Washington trip allows students to experience a ‘different world”
The world’s largest biomedical research agency recently hosted two GCU students, giving them the chance to gain new insights and a deeper understanding of their profession.
Kanwal Chaudhry (Kacy) & Aingela Philip, who are both in the final year of their BSc (Hons) Applied Biomedical Science degree, spent two weeks in September at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Washington.
With a workforce of over 18,000, the facility carries out research on a variety of different diseases through lab work and clinical trials with volunteers from around the world.
We caught up with Kacy and Aingela to find out more about their experience and to hear how witnessing the latest technology has helped inspire their future career plans.
How did you find out about the opportunity and why did you want to get involved?
Kacy: “We both heard about it at the same time, through an email. I definitely knew I was going to apply for it.
“I’d been to South Korea last year, and when we were interviewed by the lecturers for this opportunity they asked how it was going to be beneficial for GCU to send us to NIH. I spoke quite a lot about South Korea and how when I returned the University appointed me as a Student Study Abroad Ambassador. I’ve been campaigning since then for students to take on different opportunities that are available abroad. University is the time to do these things and it’s much more difficult to do this sort of thing later on in life. So I wouldn’t have missed this opportunity – if another comes up before I graduate then I’ll not miss that either!”
Aingela: “I’ve always been interested in travelling but I’d never had the chance because of University. This time I was really interested because NIH is the biggest hospital for clinical research and trials. Our course focuses on lab work, so I just applied through curiosity. I knew there would be interviews, and I wasn’t sure I’d actually be selected.”
Where did you guys stay during your two-week trip and how was it travelling to the USA?
Aingela: “My uncle lives quite near Washington, so it worked well. We took the bus and it was only like 40 minutes on the bus. We just sorted our flights about six weeks before and shared a bag between us as well!”
Kacy: “This was actually my first time travelling with a friend. I’ve always travelled by myself – like not even with a family member! I was praying that Aingela would get it because if it had been someone else then it wouldn’t have been as fun because we would have probably gone our own way at different points on the trip – instead Aingela and I were together all the time.”
How often were you in at NIH and how impressive was it to see all the work that goes on there?
Aingela: “We were in Monday to Friday. Most of the days we started at 9am and would finish about 4pm. We got to meet a lot of different researchers which let us hear people talk about their work. We managed to actually go to the labs twice to see some of the work.”
Kacy: “They research a wide-variety of rare and common diseases. NIH has 27 different institutes, but the ones I was particularly interested in were the ones looking at mental health and cancer. The things that they do within NIH just blows your mind.
“It’s the biggest clinical centre in the world so you obviously get patients from a variety of different countries. Patients also get paid for the research that’s done on them – it basically acts as an incentive for NIH to get volunteers. It’s a long process for everything to be researched and get passed because everything has to be checked by the Federal Government.”
Aingela: “One particularly interesting part was the Virtual Reality room (VR), which basically focused on providing stress relief for carers of people with these different diseases. The carers basically put on these headsets and it comes up with different things which helps combat the stress of being a carer. The brain’s response is then monitored to measure how positive an impact the image or video has.”
You obviously had some free time away from NIH as well, how much did you enjoy spending time in Washington?
Aingela: “One of my highlights was definitely getting to explore the city together. I’ve been before but being in a city with a friend is much different to exploring it with family. We used our afternoons to try and see as much as we could, and we also got the chance to try so much food – that was the best part for me!”
Kacy, what was your highlight of the trip?
Kacy: “I found it really interesting to see the pharmacy at NIH, which is for inpatients (who are in the facility 24/7 being monitored for a disease) and outpatients (who come in, do a study and then leave).
“The pharmacy provides medicines worldwide and there’s a robot inside that dispenses everything. It’s so cool – I was absolutely mesmerized by it! It really was a different world.
“It’s difficult to comprehend the size of NIH – there’s actually a shuttle bus that takes you around the place. Getting into it was like an airport, there was so much security. They’ve also got their own fire department, police station and hospital – it’s like a city!”
“I also went to Buffalo and the Niagara Falls during my time off, which was amazing. It was definitely the best part of my whole trip outside of my time at NIH.”
Was it beneficial to get a different experience to what you’re used to in Scotland?
Aingela: “In Scotland, everything we do is practical work in the lab. I’ve always been curious about research because it’s something I don’t know anything about. Once I went there I was completely shocked – it’s another world. They use this term “translational” so they mix the theory with practical, and this was something I really enjoyed.
“I thought I was 100% sure that I didn’t want a career in research, but now I realise it can be an option because I went and experienced it. I’m probably more confused because I have more options!”
Kacy: “The only real exposure we’d got was on placement so after that I’d decided I wanted to do a Masters after finishing my current degree. I’d now love to maybe go straight into a PHD. The trip has inspired me to think about what type of work is going to develop further in the future.
“My Honours Project focuses on AI and I don’t think that would have been the case if I hadn’t gone to NIH. It’s definitely helped me realise there’s more out there. There’s clearly a path there for all of us and there are no dead ends in our profession. Research allows you to do a piece of work and then do another one to develop it further or explore it further. I had wrongly thought you find the answer to everything with research, but you don’t. That’s the beauty of it.”
Find out more about GCU’s Biomedical Science course here
By Ross Clark
Got an SHLS or GSBS story? Email me at Ross.Clark@gcu.ac.uk or message me on Twitter