ISSI 2023 Guest Blogger Maria Remsha
Each year we ask UK students who have taken part in the Dr Bessie Lawrence International Summer Science Institute (ISSI) to write a guest blog to reflect on the month they spent in Israel working as part of a research team alongside scientists at the Weizmann Institute. Outside of lab time students explore Israel while forming friendships that will last a lifetime. Maria Remsha went to Sir William Perkin's School and will be going to the University of Cambridge to study Chemical Engineering and Biotechnologies.
Maria Remsha's ISSI experience
Before boarding the plane, I was very anxious. I had never done any program quite like this. So many different people from so many different countries and backgrounds all working together on advanced scientific research projects. I was worried that I wouldn’t be smart enough or that I wouldn’t have anything in common with the others. I found on the first morning that I was right about one of those things.
By the time breakfast was over that day I had made at least a dozen friends. Not one person was similar: we all had different opinion, different cultures and different educations. However, we were all connected by our collective desire to leave a mark on the scientific world, and I am convinced that everyone will go on to do just that.
My project was based largely on computational chemistry, something I had never even heard of before, let alone researched. We were looking into designing new antiviral drugs against SARS-CoV-2 and MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome). Drug discovery is a long process and computational techniques like machine learning and deep learning artificial intelligence can shorten it, as well as make it cheaper. It was quite new for me because I hadn’t done programming for a while and to go from that to using the Weizmann cluster with over 100 terabytes of RAM was very scary. However, with the help of my super patient mentor and my wonderful lab partners, we all managed to complete our project and present our findings to the ISSI cohort.
Our projects took up a lot of the day, but we always made time to hang out with friends. It might have been a 6am tennis session or a 10pm UNO ‘battle’ or 5am yoga, but I would not trade those times for anything, even extra sleep.
During the weekends (Friday and Saturday), we were taken on trips across Israel, from Haifa and Caesarea in the East to the Dead Sea and the Negev Desert in the West, to Eilat and the Red Sea in the South to Mount Meron in the North and Jerusalem in the middle. We got to experience all the different religions present in Israel and different ways of living, like Kibbutz and Bedouins. We also learned so much geology that I could probably tell you all about how Israel’s unique land structure was formed.
This programme was full of so many wonderful experiences and it has definitely influenced my future aspirations. I have rediscovered my passion for programming and will take courses to study it again. For anyone thinking about doing ISSI, I highly recommend it, you will make lifelong friends and connection all across the globe.
More information about the Bessie Lawrence Summer Scheme.