Whpearson recently mentioned that people in some other online communities frequently ask "what are you working on?". I personally love asking and answering this question. I made sure to ask it at the Seattle meetup. However, I don't often see it asked here in the comments, so I will ask it:
What are you working on?
Here are some guidelines
- Focus on projects that you have recently made progress on, not projects that you're thinking about doing but haven't started, those are for a different thread.
- Why this project and not others? Mention reasons why you're doing the project and/or why others should contribute to your project (if applicable).
- Talk about your goals for the project.
- Any kind of project is fair game: personal improvement, research project, art project, whatever.
- Link to your work if it's linkable
I'm in the early stages of my PhD research in metabolomics, which specifically means that I'm constructing what will end up being a library of tagged proteins to use in probing protein-small metabolite interactions. While the genomes and proteomes of quite a few model organisms are well-understood, cross-pathway regulatory interactions are another extremely important factor in metabolism, and these have had only minimal effort put to characterizing them. My work is therefore aimed at finding and characterizing these interactions on a broad scale, and incorporating that understanding into existing computational models in order to facilitate rational design in biochemical engineering.
I also have a fanfic project going that I started to 1) get better at writing; 2) challenge or avoid the most painfully prevalent tropes of the particular fandom (Labyrinth); and 3) to keep me somewhat sane. I found Eliezer's HPMoR not too terribly long ago (was my favorite method of procrastination while studying for quals, in fact...), and that's given me perhaps altogether too many ideas for other potential study distractions after I finish the story. http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6347718/1/bTalespinner_b
I read Talespinner. I love it. (It includes perhaps the best prose kisses I have ever seen, among other charmingly evocative description and engaging characterization.) Please do not fall into the commonplace trap of abandoning your fic in the middle to work on something else. I want to read the rest of it. Also read and liked Olive Branch, though not as overwhelmingly much.