Coming in as a transfer student with no research experience, I thought it will take me a while to adjust. In addition, owing to the dynamic nature of the stream and with a lot of people working on different things, I thought I might be a little lost at first. However, after meeting Dr. Tim and getting to talk with other students, I immediately felt I was part of the team. Everyone was accommodating and happy to help me when I had questions. The area of research I decided to work on was the ZIKA pH Lamp Diagnostic in mosquitos. Working in this stream has allowed me to acquire new skills. I have become rather competent in communicating in a scientific community, handling large data, qPCR and pH lamp technique and working with a diagnostic system.
Do it yourself Diagnostic was the answer to utilizing my summer in a productive, informative and beneficial way. When I decided to do research in the summer, one of the things that was always on my mind was how free I’ll be in the lab. However, with an emphasis on “Yourself” in DIY, this exact worry of mine was put to rest. Not only did I get the freedom to work on what interests me out of many research areas offered, I practically got to choose how I wanted to approach it. To my pleasant surprise, in addition to the hands-on lab experience, I also gained skills in a variety of disciplines. Simply put, joining DIY Diagnostic has given me an opportunity to broaden my skillset while having fun as I do it.