First week of A*STAR IMRE attachment is finally over!

Its been pretty much interesting so far, with wacky nerds as research partners, and super soft hearted researchers and mentors. not to mention the excellent drinks at the pantry and our 2 hr lunch break! haha

For the uninformed, A*STAR is the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore's official body for all science research. Of course theres still NUS and NTU, but A*STAR is the main one. Consisting of 12 research institutes, half of which are dedicated to biomedical research, it is also Singapores biggest conglomeration of research institutes.

IMRE stands for Institute of Materials and Research Engineering, which focuses more on the physics of materials and their properties. I'm attached to for the next 4 weeks there doing a project on Optical Solar Cells.

Its quite far for me to travel to anyway, coz its located in the NUS compound, near the clementi side, so I spend at least 1.5 hours travelling. Its located next to the NUS school of business and the Temasek Lifesciences Laboratories, another RI but not under the A*STAR umbrella.

My research team. The centre one is Yong Jin from RJ, who is really quite crappy. The right one is Shaun from AC. Wonder if nicole knows him.

Shaun operating the glove box. Quite a cool contraption, the glove box. Lets you do everything in a inert nitrogen environment free of contaminants and dust particulates. Too bad its not sterile.

The idea is to put your hands through the black gloves into the box. Somehow when the pressure is high the gloves pop out, which somehow impresses Yong Jin. I don't wanna know why he finds taut gloves fascinating.

Oh and Yong Jin also has a morbid obsession with air guns and nitrogen guns.

Our student pass. Gives us access to the library and the common corridors but not the labs. At least we can access the pantry, which is all that matters:)

more photos next time.