I recommend checking it out if you haven’t done so already.
