Can you tell us about the science program you participated in last summer in Pennsylvania, and what your research was focused on?
This last summer I participated in the Undergraduate Summer Research Program Summer Research Opportunity Program (USRP SROP) which consisted in a cohort of students like myself that were very interested in different research topics but wanted to focus on a specific topic that already interested them, for me that was bioinformatics. This program was designed to mimic the graduate student experience so that we would be prepared for our potential pursuing of a PhD program and how we would be expected to partake in research which means that we were paired with a faculty mentor and we were given free reign on a given research topic that we chose with the guidance of a faculty mentor and graduate student. This was probably part of the experience that makes it as memorable as possible because we would work on research essentially full time and see how we would be able to organize the other aspects of life that the participants have. In my case it was being able to maintain a social life and exercise because a lot of the things I had for hobbies I did not bring with me. I was sometimes even going beyond the expected 8 hours a day to get a specific aspect of my project finished. What I was doing more specifically I chose before even getting the acceptance to participate in the program because I think for programs like this it is important to have an idea of what you want to do in which case I looked at the field I wanted to see if I want to pursue in my graduate studies which was bioinformatics, pick a faculty mentor that had research interesting to me which was eukaryotic transcription and say I wanted to work with the faculty mentor if possible.
What drew you to partaking in this research, and how does it connect to your major or academic interests at DePaul?
I was always very interested in doing research between the place of biology and mathematics as there are many opportunities and combinations that can be pursued from it and is the area I want to be in for a career. I believe there are many areas we do not know much about since this field of research is one that requires mastery of both subjects to be able to explore new ideas and I personally enjoy the aspect of manipulating data and playing with numbers to switch into a new mindset of explaining the phenomena that occur with literature and explain it to people that may not be hyper specialized in the field also.
What were some of the most meaningful and challenging aspects of your research, and what were you able to learn from it?
The most meaningful aspect has to be this other program I was participating with in tandem which is NSF NCEMS and they were very helpful to be able to provide me assistance throughout the summer. This organization was able to provide me with more information outside of the specific research I was conducting and more practical things that I should know about should I want to head into this field or any field involving research with datasets. There were specific workshops designed to give us an idea of practical statistical tools we may or may not need to use in the current summer projects as well as how to use a large cloud service computing system that provides us computing power for gigabytes of data processing and can be useful to have as a skill in a world where we are expected to learn how to code already. The most important part is the data management procedures and how to handle data with care because there are so many different issues that can happen with handling non-physical data and preparing for these issues is a very important part that gets often overlooked in research. The most challenging part for me definitely has to be having to learn the biology portion of my project to be able to do this research. While this research is bioinformatics and heavily relies on coding in bash which was new to me but not a problem to learn, the only part I was missing coming from a mathematics background is the biology behind any results I saw in my project. While this does put me in a unique position to analyze numbers more objectively, I do need to know some fundamental aspects in biology that take years of coursework to fully understand and I had to do it in essentially 3 weeks or the project would never start. The thing that I could learn from this is that going into graduate studies, the only thing one person will be able to know is their specializations, even going from one field of biology to another can result in large gaps of knowledge and is why we have collaboration between multidisciplinary groups. the only way to do research for an undergraduate is if you can quickly take in information and be able to develop that understanding as that is all that can be expected from students that are still trying to understand what field they may want to pursue.
How do you hope to build on this experience moving forward, whether in future research, graduate school, or your career after DePaul?
This experience had one goal which was to prepare a participant for graduate school and it lets me know that I do want to pursue a PhD in the future as well. I saw all of the hardwork that I was able to put into my project and I do like the idea of working on an even longer term project that could be useful to someone else in the future somehow to someone. I gained experiencing in being able to take several different research articles and digesting them in an efficient way and be able to process data from DNA that is useful as a way to work on intangible things you can see instead of more qualitative datasets one can get from running a standard experiment and can be applied to other works I may do research on as a way to understand different datasets that may seem confusing at first. I do want to keep up with research in this field as well as I find it very rewarding and is something I am currently doing with a new research project with NCEMS that is attempting to build the foundation for more research with the megatons of data that is already preexisting and accessible.
How did this summer research experience shape your sense of what it means to be an Honors student, both inside and outside the classroom?
Outside of the classroom is a much clearer area as now I have more possibility to carefully develop an honors senior thesis that I will like and is feasible with the resources at my current disposal and being able to know what exact limits I have for this endeavor and what I can learn while balancing student life. As for inside of the classroom, a lot of the current classes I have been taking since my summer experience while all related to math in some way are all complete foreign material where there is little crossover and being able to understand the information is something that needs to be taken as a honors student in which we all try to take in from past experiences and the multidisciplinarity we have acquired as an honors students and the varying fields we have. It also has shown me that there are many ways you can spend time that may be more meaningful than other methods and it all really depends on mindset of wanting to take on these challenges. I have been trying to tackle on 3 new hobbies, drawing, sewing, and electrical work because it is a different way I can learn and does engage my brain in other ways that may not happen often.
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