by Reinosuke Luke Kusano
Good morning, Nikko! Tell me a bit about yourself: what you’re studying and what your interests are.
I am a fifth-year integrated master’s student here at University of St Andrews in the Physics and Astronomy department. I am on the Astrophysics track, so I say that it would be my main interest.
What’s your summer internship on?
I started the summer working with Aleks Scholz at the Observatory on the new robotic telescope. So that was an evening shift, working on aligning the telescope so that it could track longer without causing star trails. This means that we can finally use the telescope for scientific purposes. A month into that, and I quote one of my classmates, I tripped and fell and landed the biophotonics internship with Andrea di Falco and Paolo Annibale, working on the 3D printer machine they recently got this academic year.
Wow! An Astro student doing an internship with the Biophotonics group! That’s quite a change. What have you been doing as a part of the internship then?
The purpose of the 3D printer is to print microfluidic chips, which are devices used to study fluid behaviour in microchannels. For Andrea’s group, they’re planning to manufacture these chips to use with their optical tweezers set up. For Paolo’s group, they’re using the chip to culture cells and study the cells inside these devices; the idea is that you can replicate the environment the cells are normally found in. So, my job is to come up with a procedure. The group hasn’t had much success in the last couple of months, so my job was to get in and use my 3D technical know-how to help develop a procedure and try and produce some of their designs in real life.
Where did you get that 3D printing know-how from?
Last year I was in Boston as part of my Laidlaw internship, and I was teaching coding to high school students over the summer for a summer school program. One of my colleagues, Thomas Williamson from Durham, was teaching the 3D printing and 3D design aspects of the course. I followed along in the class, where I picked up my 3D design and 3D printing experience. It was quite rudimentary, but it allowed me to understand the basics of it. Then, in February this year, me and my classmate, Rory Brown, we decided to jointly purchase a cheap resin printer to print D&D [Dungeons and Dragons] minis for fun. That seemed to be enough to convince the [Biophotonics] group to take me on [laughs].
Did you have any interesting findings as part of your Biophotonics internship?
Oh yes, absolutely. We wanted to complete this task by using as much of an off-the-shelf component as possible compared to the literature, and these off-the-shelf components aren’t as well documented. One of the PhD students told me that when they called the manufacturer to enquire about their resin properties, they were denied information due to their confidentiality. Working on such a small scale with the microfluidic chips, we discovered many things which weren’t known before. So, I found it interesting that it is not well documented in the literature, although it is quite well-known in the 3D printing community. That was where I spent a lot of my time at the start of the internship, finding information from people using similar resin and material where they encountered the same issue. I’ve been able to put these findings into a document, which hopefully might lead to a paper, to inform other people in the field if they’re interested in using these off-the-shelf components and what they could expect.
How has it been working in a completely different area of research to Astrophysics?
It did take me a while to get used to it. I think the thing that really jumped out to me first is the way the group operates. In Astrophysics, the groups are tiny, at least here in St Andrews; there are four main study areas, and usually, you’ll find that within each, there are 5 to 6 members of staff who each study various things, and sometimes they work together. This is very different to the Biophotonics group, which is I think the third largest group in the School, with around 18 people. They have two group meetings, one with a very big group and then they have a smaller one with the subgroup; I find that fascinating that they have so much manpower and research going on at the same time, as well as how each one of them contributes to each other at the same time. Overall, you know that that was definitely a culture shock.
How’s it been working in such an environment with a lot of collaborators?
Well, it’s a new experience you know, it’s definitely not a bad experience. I initially found it a very cool thing to work with so many people. But with a large group, there’s also a disadvantage that comes along with it, in the sense that I’m used to working by myself or working with a supervisor; all of a sudden, I have three supervising PhD students, as well as Andrea himself. I think it’s a lot of getting used to, but at the same time, once I got used to that, there was massive room for collaboration and discussing ideas. It’s one of those things with advantages and disadvantages; but given my experience so far, I definitely prefer the Astro track.
You’ve also been a Laidlaw scholar, and you did a rigorous research project with Juan (V. Hernández Santisteban) in your second year. Have there been any interdisciplinary skills that you’ve taken over into your Biophotonics internship?
I wouldn’t say particularly from my Laidlaw research project. I’d say the skills that I got from that project were definitely planning and time management skills. Andrea gave me a lot of autonomy in this project; he told me what the machine was meant to do, and I just had a general goal of getting it to work, so it was already quite an open-ended task. Having worked at a research level where I had to plan my working hours, goals, and aims for the day, I would say planning was the skill that transferred over the most, where, given the task, I was able to plan and come up with goals on a day-to-day and weekly basis.
