Stephen Lau, June 16, 2015

     Hola amigos, as you can see I am Stephen Lau and this is my second year participating Project Seed.  I, Stephen Kenneth Lau was born in New York City, New York on May 11, 1998 have been living in Pittsburgh since I was 2 years old.  However both my younger siblings were born here in Pennsylvania.  I have currently finish my junior year at Chartiers Valley High School and will be officially a senior this upcoming fall.  For those who are wondering, I am Chinese and I've been to China twice.  Don't ask me to speak in Chinese (don't really know much). 

     I'm just a typical kid who eats and sleep a lot and enjoy playing sports.  I do both football and track.  I started football to prove a friend that anybody could do the sport but that was back in 6th grade.  I can be lazy and unaware of what's going on, but the upside of not knowing much is that there are more things to be learned and it becomes both more surprising and exciting.  With the beginning of the 12th year of Project Seed and the absence of some of the 11th year students, meeting all the new participants will be an amazing time as we start to learn more about each other and slowly become a family just as it happen last year.

     It's been only two days and my expectation for the other students have already been in progress.  We all have introduced ourselves and we are already getting along just fine.  I even have a feeling that my project this year is going to end much better than the last one.  This time I'm using MOE (Molecular Operating Environment) which is something I already have some sort of background in.  Also this time it's a program other students in my research group have used before so I can ask for some assistance if needed be.  I look forward using MOE and its alanine scanning feature where amnion acids are replace with this one specific one, alanine to determine the role and purpose of the other residue.  It's always a pleasure working with the Project Seed program and I can once again work with Madura's Research Group...