So I have not written on this blog in FOREVER. Sorry about that. Here is the story. I am still in Logan, though I have moved to a new apartment. I am way excited about my new place. I like it a lot, we have a pool and hot tub. So nice.

The other great news, I am now a PhD student. I know crazy, so crazy. I was doing a Masters in Biological Engineering when the departement head called me into his office. I was terrified, the reason, my r

ecent results hadn't been great. The equipment I was using was contaminated and it messed with my results. So I thought that I was going to get fired. Then the unthinkable happened, Dr. Sims told me that they liked me so much that they wanted me to switch research and do a PhD. I was blown away, it took me a day to compose myself and then I accepted.

My new research is with Dr. Randy Lewis.

He is amazing. Randy came from the University Wyoming this year. His research has been with spiders, that's right spiders. For the first several years he studied the molecular biology of spider-silk. He and his team sequenced the the proteins that compose spider-silk. Then his team started engineering synthetic spider-silk. They inserted the spider-silk gene into several other systems, namely goats, bacteria, yeast, and alfalfa. Here is a link to a newspaper article about the research:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705375752/A-web-of-possibilities-Utah-researcher-uses-goats-to-make-one-of-the-strongest-known-substances.html

My particular research is to process the spider-silk proteins that we have put into goats. The goats produce the proteins in their milk. My job is to help to refine and optimize the process in which we take that milk, extract the protein, and then turn the powder we get and make it into a fiber. This is the type of research I really want to do. I am so happy to be doing this, even though it means that I'll be here for another four and a half years. I'll be a doctor, oh yeah, a doctor. It is amazing.

Wish me luck in my new endeavor.