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Weeks:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Week 10
Aug 12 - Aug 18
The last week. I realized that trying to modify the code at this point was probably not practical. Professor Gonzalez asked me to explain all that I've been working on to a grad student - Hailong. Hailong would be joining the Diego lab and continuing my work. Over the week I also tried to find whether other databases listing ADR-drug and gene-pathway relationships exist. I finally found them. The Keggs database had the latter. I looked through it and it seemed very well annotated. Finding a free database listing ADR-drug relationships proved to be more difficult but I finally came across one. I planned to use them for repeating the experiment I had done for finding ADR-pathway links.
This was the last weekend. Skatje, Kyle and I visited the Phoenix zoo and then hung out at Kyle's place. Phoenix zoo was a pretty nice place but we went a bit late and so 1) It was just way too hot for doing anything and 2) Some of the interesting spots like the pet corner were closed by then.
The week was almost over. Time to start packing and wrap up. I played around with Cytoscape and found a cytoscape plugin- drugviz which allows you to do cool stuff for analyzing the relationship between drugs and their targets. I also met Hailong again to discuss the project. I no longer regretted choosing to work on a new complex project. I may have failed to make it a big success and the work I did may have been extremely tedious but it was still my project and I loved it.
Skajte left the day before me. I met Melissa before leaving. We ate in the Mexican restaurant- Mi Amigos and watched the movie - The Ugly Truth which was hilarious.
Finally it was time to leave. It was exceptionally hot that day and I almost fell sick dragging my gigantic suitcases all the way to the light rail, then to the airport shuttle and finally to the airport. I would walk for a few minutes and then just sit down in the middle of the road when I could no longer drag myself any further. I come from a hot country but before staying in Arizona I had no idea a place could actually be this hot!
Overall it had been a great experience. I learned how research works and realized that I like it. Sure there were times when I felt extremely frustrated and depressed but I enjoyed the challenge of discovering something new way too much to let that stop me. I had a wonderful mentor who guided me along the way and friendly colleagues who helped me as much as possible. I also got to see a completely new place and meet some cool people. I regretted not spending more time with them though. Being generally quiet and shy I wasn't able to get too close to any of them. However I was more outgoing now than I used to be and had a greater sense of independence. A big thanks to DREU for giving me this wonderful opportunity.
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