November 2024 Newsletter: Practice Makes Better
Isavella's Newsletter
Keep trying and practicing
The challenges I faced last month didn’t go away this month, they only got more manageable. If you ignore a challenge you are facing, then it's only going to get harder and harder. But, if you keep exercising your obstacles, actively identifying what you need to work on, and then acting upon it, the challenge will get smaller and smaller. Then, it won’t be a weakness anymore, and it may even become a strength.
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…
Began Velocity In TKS
TKS has a program within the program for kids who want to get the most out of TKS and actually make an impact. Velocity does just that. In this program, we get extra coaching and 1-1 time, along with more resources to ultimately level up. They say TKS is about levelling you up in your knowledge and skills in science and tech, but velocity is about levelling you up as a person and helping you develop those mindsets and soft skills for you to fully succeed.
There is extra commitment in this program, there is more for you to do, and the expectations are higher. But that’s what you need if you want to make the most of this opportunity, and that’s what I want.
Toured Innovate Calgary’s Three Innovation Centres
Located near the University of Calgary, I got to have a tour of the three Innovation Centres Innovate Calgary has. The three centres included the Social Innovation Hub, the Health and Life Sciences Hub, and the Aerospace Hub. These centres are accessible for startups that need the tools and spaces to innovate and scale.
The Social Innovation Hub is where people from different startups can go and collaborate and work on different projects. That is also the space for those startups to get mentorship and assistance to guide them.
The Health and Life Sciences Hub holds a few labs for startups to go and perform experiments and make progress on their work. The labs have a variety of resources and machines to use for almost any project you may have.
The Aerospace Hub has multiple tools and machines for any kind of building or engineering work startups may need to do. The machines there also have variety and can support any project being done.
It was so cool to see the kinds of resources and spaces for startups to innovate right here in Calgary!
Photo Credit: Arissai Filleul
Attended and Volunteered and BioAro’s Precision Health and Longevity Summit
The Precision Health and Longevity Summit, hosted by the company BioAro, was great for shedding light on the importance of shifting our healthcare system to focus on longevity and changing some of the current treatments we use. One of the big ideas at the summit was to focus on expanding the human health span, not the life span. What’s the point of living to 200 if you're sick or physically challenged? Longevity is about increasing the number of healthy and enjoyable years we have in our lifetime. It was said that longevity is affected by our mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being, and we need to look at all those factors to achieve our goal.
I got to get exposure and insight into many fields that overlap with longevity such as microbiome testing, genome sequencing, precision medicine, AI with longevity, and some other fields I didn’t even realize had a connection to longevity like sports, housing, and workplace environment.
The talks that stood out to me the most were the ones on housing and workplace environment because I would have never thought of them overlapping with longevity, but they are perfect examples of how the human lifestyle contributes to longevity and overall health. Here are some takeaways from those two talks (read a full recap of the summit on my blog here):
Speaker John Brown: There are more elderly people in our world now than ever. Traditionally, when you get older, you are put in a home or have assistance to help you complete tasks and get through your day. But, this actually makes elderly people feel isolated from the rest of society and can even make them feel like they have no purpose. At that age, they crave independence, purpose, and community. John Brown builds accessible (or inclusive as he likes to call it) housing for elderly people, which includes accommodations for those people to navigate their house and have that independence and discrete support. This makes them feel like they are capable and can improve their overall well-being.
Speaker Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett: We spend most of our days at work, so it’s important to focus on what happens during those hours. Our workplaces can usually cause a lot of stress and anxiety, which can cause your mind or body to overwork and burnout. In order to ensure we reach our maximum human health span, we need to address those problems our workplace environments can produce. Dr. Laura Lovett discussed solutions like proper training, flexible scheduling, and more to combat those issues.
As a volunteer, I got to help out at the media wall and take photos and videos of attendees and speakers. It was awesome to hear about everyone’s story and drive to work in the field of longevity.
An added bonus to the event was getting to bring home a gut microbiome testing kit, which I can use as a self-test at home.
