Hi.
My name is Brendan Colon.
Right now, we are in Harvard Medical School, in the Silver Lab, and I work in a field called
synthetic biology.
My research goals are to take solar panels and develop bacteria that can plug into the
solar panels, such that they can grow off the energy harvested from the sun, in a manner
that is more efficient than plants.
I'm working on this organism called ??, and they are interesting because they can grow
off of gases.
They can grow off of hydrogen and carbon dioxide gas.
I am interested in using evolution as a tool to create better ?? bacteria, such that they
can grow more efficiently in the bionic we've set up.
I grew up in the Midwest.
I grew up in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois.
I've always been interested in tinkering with technology.
I think, now, what better technology to tinker with than biology, now that we have the tools
to be able to do so.
Truthfully, when I first started science, I was really bad at it.
I don't think I latched on to what I needed to know.
I think I got a C in my freshman year of biology.
But, I think, after wrestling with it a bit, I thought it was really fascinating stuff
and I wanted to learn more.
I couldn't get enough at some point.
I didn't really hit that point until undergrad.
My transition to synthetic biology was driven mostly by my interest in making things and
tinkering with technology.
My interest in the bionic leaf mostly came from having somewhat of a chemistry background.
I thought the questions that were posed, how can we make this system work off sunlight
better, were things tuned to my background.
I do think tinkering with the biological component is new to me, and I think it was just interesting
enough to where I can combine all of these things that I liked into a product that could
potentially be really transforming.
The technology that we've introduced so far looks very promising, and we are outcompeting
most terrestrial plants for photosynthesis.
What I want to take this technology and push it towards is outperforming some of the benchmarks
that we have for photosynthetic bioreactors, beating algae or other microorganisms that
are much better at photosynthesis than plants, and are used industrially to make products.
If we can push the technology towards that benchmark, then we have a much more viable
technology for industry to pick up.
I definitely had the exact same thought, that science, at one point, was just too hard for
me, or wasn't something I could ever do.
I think the first piece of advice I'd give is to just not worry about how you match up
against your class, because I think classwork, many times, doesn't translate to conducting
research in an efficient manner.
There are a lot of ideas out there, and yes, you can know all of them, but unless you've
really tried your hand at doing your own research project, you probably won't get some of the
payoffs of doing science.
I think you have to have a little resilience, but I think that if you're a curious-enough
person, I think a lot are, wanting to get to that answer will really push you through
a lot of the hardships.
When I discover something that, I think, is exciting, I will jump up and down and shout.
Other people haven't heard me do that before.
It's a good feeling, yeah.