January 2025 Newsletter: Balance
Isavella's Newsletter
Sometimes things just start to fall into place
This month felt like things did just that: start to fall into place. I felt much more rested and productive this month. I’ve been able to take more time for myself and do non-productive things as well, which is also just as important. I’m hoping that this month can be a baseline for what every month coming up should look like, and I say baseline because every month will be better than this one. There were times during this month when I did feel a little swamped, but there was still much more balance than before. This was a sign that I am adapting and learning from the past so that I can perform better in all aspects of my life this coming year. So, just keep working on yourself and keep trying to get better, and eventually, things will start to fall into place, and you will notice the difference.
Who Am I?
I’m Isavella, an ambitious and driven 14-year-old who has recently been accepted into TKS (The Knowledge Society), and I want to share my experience with all of you! Throughout these monthly newsletters, you will see some of my accomplishments and downfalls, not to mention other things going on in my life. Not everything comes easy, and I won’t make it look easy.
This Month I…
Published My Review Paper On Genetically Engineering Phages For Phage Therapy
I dedicated this month to finishing my review paper. Reading papers was not something I enjoyed, and I really wanted to move on to building things, running simulations, and trying out new ideas. But, this was something that I had to do because I knew writing this paper and reading the papers to learn more would help me perform better when I move on to starting the really cool projects I’ve been thinking a lot about.
After reading and writing this review paper, I really learned so much that is going to be helpful for me as I begin to now start projects and simulations where I am actively applying what I learned. I’m really happy I gave this 100%. I learned about how different gene editing processes work and how they differ when using them on phages, I learned about the kind of gene edits you can make, the obstacles in gene editing phages, the potential, and where the pain points are in making phage therapy FDA-approved utilizing gene editing.
For this review paper, I read 9 papers and used 8 of them when writing. I would take notes after reading each paper. Then, after reading all the papers, I “synthesized” them, meaning I read through the notes I took and tried to make sense of them/understand them better so that I would actually retain the information, as well as it would help me when identify what in my paper should I focus on when writing.
My paper covers 6 of the most commonly utilized methods to genetically engineer phages. I also provided experimental data from other papers I read highlighting the gene editing applications and success rates/effectiveness. I’ve also discussed some of the obstacles/potential gene editing phages unlock for their use in phage therapy and for clinical applications in general. It’s published now and you can read it here!
The next step in this review phase is to record a short video talking about some of the core learnings in my paper, which should also be out in the next week or so.
Progressed Further In The IKEA x TKS Challenge
My team with Arissai Filleul and Sophia Dhami, as well as everyone else in the Innovate TKS Program, have been waiting patiently throughout this month to hear more about the results of the IKEA challenge. Our team had made it to the top 20 (determined by the TKS directors), as well as the top 6 (determined by the IKEA executives themselves), which was already such an amazing achievement for us that we are really proud of.
Just this weekend, our team, as well as the other top 5, got to present our slide decks live to the IKEA executives who will make the final decision as to which teams will be the top 3 projects and the “winners” of the challenge. Hopefully, we will hear some news about the results during this week. Our team is already really happy about how far we’ve come throughout this challenge and are very optimistic about the results that lay ahead!
Continued Progress On My Science Fair Project
For my science fair project alongside my partner at school, I’ve been able to incorporate the stuff I’m working on at TKS to actually be able to conduct real experiments using phages. We’ve got access to a laboratory at MRU to be able to conduct experiments on phage stability and effectiveness in different environments with varying temperatures and pH levels. The purpose of this experiment is to identify the pain points in phage stability and when it is necessary to take extra precautions when administering phage therapy to ensure its success.
We decided to run this experiment focused on this topic because we wanted to try and stand out from what others may be doing. We didn’t expect anyone else to be conducting real experiments in a lab to test the stability of bacteriophages for their use in phage therapy. Also, we both wanted to do a hands-on experiment, not a simulation or research-based project. So, we wanted to put in the effort to try and connect with people to see if we could get access to a space to perform experiments in. We wanted to conduct procedures that were interesting and had multiple components, that way we could collect as much data as possible. This kind of experiment type is something neither of us had eve done before, and we know it will definitely be a great learning experience.
We will conduct the experiment in late February/beginning of March. Until then, we have confirmed our dates at the lab, have finished preparing our procedure, and have continued to collect data and build a hypothesis. For science fair, our deliverables include a trifold depicting our experiment/research for the project, a slide deck covering the same thing, a video covering our experiment and findings, and a paper detailing our experiment methods, results and findings, analysis, and overall conclusion to what we learned.
I’m really excited to be working on a project like this and can’t wait to get the opportunity to be in a real lab and advance my knowledge in phage therapy further!
Growth
This month I really had to relearn how to prioritize my tasks and goals better. I wanted to be at the end of writing my review paper by the end of this month since my motivation was lacking all of December because of the IKEA challenge, as well as just feeling burnt out overall at the end of it. Plus, reading long papers wasn’t something I was really excited about. I wanted to get on with doing the building and simulations. So, for those few weeks, I dedicated my goals to just focusing on the paper. I didn’t overcomplicate my days with multiple goals/tasks that didn’t have to do with my paper, because I knew that wouldn’t help me make progress. After writing this paper, I gained such a better understanding of the capabilities of phage engineering and the methods for it. When I move onto the idea phase of my focus, the technical knowledge I now have will help me be able to complete a high-quality and accurate project. I also grew with time management a lot this month. I felt much more rested and relaxed compared to other months and have found better ways to take time for myself and recharge, especially as everything starts picking up again.
Shout-Out!
I want to give a shout-out to a few people I got the chance to meet with this month:
Katanya B. Kuntz: She is the co-founder and CEO of Cubo Consulting Corp, a company that makes quantum technology accessible to other businesses. It was great to talk to her and learn about how she was able to take her scientific research and turn it into a prospering business opportunity and scale it in such a short amount of time! She gave really great advice and was so happy to meet with her!
Magdalena Pelka: She is currently conducting her PhD research in phage therapy, and it was really great to have someone who is actively in the field share their work, their insights, and also their feedback on the things I’m doing! She also gave me some written feedback on one of the first articles I wrote!
Rafwana Ibrahim: Also a PhD student conducting her research in phage therapy, it was great to talk to her to learn about the different kinds of research projects PhDs are doing in the phage therapy space and get more insight into the potential of phage therapy from those who get to work on it hands-on! She shared her work with me, answered my questions, and even offered to read over my review paper when it was done!
Also, a quick shout-out to Sophia Dhami and Arissai Filleul for helping with presenting the IKEA challenge deck live (Sophia did the actual presentation of the deck and did so good)!
In Other News…
I have another fight coming up on March 8th, so I’ll be dedicating my time as well to training for that. I’m really excited to get back in the ring!
What’s Next?
This month, I’ll publish my review video right away. I will also begin the idea phase of my focus and make a lot of progress there, even hopefully be close to finishing it by the next newsletter. I will also be making progress on my science fair project with my partner so that we are ready to run the experiment end of this month. Outside of phage-therapy-related projects, I’ll also be training for my fight. I’ve got a lot on the go this month, but I’m enjoying every bit of it!