About me
Hi, I am Avery Houston a Bioengineering major with a concentration in Cell & Tissue engineering at Northeastern University. I am from the great Granite State of New Hampshire where I learned to love nature and people through hiking, sports, and enjoying the great outdoors with friends. Growing up in a small city has instilled an appreciation of caring for others and making the world a better place as best I can!
Previous Work Experience
January - July 2022
In vivo/In vitro Immuno-Oncology Co-op at Dragonfly Therapeutics
My last Co-op experience was in the Biology group at Dragonfly Therapeutics where I was able to learn Flow Cytometry on a variety of machines to get a better understanding of cellular responses to various drugs applied in vitro. I learned how to stain in the surface and intracellularly to characterize cell types as well as identify cytokine responses from cells using protein transport inhibition. In addition to cell based assays, I learned how to analyze cytokines in supernatant of cultures using bead-based immuno-assays from Biolegend. I also worked with samples from mouse studies such as tumor and blood which were processed according to protocol.
Data analysis from these experiments was done using FlowJo and visualized in GraphPad Prism. My experiments were written up and saved in an Electronic Lab Notebook software (Benchling) for approval from my Biology colleagues.
January - July 2021
Research Associate Co-op at RegenX
At RegenX I experienced a fast-paced and exciting startup environment where my skills were put to the test each day. Starting from the ground up we built the lab from nothing to a fully functioning cell lab and gained great experience along the way. I assisted with adherent cell culture, protein production and purification, and assay development with quantification. I used my previous skills of aseptic/sterile technique when working with the cells as well as improving my data analysis skills when developing a protein assay. I was also introduced to histology from animal studies and used QuPath to create a machine learning AI analysis of the scanned slides.
January - July 2020
Upstream Process Development Co-op at Homology Medicines
My first biotech work experience started at the beginning of 2020 at Homology Medicines a Gene Therapy company. Here I was stationed in the Upstream Process Development lab to assist with all lab work from cleaning and building bioreactors to daily sampling and data analysis. I developed my skills in aseptic technique and cell culture over this 6 month internship with only a slight working delay from COVID-19. During this absence I was grateful to be able to work from home on a data analysis bridging study comparing nutrient and metabolite readings from daily samples so that the new machine would be fully on-boarded for our process.