by Nzuekoh Nchinda

Falling in love with city life is quite a way to spend a summer and Boston is a quintessential place to do just that. One of the oldest cities in New England, Boston is wonderfully vibrant and full of history, diverse cultures, beautiful parks, and a metropolitan ambience. 
            
The Harvard School of Public Health is located in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area, a medical campus near the Fenway and Mission Hill neighborhoods of Boston.  Centered on Harvard Medical School (HMS) and its affiliated teaching hospitals, Longwood provides an atmosphere of driven students and scholars. While waiting for PCR procedures to finish or taking lunch breaks, my lab mates and I enjoy the summer sun on the open lawn at the footsteps to HMS. The weekly performances by students from nearby Berkley College of Music add to the beauty of relaxing outside, resembling a serenade in a park.

by Nzuekoh Nchinda

Having a great mentor is key to getting the most out of an undergraduate research opportunity. At Sarah Fortune’s lab, it’s been such a wonderful experience working under Richa Gawande, a fourth year graduate student in the Biological Sciences in Public Health (BPH) program at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). She was kind enough to sit with me and share the experiences that have led her to where she is today.

Why the Fortune lab?
“[It] gives a good balance of excitement and rigor. Straddling the basic science and translational global health line is really important to me,” Richa said. 

She stressed that the Fortune lab gives her a good balance between basic science, great energy in the lab, diversity of projects and translational research.  Translational research is a key part of her interests because it is a way of conducting research that makes findings applicable to the population that is under study, and it encourages multi-disciplinary collaboration. 

Richa’s motivation for coming to HSPH is to acquire the skills to become part of a sustainable research community focused on developing settings.

by Nzuekoh Nchinda

As I ride the shuttle bus each morning to the Longwood Medical Area, I become increasingly excited for what the day will have in store. Days at the Fortune Lab are far from boring, since each one brings a new learning experience, broadening my knowledge of both laboratory techniques as well as the vast scope of public health. 

On most days, I immediately start on my project. Conducting the necessary lab procedures takes a full 9:30am to 5:30pm day. But time always seems to fly by—despite repeating the same procedures daily, work never feels monotonous. What makes bench science so stimulating is that the potential result of your procedure is always unexpected. I may perform the same basic technique multiple times, but each time I make slight adjustments based upon the results of previous experiments. And the results of each procedure are different. So much of lab work is based upon trial and error. There have been days when all of my procedures failed to yield the results I needed. But then that moment comes when that desired result occurs. From that moment, I gain a deeper understanding of the bacterial mechanisms taking place in my project. It is that moment of discovery that keeps lab work exciting.

scientific bench research, and also view the findings in the light of its implications on the welfare of epidemic-hit third world regions. Made possible by the Harvard Global Health Institute, this opportunity at the Fortune lab will add significantly to my understanding of molecular biology and international health policy, and compliment my academic studies as a Chemistry concentrator with a Global Health and Health Policy secondary field. 

Dr. Fortune’s laboratory, located at the Harvard School of Public Health, uses molecular biology lab techniques and new technologies to study biological problems involving Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). Areas of interest include genetic and epidemic variation, the ESX1 secretion system—an essential mechanism that allow pathogenic bacteria to take control of host cells in the body in order to replicate, and mutability of the bacterium and consequent multidrug resistance.