I was very excited to hear that I received the C-DEBI grant, because I had nothing but wonderful experiences during my C-DEBI summer internship at USC in 2016. Receiving the grant has enabled me to continue doing research and maintain a presence within the C-DEBI community, which has opened doors to numerous opportunities. Jen Biddle at the University of Delaware worked with me to help fund my internship in her lab. I had my first experience with grant proposal writing and collaborating with a professor from another university. It was a great privilege to work along side Jen and her students. Bioinformatics comprised only a very small portion of that internship at USC so when Jen offered me the opportunity to learn more about that field I jumped at the chance. I have never previously worked with metagenomics and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Bins, scripts, and completeness, these are all terms that I had no idea what they meant before this internship. I was able to work on samples collected from the Costa Rica Margin. The skills I learned throughout the internship have allowed me to determine what I would like to do for my Master’s Degree. I am very pleased to say that I will be a graduate student at the University of Delaware this summer and I will have Jen as my advisor. I am very excited to continue on this journey and I look forward to more opportunities with C-DEBI.
Christina Baughan at the Biddle lab, University of Delaware.
