My undergraduate research experience began when I joined Professor Mukul Bansal’s Computational Biology Lab at the beginning of the second semester of my sophomore year. After spending some time reading the relevant research papers from the field of computational phylogenetics, I had the opportunity to spend the summer working on my project on studying and characterizing the impact of uncertain gene tree rooting on phylogenetic reconciliation through a Summer Undergraduate Research Fund (SURF) Award. After finishing my work on that project, I received the opportunity to present the results at the 13th International Symposium on Bioinformatics Research and Applications (ISBRA). Now, as I enter my senior year, I am excited to continue my work in this field through my University Scholar project on characterizing the accuracy of gene tree rooting methods using a simulation framework.

Working on my SURF project during the summer of 2016 allowed me to fully immerse myself in my investigation and experience the process of designing solutions to challenging problems. As a result of that experience, I realized that I really enjoyed research and decided to pursue a Ph.D. in Computer Science after graduation so that I can continue working on computational problems in genetics and genomics. Getting involved in research has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my undergraduate career, and if you too are interested in exploring opportunities in undergraduate research, please feel free to contact me with any questions that you have about getting started!