My name is Siyuan Liu. I
actually go by Claret. We are at University of California Los Angeles. Our lab is focused
on translational medicine research. I'm focusing on rare population of T cells and we're trying
to increase this cell population in people in vivo and then target the cancer cells.
I am from China. I grew up in Changsha, Hunan which is in the middle south of China. At
the beginning, I actually just think oh this is very cool. I can save people. But two years
ago my uncle passed away because of the leukemia and I think I feel like more responsible to
do that right now.
What I do in the lab because I'm a research associate and a lab manager so I'll say 70%
of my time is doing the bench work, lab work and the other, the rest of the time I do a
lot of management work. I was running the facts using this [INAUDIBLE] and what it does
is basically we have different kinds of immune cells and we label with different fluorochrome
and then after we collect the samples, we can characterize the different immune cells
and see what's their property. That will help us to determine if the body is fighting with
the cancer cells or not.
If you are considering a career in science or research, my suggestion is you can try
it as early as possible to see if you like it or not. Interest is the best teacher. You
can't just do something because your friends think oh I'm doing this because I think it's
cool. Because it's your career. You're going to do it for your entire life. You don't want
to waste your time on it. And the other thing is I always tell my undergrads, I think when
you join the lab, the most important thing is not to learn all these techniques. The
most important thing is to train yourself, have a logic and an analytical thinking ability
and how to do things organizedly. Just think creatively. I think that's more important.
My hopes and dreams of course some day we can cure cancer and that will be great if
I am part of it. So that will make myself proud. I think my family will be proud of
me too.