Aloha! I’m Amy, a 15 y/o SynBio and Climate Tech research from Toronto, Canada. Read on for a recap of my February:
Winning a VR x SynBio Hackathon
Ever read a page in your biology textbook and think, “what did I even read?” That’s because words and static diagrams are really bad at intuitively explaining complex biological phenomena (like photosynthesis!)
And so Jolie, Valkyrie and I created Blob-o-vision. Blob-o-vision transforms passive learning (reading, watching videos) into a virtual reality biological world that students can actively explore.
Why the name Blob-o-vision? Because at a molecular level, everything is just blobs ;)
Our project was awarded Best Presentation in a 2-day hackathon. Check out our pitch below:
Home-Bench
Since the world is still very COVID-y, I brought the lab into my home with this CRISPR kit from the Odin. Check out my video below for a really cool experiment, my mistakes and a fun explanation of CRISPR & homologous recombination:
Stoicism Seminar
Stoicism. The ability to take whatever 🤬the world throws at you and smile through it all.
This month I was invited to give a seminar at my middle school on this superpower, living in accordance with nature. Check out my slide deck below:
Menu of the Future
For a more sustainable future, we need to rethink what sustains us — food.
A few days ago, I volunteered at SynBioBeta’s Food & Ag conference. It was a super fun and worldview-changing experience. Click the image below for my reflection of the conference:
Developing an Intuition for Biology
When you’re revising an essay and one sentence just doesn’t sound right, that’s your intuition speaking to you. But for biology, everything feels very uncertain and the only way to verify your hypotheses are to perform experiments at the lab, right? Wrong.
Laura Deming is taking a new approach to biological discovery by gaining an understanding of the facts and theoretically thinking about biology. She proposes that you take one of two mental models to learn from:
micro: look at biology from the atomic level, know the size of cell components, who they talk to, etc. to gain an intuitive feel
check out this website
macro: change one instruction in the genetics of the cell and figure out how the whole system will respond
Learn more below:
3 Life Skills
Here are the top 3 skills to practice throughout your life (courtesy of Kelle):
Figure it Out: if you’re in TKS, you’re probably getting a mild form of PTSD from hearing this word, but it’s true. Doctors with years’ worth of medical knowledge still need to figure stuff out sometimes.
Critical reasoning: the ability to push past barriers & break down problems
to achieve this, you need mental models
Do things that matter: this will mean something different for everyone but by doing things that make sense and result in long term gains, you will build a meaningful portfolio.
What’s Next: Solving SDG5 For Mexico?!
Did you know that 75% of women in Mexico with a college degree don’t get a paid job?
For the month of March, Sualeha, Klara, Sofi and I are working to deconstruct the employment problem in Mexico and solve it along with the UN.
If you know anyone in Mexico that can help us gain perspective, please let us know!
🍽
Read: When Breath Becomes Air, I Am Malala
Talk to your future self —> Meet Your Inner Mentor
A playlist that helps me fall asleep at night. Piano is beautiful.
🛠 Chrome Extensions
Save to Notion: eliminate <<highlight, ctrl-c, click, click, ctrl-v>>
Visualize Value: enlightenment in every new tab
OneTab: save your tabs and save your RAM
How you can help me:
My friends and I have a legit SynBio project in the making, but we need funding. If you’re able to contribute anything or have any ideas on how to get funding, please reply to this email :)
Quick update on my plant, it’s thriving! The taller one was the one struggling to come out of its seed. Goes to show that the toughest challenges do create the toughest people/plants. The other picture is a happy piece of art I made.
Have a happy day, till next time ✌️
Connect with me on twitter.