Hacking, Hatching (plans/work), and Harmonizing: March

Subtitles are lame (BUT INFORMATIVE!). Just kidding! Hope you have fun reading this.

Hey!

What’s the only flower that can grow on a face? A tulip (aka two-lip) :)!

Welcome back to my newsletter. Hope you had a snazzy March.

For those who don't know, I'm Nina Khera. You may have met me during a meeting, or at the latest networking event in Boston. I'm a 16-year-old human longevity researcher who's working on projects from topics spanning cellular senescence (zombie cells) to epidermolysis bullosa (skin disease)!

This month I’ve worked on Biotein, Youth STEM Matters, understanding brain aging, and doing a hackathon!

——

Biotein

We’ve finished our initial experiments with our CRO! Unfortunately, because of some technical issues we will have to redo a portion of them. This might take another month-2 months, which is unfortunate. We’ve been working, in the meantime, on securing IP for our idea as well.

——

Mindsets and Philosophy

Here are some thoughts I’ve been having!

• I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to manufacture a personality. But there’s a thin line between manufacturing a personality and responding to your environment personality-wise. So who even knows if our personalities are real or fake? How do we know if we’re just reacting to our environment and course-correcting or this is our genuine personality? Also, if we do react to our environment (it makes sense evolutionarily: goal of fitting in), is that really that big of a deal? Not sure.

• Living your life and having experiences > being safe and being in a routine. I feel like it’s so easy to fall into the latter and discourage yourself from trying anything new but the former is so rewarding and amazing that there’s no point in getting paranoid about the consequences sometimes. Of course, don’t do anything crazy, but sometimes we have to realize that we only really have one life. Might as well make the most of it.

——

Knowledge Bytes

Here are some recommendations from the month!

- Great book: Masterminds by Gordon Korman! Great childhood nostalgia for me but I’m realizing it was a pretty good book.

- Great source of quick ideas and collaborations: Hackathons centered around specific problems are the best!

- Good snack: Frozen fruit. Straight. Cold. Tastes delicious and is so good!

——

Shoutouts

Here are some fun shoutouts:

• Thank you Dr. Wolfe for all your advice relating to Biotein’s experiments and help with experiment result interpretation!

• Thank you 1517 for being a continually supportive and helpful venture fund!

• Thank you Mr. Leschinsky for all of your patenting advice for Biotein!

you know you’re obsessed with biotein when…. all the shoutouts relate to that! oops

Thank you to everyone reading this. Even if I didn't mention you this month. you probably helped me a lot. Thank you!

——

Next Month

In April, I’ll be working on Biotein, school, Youth STEM Matters, brain aging-reading, and more!

Reach out to me if you want to talk about human longevity (or just life sciences in general) or anything else honestly!

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nina-khera-115b5a175/

Personal Website: https://ninakhera.com/

Email: kheranina@gmail.com (or just reply to this email)