While reading news articles, I came across a news story about how radiation affected monkeys, titled “Three Ways Radiation Has Changed The Monkeys Of Fukushima.” This made me realize that studying monkeys can help us understand the effects of radiation on the human body. At first, I wanted to conduct actual experiments with monkeys, but I quickly realized it was too expensive! So, I reached out to Dr. Jung, my mentor from my previous summer internship, to see if we could do similar research using computer simulations. He agreed to guide me on this project during the summer of 2024. After extensive web search, I was fortunate to get a computer model of a monkey from Korean researchers! With Dr. Jung’s guidance, I ran computer simulations on my Mac over the summer, and the calculations took about two months to complete!
I received three monkey models in different posture: standing, crawling, and squatting. Here’s the monkey model in crawling posture I worked with over the summer!
This is the monkey model in squatting posture.
Here’s the radiation burden to the stomach and lung for the three-posture monkey models.
With Dr. Jung’s guidance, I summarized my summer work and completed a manuscript. We submitted it to the journal Radiation Protection Dosimetry, and now we’re waiting to hear their feedback!