What is your home university and what are you studying?
I study Neurobiology, Physiology and Behaviour at the University of California, Davis.
What attracted you to take a UROP placement at Imperial?
The opportunity to learn from and collaborate with researchers and clinicians from a world-leading institution drove me to seek out a UROP placement - I also loved the idea of working one-on-one with a member of Imperial faculty with the chance to make a real contribution.
What is the focus of your UROP placement?
I am analysing clinical data from pregnancies at risk of pre-term delivery to find correlations between supplemental progesterone, birth outcome, and metabolite levels. I'm using computer programming to create visual representations of my findings and explore the dataset in greater depth.
What has been the most enjoyable aspect so far?
I have loved the opportunity to network with other researchers in the group and learn skills that I never thought I could do. Being in a lab environment is new to me, so it's great getting an insider's perspective on how things are run in the field of biomedical research.
What has been the most surprising aspect or biggest insight during your visit so far?
I have learned that in research, even if you don't find the answer you were looking for, you often discover even more interesting questions that fuel future investigations.
What are your plans after you graduate?
I am planning on attending medical school and working as a clinician and researcher in the field of maternal-fetal medicine.
Any final comments?
My UROP was an incredible learning experience that showed me a snippet of what it's like to contribute to important biomedical research. I would highly recommend it to anyone eager to learn!