My first two weeks in Thiruvananthapuram went by so quickly. Thiruvananthapuram, or Trivandrum for short, is the capital of Kerala, a state in south India. I have joined with the Center for Environment and Development (CED) to work on a project on heavy metal pollution in waste water, sediment and ash.

Before going to the field I had to do a lot of prep. Once I landed in Trivandrum, I jumped straight into work. On the first day, I took a trip to the CED to meet my mentor. Immediately after this I went up to the Geoinformatics lab to learn how to use the instruments I would need to do my field work. I was pleasantly surprised when I found that I was somewhat familiar to their lab; however, I still had a lot to learn. Two biotechnologists taught me how to use their travel pH meter and their stationary meter while I was there. I was lucky to learn more about a separate lab that these scientists were conducting. They were working on growing banana trees in different genetically modified soil. 

Next, I had to familiarize myself with the geochemistry of the four heavy metals I am testing, the water systems in Trivandrum, and the effect of heavy metals on the environment. I went to the Department of Geology in the University of Kerala to get some books. This is different from school, because I am usually learning about the topics that come up in the lab. For this project, information was not given to me in a handy PowerPoint, I had to rely on the book recommendations by my mentors. Of course, with my experience with the US paper, I grabbed every book that seemed slightly relevant to my topic to browse through.

I needed help from other groups to test for heavy metals in my samples with their machinery. In order to organize this, I attended meetings with scientists from the Geological Survey of India (GSI) to test the solid samples and the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research-National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (CSIR-NIIST) to test the liquid. It’s best to finalize these things before we are on a time crunch after the samples are collected.