Presenting my research at the URS!

This May, I presented my research at the UW Undergraduate Research Symposium. This was an amazing opportunity to share the project I'd been working on in my lab throughout the year, and the first time I'd ever presented my research publicly. This challenged me to practice my science communication skills and taught me the conventions and process of creating a scientific poster and presenting in a symposium style. These skills will be massively important in my future, as communicating findings with a variety of individuals is possibly the most important part of practicing science. Additionally, it prompted me to learn how to analyze data and draw conclusions, and how to contextualize those conclusions and demonstrate their significance. Finally, the most difficult portion was practicing communicating complex information and data in a concise and clear manner to people unfamiliar with the field, and keeping within the time limit (5-7 minutes!). I learned that sometimes it is more important to convey the findings and significance, because that is what resonates with people, and let the data be a supplementary resource that they can dig into, if they want.

My project was titled Investigating Malaria Parasite Zonation in the Context of Cell Death Deficiency. I examined the connection between cell death, sex of the host, and parasite localization within the different liver zones in liver stage malaria. In the end, I found that there was no significant difference between control and cell death-deficient male or female mice in parasite frequency or zonation. However, I also performed a statistical power analysis on my dataset and found that it was less than 80% powered, meaning that my conclusions may not be representative of field occurrences. Ultimately, after discussions with my mentor and PI, we concluded that it would not be worth it to continue this project at this time, another important lesson. It is useful to be able to evaluate where is more Ultimately, although this was an interesting project, I look forward to exploring new areas in the future.

This project developed my skills in image analysis and statistical analysis of data, though it was not very benchwork-heavy, which I didn't love. Although it was super interesting to learn how to do this type of image analysis and more about microscopy, after spending a few months basically only working at a computer, I definitely know that I enjoy benchwork a lot more.

Overall, this experience massively developed my communication and lab skills as a scientist. I'm grateful to have had this opportunity, and enjoyed the presentation portion (though it was a bit nerve-wracking). I hope I'll be back next year!

My abstract is viewable here

My poster is viewable here as a PDF