Did you receive any funding for the project?
Both of my internships are funded by the staff themselves. I know that many summer students here are funded by the Student Staff Council (SSC) funding, which is the funding you apply for in the second semester. With the SSC, you agree with the staff on a project and then apply for funding with the School. However, the Astro project was already advertised with funding, so I didn’t apply to the SSC. This meant that if you got accepted on the project, funding was guaranteed. The Biophotonics internship was funded by Andrea as well. Also, this project was only planned a month into the summer, so it wasn’t something that was advertised during the semester. It was something that Andrea decided at that moment and well, as one may say, the stars aligned, and I just happened to be in the building at the same time to find out about it.
I think that’s really good for students to know; that they can have a possible summer project funded by staff and not necessarily by the SSC.
Yes, absolutely. I’ll say this from having gone through this myself; being rejected from the SSC doesn’t mean that you’re unqualified for funding or you’re unqualified for any research project at all. I did get rejected from the SSC (not this year but the year prior), and I’m still here getting funding from projects within the School. So, there are many avenues, you just have to look out for them.
As we mentioned before, your main interest is in astrophysics, and in particular, I believe time-domain/transient Astronomy. But with that being said, is there a possibility of you doing a Biophotonics related PhD in the future? Have you developed a newfound interest in Biophotonics?
To be blunt and honest, and I’m sure all the readers of PANDA would understand that I think I’m in a spot where I would go where there’s funding. If I had the choice, my first choice would always be to remain in Astrophysics. But I think having worked in Biophotonics, I’ve seen how much money other fields are getting. In terms of funding, working in Biophotonics has really opened my eyes and made me realise that there is funding elsewhere, and that if academia as a concept is what I’m interested in, I wouldn’t say that I’m not interested in pursuing something in photonics. What this summer has shown me is that, like nowadays, you also need know-how and skills in other areas other than your study. So, I guess it comes back to like the book-smart/street-smart discussion, right? As an Astrophysics student, I would not have gotten this opportunity if it was not because of this skill that I have, which is completely unrelated to my degree. It was good to realise that my other skills are useful, and that there is a demand out there. At the same time, I’m also realising that my skills might not necessarily be comparable to an engineering student or might not be as thorough or as in-depth as these experimental groups might need. But you know, if Andrea decides to offer me a PhD in manufacturing microfluid chips (and I hope he reads PANDA), I wouldn’t necessarily say no.
Do you have any tips or pointers for undergraduate students looking to do an internship with the university in Biophotonics or otherwise?
Be proactive. All students who are interested or want to go into research should know that there’s a lot of luck involved, and sometimes you just have to be in the right place in the right time. I’d like to actually quote a phrase by Simon Clark (a physics YouTuber), who has the phrase “proactive serendipity”. Serendipity is an important aspect when you’re in academia, but you can always increase your chances by being proactive e.g. by reaching out to staff members in the School. In my case with Juan, I emailed him in November of my second year, which was incredibly early compared to many students. The reason for that was because he was one of the few members of staff in the School who did something I was interested in. So, if you’re interested in research and academia specifically, just be aware of what’s going on around you, in terms of research and what the staff are doing. Also, to quote another staff member, Keith (Horne), grow a thicker skin, since you will get rejected a lot in academia. For example, staff might say no, not because they don’t want to work with you, but because they don’t have the funding or the project yet. If they say no, usually they’ll give you one of those reasons, and it’s okay to then follow up with “When should I get in touch with you again?”
With regards to the actual content of your internship: what should people who want to do something similar expect?
I think the thing that I’ve learnt, having done three internships in the school so far, is that your supervisors are not the be all and end all, and they definitely don’t have the correct answer all the time. You’ll learn that your supervisor can give you insight and advice from their years of experience, but they won’t necessarily have the answer to the question you’re looking for, especially when you’re at the frontier of research. The one thing that any student coming into a research internship should realise, is that you won’t necessarily find the answer, and it’s really up to you to look for those answers.
That’s a really good point. Lastly, what have you personally learnt from your projects?
That there’s money elsewhere! [laughs] There really is a lot to learn out there. I would describe myself as someone with like tunnel vision when it comes to Astro. I’ve been trying to get into Astrophysics for most of my life since middle school, so I’ve cut out a lot of other new and interesting research that I may have the skill for. This serves a lesson that I have skills that could be applied to other areas, maybe not even in physics, and that I should definitely like keep my eye out more for these emerging opportunities.
