Question: Describe a typical project you would do

Valerie Bentivegna answered on 9 Nov 2017:

One of the projects I was involved in was about developing a method to do stiffness measurements on a specific sample.
The technique we used, called “atomic force microscopy” (or AFM), uses a little probe to poke the sample, in a way, and if the probe bends a lot, that means the sample is stiff. Imagine you’re pushing on a table with your finger: the table pushes back so you need to bend your finger to keep on pushing. But if you’re pushing on something soft like a sponge, the sponge is really soft and gives way, so you don’t have to bend your finger to keep pushing.
The problem is that you need to be able to “touch” your sample. And the sample we wanted to measure was a group of cells that only grow in a gel. A bit similar to hair gel. So we couldn’t touch the sample directly because it would be surrounded by the gel and it would get in the way and make the probe all sticky.
So I developed a way to grow these sample on top of the gel, instead of in it.

In short: there was a problem with the experiment, and I helped find a way to make the experiment work.