I got to make some wonderful connections with people such as the hosts and founders of the company BioAro Dr. Anmol Kapoor and Raman Kapoor, and others such as Hon. Leela Aheer and Alina Semenenko. Everyone mentioned here and more made this summit such a wonderful experience! I learned so much and gained incredible insights about the next advancements in health and longevity!
Photo Credit: bellapescaproductions
Did The TKS Focus Hackathon
Similar to the explore hackathon, the TKS focus hackathon focuses on using the knowledge you learned from your focus to create a solution to a problem the world is facing. This time, however, you needed to have an actual prototype/simulation that could be shown or demonstrated in your pitch. This hackathon product is similar to one of the phases in the focus process, the apply/replicate phase, where instead of just writing or reading about an idea, you actually get to do hands-on work.
In my group with Sophia Dhami, Arissai Filleul, and Joel Almadas, we combined our focus topics all related to health and medicine (phage therapy, personalized medicine, AI and cancer, and connectomics), to create our solution and choose the problem we wanted to tackle.
We decided to use phage therapy to combat Melanoma (a skin cancer), with the phages administered through injection.
The phages were genetically engineered to detect cancer cells instead of bacteria (like they are naturally capable of doing). They were also genetically modified to carry a drug combination that would kill the cancer cells when administered directly to the target. You can watch the video we made for our project here.
A downfall our group had was that everyone was not on the same page, and we were overcomplicating our project idea. We had trouble communicating and sorting out the confusion beforehand and instead had to scramble last minute to come up with an idea everyone agreed on and get a simulation and prototype done in time.
In doing this project, we learned about team coordination, time management, and presenting with purpose. This definitely wasn’t our best, but we were all happy that we had an idea and presentation to submit by the deadline!
Made Progress In My Phage Therapy Focus
I began planning and doing the research for my review paper, which will focus on genetically modifying phages to have minimal phage genomes, have specific target detectors, improve their stability in different environments, and do an overall review of the benefits and advantages of incorporating gene editing. This will ensure that the phages only have the genes and characteristics necessary for the task they will be used for. This will prevent any outliers or discrepancies in phage therapy use and allow for consistency and regulations in manufacturing the different phages, without compromising phage therapy customizaion/personalization.
I have also begun writing an article on CRISPR gene editing and the applications of it in the future. I will also have a part covering the overlaps between CRISPR and phage therapy.
Growth
I’m sure I’ve said this the last two months, but I also grew very much this month. If I’m not growing and learning from mistakes and experiences, then I’m not getting better or making progress. I’ve learned about team coordination and time management for projects. I’ve also reviewed presenting skills and how to make an impactful pitch that will stand out. I’ve learned again that I need to do a better job with the groups I work in to effectively communicate and sort out any confusion on an idea beforehand, that way the projects we go on to make are high quality and thought out. I’ve also been exposed to different fields and careers through the events I’ve attended and the people I’ve talked to, which gave me insight into the possible careers that I could pursue in the future.
Shout Out!
I want to give shout-outs to my hackathon team members Sophia Dhami, Arissai Filleul, and Joel Almadas!
I also want to give a shout-out to Hon. Leela Aheer, who I met with a couple days ago and had such a valuable conversation with!
In Other News…
I got to to go the Operation Minerva Networking event, which is a 3-part program that connects girls interested in STEAM with women mentors working in those kinds of fields. The first event was a meet-and-greet, where we got to do a scavenger hunt around Telus Spark and do some speed networking with different mentors and learn about their careers! I got some real eye-opening insight into the variety of careers that are out there!
What’s Next?
For December, I want to focus on the first TKS challenge that will be starting next week. A TKS challenge is where we get to work with big companies that present to us actual problems they are facing. We then create a solution and pitch it to them. If we get selected, our group gets to have their pitch presented to the company’s team of executives who will review it. I also want to finish some of those projects in my focus and keep learning and progressing.
OMG YOU MENTIONED ME YAY!! Awesome article, really shows the progress you made this month.