Meet the Intern Making a Documentary to Change Your Misconceptions About Antibiotics
The unstoppable foundry10 intern Pinyu Liao combats antibiotic resistance, bakes blueberry crisp, and dissects owl pellets in her off time.
UPDATES: We are thrilled to share that former foundry10 intern Pinyu Liao was recently featured as one of The 74’s 16 Under 16 STEM Achievers for her documentary “The Quest to Stop Antibiotic Resistance,” which was also shortlisted for the 2022 World Health Organization’s Health for All Film Festival! Pinyu was featured in the Seattle Times in August 2022. Learn more about how youth can build their social capital through a high school internship in foundry10’s 2021 High School Intern Program Report.
“The Quest to Stop Antibiotic Resistance” premiered in February 2022. Watch the film and read our 2021 Q&A with Pinyu below!
Pinyu Liao is a student at Inglemoor High School and an aspiring biomedical scientist. For her foundry10 intern project, she’s creating a 10-minute documentary to engage the public in preventing our escalating antibiotic resistance.
When she’s not dissecting owl pellets or running her blog Lavender + Lab Coats, she dreams of wearing a Victorian ballgown, traveling to Oregon in a covered wagon, and designing her own laboratory-based high school. Read on for a Q&A with the multi-talented Pinyu Liao.
What do you like to do for fun?
In my free time, I like baking (I just baked some blueberry crisp bars this morning!) and researching pathogens. While it seems like a weird hobby, I’ve collected specimens of a type of grass mold outside my house and observed it under the microscope, and dissected an owl pellet that I found in a football field. I suspected that the mold was black mold, but it turned out to be just a common slime mold, so it wasn’t as deadly as I thought!
Describe your summer intern project.
I’m creating a 10-minute documentary to engage the public in their role in preventing our escalating antibiotic resistance. As I started researching antibiotic resistance a couple of years ago, I realized that misconceptions about antibiotic resistance are a big contributor to our antibiotic resistance crisis, as so many people believe that getting your doctor to prescribe antibiotics when you really don’t need it is perfectly fine or scientists can just develop new antibiotics when we run out. In fact, in a study by the WHO, they found that a shocking number of people had a variety of misconceptions about antibiotics. So, I wanted to create a documentary to help people understand this issue in order to work to combat antibiotic resistance.
What have you enjoyed most about working on your intern project so far? What has been the most challenging part?
Working on this project has been a lot of fun so far, and I particularly enjoy working with my mentor, Tina Polzin, and the other interns at foundry10! Having other people help give feedback and insights into my project has given me a new perspective in what makes a documentary engaging, which I’ve been incorporating into my project. I also worked with the University of Washington Tele-Antimicrobial Stewardship Program (TASP) to find interviewees for my documentary, and I was amazed by how helpful and passionate everyone was, especially about preventing antibiotic resistance. Finding interviewees has been a challenge, but the group at TASP was incredibly helpful in this aspect.
What is one thing you think most people would be surprised to learn about you?
Besides biology, I also love European history and fashion history! In fact, one of my bucket list items is to wear a Victorian-era ball gown. Another one of my bucket list items is to travel from Independence, Missouri to Oregon City, Oregon in a covered wagon. Okay, I can compromise on the covered wagon part because the other cars would probably get annoyed at me for moving at a snail’s pace, but at least an RV?
If you could only listen to one song, watch one movie, read one book, and/or play one game for the rest of your life, which ones would you choose?
This is a hard one since my favorite song changes a lot, but one song that I’ve always liked is “All of Me” by John Legend. While this isn’t a movie, I loved the Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit,” so I would probably choose that to watch for the rest of my life. It wouldn’t be very practical to only read one book for the rest of my life because of school, but ignoring the practicality, I would choose to read “Kira Kira” by Cynthia Kadohata because it has also endured through the years as one of my favorite books. Finally, I don’t play a lot of games, but I would choose to play chess for the rest of my life, because people can make careers out of playing chess, so it would be a good skill to develop and interesting enough to play forever. But I would be good with the Google Dino Game too!
If you could design your own school, what would it be like?
This is a fun question! First of all, I would like to design a laboratory and research-based school, where students can conduct their own experiments and projects, inspired from a laboratory program at a high school that I heard about (I was so jealous when I heard about it!). I would offer tons of science classes, including more specific classes like biotechnology, behavioral biology, genetics, and astrophysics, as well as English, history, math, and art classes.
Many of the classes would be discussion-based with hands-on projects, since I think that discussions are a great way to promote independent and creative thinking while learning to work with others. I usually learn best with a combination of lectures and applying that knowledge through hands-on projects, so having the projects component would be important to my school.
As hard as it would be to get such high-profile teachers, I would love to have Robert Sapolsky (neuropsychologist at Stanford University), E. O. Wilson (founder of sociobiology), Gerald Crabtree (developmental biologist at Stanford University), Raymond St. Leger (molecular biologist at University of Maryland, College Park), Craig Venter (entrepreneur in synthetic biology), George Church (geneticist and an important figure in the Human Genome Project), and so many more that I can’t fit in this paragraph to be the teachers at this school! Anyways, the school days would last from 10am to 4pm because I despise early start times, and the school lunches would NOT contain suspicious lunch meats or chocolate milk.
Is there anything I didn’t ask here that you want the world to know about you?
I run a blog called Lavender + Lab Coats about my experiences as an aspiring biomedical scientist, including tons of posts with tips for other students as well as topics in biotechnology, because this stuff is just so cool! Check it out at lavenderandlabcoats.com.
At foundry10, high school interns have the opportunity to design their own creative project and consult with a professional mentor to turn their vision into reality. Previous high school interns wrote published memoirs, designed video games, created art pieces, built robots and more, all in the foundry10 Seattle office, a vibrant, exciting atmosphere of learning and professional development.
When COVID-19 shut down the foundry10 office, we took our internship program online. Youth adapted, created, persevered and far exceeded expectations. We have so much gratitude for the interns and mentors who have shown so much flexibility, grace and ingenuity as they’ve had to adapt right along with us. Learn more about how Virtual Internships Teach Life Skills You Can’t Learn in School and Why You Should Consider Hiring a Virtual Intern.
