I am interested in the Digital Scholarship Student Research Fellowship because being part of this Fellowship provides ample opportunities to interact with students from diverse academic backgrounds on a more personal level and the opportunity to explore topics of mutual and eclectic interest in the presence of cross-disciplinary perspectives. Interacting with other students during the Fellowship will enable me to improve my communication skills, learn new skills from my teammates, improve my creativity, and develop a sense of accountability. Interacting with fellow scholars from different disciplines will strengthen my social skills. Working collaboratively with peer scholars will help me accomplish my research and group goals more quickly than working individually. The first week has been splendid as my interactions with other fellows and the fellowship coordinators have encompassed cheerful banter to informative sessions that have left me expectant and anticipating our meetings.
My project is on Clustered, Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, abbreviated CRISPR. It is a gene editing technique that has revolutionized the field of medicine. I will begin by describing what sickle cell disease entails, its symptoms, and its effects on individuals, families, and friends, followed by a vivid description of CRISPR, how the treatment is administered, and the statistics of its success. The project focuses on the pros, cons, and ethical concerns about gene editing. This project is dear to my heart as in my country, Kenya, many children die young and do not get to reach adulthood as they succumb to the adverse symptoms of this disease. CRISPR technology provides a cure for these children, giving them a fighting chance and an opportunity to grow into adults. CRISPR is, however, very expensive because it is a gene therapy technique that makes it impossible for most sickle cell patients to afford it, and the majority are in the dark about a potential cure for sickle cell. As a fellow, I will have ample time to delve into the research of how CRISPR will be made available to the public and its downside, thus the efficacy of CRISPR in treating Sickle Cell Diseases and whether it is feasible for this treatment to be made available to the demographic that mainly needs it, is among the main focuses of the project.
I have learned how to write and post a weekly blog in WordPress. I hope to learn how to narrow my research topic to the scope of questions that I need to answer about my research topic. I look forward to learning about mapping tools, timelines, tableau, and project management tools.