Day 4 Blog

Friday started off with a lecture given by Victoria Vesna. Seeing and learning about some of the amazing projects she has put together really showed what amazing works can come from the collaboration of people in the art and science fields.

The next part of the day was fun and helpful. I loved hearing the other groups present. It was great to see how diverse people’s projects were and see how others image the impossible. What is really amazing is that some of the things talked about might not be impossible for long. My group gave a presentation on a treatment for HIV.

HIV Process

We did not get any comments from the leaders of the groups, which scared us because we do not know if they thought it was a good idea or not. But we did get some feedback from fellow students that lead to changes and more details in our project. For example, now the nanobots in the first injection will find the HIV not by a signal but by recognizing one of the three enzymes needed to reproduce. The enzyme is called integrase and it will be used because it is not found in any cells in the body except ones infected by HIV. My group was having trouble showing an artistic element to our project but thanks to the midterm we hope to do an animation such as a flip book that will show how we would design the nanobots and to show how they would move throughout the body. I found the midterm to be a very helpful step in the process of the project.