Cassandra is an undergrad at Olin College who first began working for me at BBN in the summer of 2018, contributing to the NSF Expeditions “Living Computing Project” by improving our TASBE Flow Analytics software package for calibrated flow cytometry (which you may remember from a post last year). Flow cytometry is a method for measuring the fluorescence of large numbers of cells, often used as a “logic probe” for genetic engineering projects, and TASBE Flow Analytics allows precise and replicable interpretation of the results of complex experiments, and is being used in a number of laboratories and large-scale projects.
Cassandra's recognition by NCWIT is based on the critical contributions that she made for this project, most notably developing an Excel-based user interface that has proven to be much simpler and more intuitive for most of its biologist users. In developing this software, Cassandra worked closely with the biologists who would become her users, prototyping, testing, and adjusting in multiple rounds in order to provide a workflow that has significantly increased the adoption of TASBE Flow Analytics by bench scientists. Better, though, why not learn about it from the video that Cassandra made for her NCWIT award entry?
Although her internship is long over, Cassandra has continued to work part-time on this project, further improving the user interface she designed and addressing other issues as raised by users. Wearing my selfish primary investigator hat, I'd hire her full time if I could, but wearing my mentor hat, I expect both she (and science) will be better served by instead continuing to explore her interests in different areas of potential research and going off to graduate school. This is the bittersweet joy of a mentor: the better the student you work with, the faster they are likely to leave the nest!
So congratulations again, Cassandra!
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