In a tiny room in the sub-basement of MIT’s Building 66 sits a customized, super-resolution microscope that makes it possible to see nanoscale features of a red blood cell. Here, Reginald Avery, a fifth-year graduate student in the Department of Biological Engineering, can be found conducting research with quiet discipline, occasionally fidgeting with his silver watch.
He spends most of his days either at the microscope, taking high-resolution images of blood clots forming over time, or at the computer, reading literature about super-resolution microscopy. Without windows to approximate the time of day, Avery’s watch comes in handy. Not surprisingly for those who know him, it’s set to military time.
In a tiny room in the sub-basement of MIT’s Building 66 sits a customized, super-resolution microscope that makes it possible to see nanoscale features of a red blood cell. Here, Reginald Avery, a fifth-year graduate student in the Department of Biological Engineering, can be found conducting research with quiet discipline, occasionally fidgeting with his silver watch.
He spends most of his days either at the microscope, taking high-resolution images of blood clots forming over time, or at the computer, reading literature about super-resolution microscopy. Without windows to approximate the time of day, Avery’s watch comes in handy. Not surprisingly for those who know him, it’s set to military time.
Avery describes his father as a hard-working inspector general for the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command. Avery and his fraternal twin brother, Jeff, a graduate student in computer science at Purdue University, were born in Germany and lived for a portion of their childhoods on military bases in Hawaii and Alabama. Eventually the family moved to Maryland and entered civilian life, but Avery’s experiences on a military base never left him. At MIT he’s been conducting research on a biomaterial that could stop wounded soldiers from dying from shock due to severe blood loss.
“I wanted to do something related to the military because I grew up around that environment,” he says. “The people, the uniformed soldiers, and the well-controlled atmosphere created a good environment to grow up in, and I wanted to still contribute in some way to that community.”
Read more at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Photo Credit: Ian MacLellan
