Research Assistant at Washington State University

In the summer of 2016 I worked in the Resat Microbiology Lab in the Washington State University, Voiland School of Chemical and Bioengineering. This was a part time job that I took on for the summer in between my Junior and Senior year of College. The lab group I was part of focused on human mammalian cells with a current focus on understanding the movement of cancerous human epithelial cells. My project was focused on developing a novel model for wound healing assays. The purpose of this model was to establish a method for making an in vitro bacterial infection model. To accomplish this I ended up growing a plate of Human Mammary Epithelial cells to confluency on a plate and then inducing a scratch with a pipette tip. Then I inoculated the plate (especially the scratched area) with a inoculum of Staphyloccus aureus. The overall goal of the project was to develop this system so it could be seen how bacterial biofilm formation prevented the healing of skin as well as a new method to study the effectiveness of antibiotics.