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I hate rainy days. Not because of the wet socks or gloomy skies, but because of the horrid little creatures that are summoned by the rain. The mere sight of a snail crossing my path or a wiggling worm on the pavement makes me involuntarily shriek in terror. This means that on the few rainy days we have back home in San Diego, I am almost always late for school (I have to  creep along the sidewalk and keep a 10-ft radius around any slugs or worm-like things I see on the floor). You can imagine my horror when I realized that basically the only wound model for my research that I could realistically use at home was planarian worms. Not just a few, but hundreds of them, each of which I would have to raise, decapitate, and watch regenerate under a scope for weeks.  But I love my research. So, I was determined to become the best worm mother out there.  Pre-op stats If it weren’t for my fear, these worms are actually super cool. They’re called planarians, and are these small freshwater flatworms. Scientists discovered that If you chop one planarian into 10 pieces, they’ll grow into 10 new planarians. It’s actually how they reproduce! They spit themselves in half, then the booty grows a head and the head grows a booty and kachow you got two worms. A planarian regrowing its head after I decapitated it The smallest planarian chunk to grow into a full planarian was 1/279th of the worm. So if you keep chopping and growing and chopping growing, congrats! You’ve unlocked the infinite planarian glitch. These crazy regenerative abilities come from the huge amount of neoblasts, or pluripotent adult stem cells, so they’re often used to study regeneration, stem cells, and aging.  Okay! Enough info. Let’s embark on my journey to worm motherhood.  Acquiring the planarians I was going to go planarian hunting in a few nearby streams, but thankfully the everything-industrial-complex that is Amazon carries packs of 30 planarians. $150.97 and 300 planarians later, I was ready to roll.  Setup: Big tupperware of worms Amazon video microscope connected to computer Amazon surgical knives Modified pipettes Lots of bottled water My very organized and clean and professional setup The video microscope I used An arrow pointing right Previous An arrow pointing right Next Read More

I was watching TikToks on a long flight from Chicago. My feed now consists mostly of small artists in similar stages of their careers. We’re all trying to stand out in the art world.  One particular TikTok caught my attention: It was a young artist revealing… Read More

Starting from Kissimmee, Florida and ending in Boston, Massachusetts, I was worried. 1,314 miles of pure railroad going across 10 states in the span of 30 hours sounded like a disastrous recipe (for my sleep). I like to think that little me would have been excited to go… Read More

Hello! It is currently September 19th, 2026, which means it’s the first day of HackMIT! What is HackMIT? Well I’m so glad you asked! HackMIT is one of the world’s largest hackathons⁠01 this… Read More

About a year ago, Ellie posted a blog about what I thought would be my (first and) last year of Mathcamp⁠06 Canada/USA Mathcamp!… Read More

After 4 years of undergrad at MIT, I’m back for an MEng (our engineering masters program) and I feel ancient. I first stepped foot on campus in 2022, and now there are class of 30’s. By the time they graduate I’ll be practically prehistoric. Being old doesn’t automatically make you… Read More

despite getting to campus over two weeks ago, my classes only started today. ??? what was i doing for all this time ???⁠08 this is something i ask myself, too… Read More