Alan Parish: Imperial College London

Summer 2007

Project: Storage Solutions and Conditions for mechanical testing on organic tissues

I partook in my three month placement at Purdue in-between my second and third year of my Meng in biomaterials and Tissue Engineering. The whole set up happened in the space of a couple of weeks and before I knew it I was sitting on my suitcase in Chicago waiting for my bus down to West Lafayette.

The first real contact I had with the American people was when I was picked up by the husband of the PhD student I was going to be staying with. He happily showed me around their house, which while likely to be considered small by American standards, was a lot bigger than my flat in south London that I had been living in over the past year. Over the next week, I got to know my new family and their wonderful doggies. They showed me around town and early made me feel welcome. It was a lot better than my other option of living on my own and having to figure out the US for myself.

My work was slightly different than I expected. As I thought I would be cutting samples for the next three months. Instead, I ended up working on a selection of small research projects, looking into tissue storage conditions and times. Through this, I got to design storage solutions for brain tissue, bone and other such tissue types. Having had a mainly chemistry and physics background, it was slightly odd working on a biology based topic, but it was very rewarding looking into the tissue and justifying storage solutions. However, the experience I will take away from this was the weekly reports I had to give to the rest of the group. It was great to see how the tensile and other tests were going and getting their feedback on my work.

When I wasn’t working on reports, I was enjoying the Americana of Purdue. The thing which stuck me the most was the football (American football not soccer). I managed to go to two games while I was here (the second thanks to Prof Bowman). I have to admit, I never really saw the appeal of the game; 15 seconds play, then they stop, get set up, and start again. But when you’re there, you feel like each one of those bursts of play is important, and you’re on the edge of your seat waiting for another amazing play.

One of the biggest slices of Americana is the food. When I first went to the supermarket, I was shocked by the size of everything; the normal size of the milk was a gallon. This “large size culture” bleeds into the rest of America with the sizes at restaurants being a lot larger than the European counterpart. However, there was not the stereotypical “large” American at Purdue I expected to see. Almost everyone I saw was running or some other activity on campus, and most of them being in better shape than I was.

This leads me on to the reason that I’m glad I came here. Being outside the US we get a polarised view of it shaped by Hollywood and TV. At Purdue it’s hard to find the stereotypes, and I spent a lot of time explaining to people that not all English people drink tea. Showing that a Stereotype is a caricature of a culture, normally twenty or thirty years out of date. I feel now I have a better view of America than I had before I came here and I’ll leave with some great memories (and Purdue clothing).