Week two has been just as great as week one. It started off with finishing preparing my simulations, then sending them to a supercomputer to be processed into short movies. My primary mentor is a grad student from Brazil named Emilia Pecora de Barros. While my project is being processed by the supercomputer, I have been helping with her research project about how Protein Kinase A changes its conformation(shape).
This is what my work space typically looks like while I am working on the simulations.
The majority of my week was spent turning 10 nanosecond chunks of simulation into 1000 nanosecond simulations. This took quite a while considering I had to do it to 15 different trials. I do this on VMD, which is a molecular visualization program for displaying, animating, and analyzing large biomolecular systems using 3-D graphics. When I am done making these simulations I will use a program called python to create computational data, so we have a visual representation of what is happening in the 
molecules.
Aside from all of the fancy computer things, I have also seen some more of the city. I have explored the beautiful UCSD campus more during my lunch breaks. On Sunday we went paddle boarding, which I had never done before, and I had a great time doing it.
The Old Globe Theatre where we saw Camp David.
Thursday I went with my host family to a play called Camp David at the Old Globe Theatre. It was a historical show about how Jimmy Carter helped resolve conflict between Israel and Egypt. I do theatre at school, so being about to see a play in such an amazing performance space was a great opportunity. I am really enjoying getting to see the city and grow closer with my host family.
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