COMBIGS | Experience

Sethuraman N

I was lucky enough to get this Semester Abroad program (SAP) opportunity by Sastra University and the Department of Bioinformatics to do my final semester project as a research internship at Universidad Tecnológica de Panama. My area of interest was machine learning, and that's the reason for choosing UTP; it has a variety of research opportunities across all the engineering fields. My project title is "Smart City (Smart local Grid and identification of anomalies with Data Analytics), Traceability of perishables with RFID, and Knowledge Transfer in DDDM" and thanks to my guide, Dr. Juan Marcos Castillo, PhD research and development associate at UTP, for accepting me to work on his smart city project. I was provided with all the facilities and materials that I needed for my research. For the first few weeks, I was given exploratory research papers and articles to peruse. And afterward, leisurely, my work advanced towards synchronising the traffic lights in smart cities with the help of IoT and machine learning tools.

Gautham Krishna S.R.

Things started to turn better for everyone when the 3rd wave of covid started to subside and on a personal front for me too as I was humbled with the opportunity to do a Student Abroad Program (SAP) at the Technological University of Panama (UTP). However, UTP had a wide range of projects to offer and I chose Smart City (Smart local Grid and identification of anomalies with Data Analytics), Traceability of perishables with RFID, and Knowledge Transfer in DDDM. This was an area that explored the workings of machine learning and data analytics in a platform that was unknown to me ‘Smart City’ and this is the same reason that excited me too as I was gearing up to learn something new with this as my final semester project under the guidance of Dr. Juan Marcos Castillo, who is a Ph.D. research associate at UTP. This was a fun and exciting experience as Dr. Juan understood that we weren’t from the same area of excellence and he ensured that we find a common ground where both of us could benefit from this project mutually. I had the opportunity to also connect with other students in Panama who were proficient in the same field and who could guide me to finish my project successfully. This opportunity gave me an exposure to the international labs and projects on going in Panama and their workflow and processes were explicit which can be imbibed and modified to our current Indian trends, thereby making it a wholesome learning experience. I would definitely suggest you all to pursue an SAP if you get a chance to!

Vijayalakshmi A. B.

I had the privilege of a remarkable learning opportunity during my final semester project as an intern at "qBiome Research Private Limited, Chennai." The co-founders and research scientists of the organization provided invaluable support, sharing their knowledge and ideas in developing the project. My work involved analyzing waste from prominent industrial sectors, studying microbes, pathways, and various factors in the microbial degradation of industrial waste. With a focus on integrating different disciplines of bioinformatics, including Biological Sciences, Database Management Systems, and Website Development, this internship enhanced my skills and provided extensive exposure to industrial research.

Shashank R

I had the opportunity to present my work titled "Generating a Fungal Knowledge-Base and Ontology Terms by Integrating Multi-omics data and Natural Language Processing for LPMO-specific Lignocellulosic Deconstruction" as a poster at the Indian Biophysical Society's national conference (IBS 2022) under the guidance of Dr. Ragothaman Yennamalli. Despite initial nervousness, the event was successful, receiving appreciation for the work. Furthermore, I am scheduled to present progress and results as a poster at ISMB2022 (July 10 - 14, 2022). This experience taught me that presenting and receiving reviews from experienced professionals at conferences opens new perspectives on problem-solving. I encourage everyone to attend and present their work at national and international conferences.

Aparna V

My internship provided a comprehensive learning experience in sarcoma (cancer). I explored Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) and its applications, focusing on "Finding the link between sarcomas and human genes and validating it using bioinformatics tools." It was a challenging task to connect human genes with sarcomas, involving research on the causes and writing a blog. I also worked on 3D printing implants for orthopedic surgery, gaining insights into the work of architects and doctors researching sarcomas and implant technologies. The experience culminated in publishing a journal.

Arvind Shankar

My BINC Experience: Bioinformatics National Certification Exam is a very targeted exam that evaluates and certifies bioinformatic professionals. It tests all aspects of knowledge that a Bioinformatics professional should possess, it’s divided into 2 theoretical papers that test objectively as well as subjectively and a final practical exam that tests programming skills in any language of the participants choice. Knowledge gained during such transfers will be more useful and last longer than those gained in classrooms and for exams.

Sai Hariharan S

I was blessed with an opportunity by SASTRA University to be part of Semester Abroad Programme (SAP), to do my final semester M.Tech(Int.) Bioinformatics project at the University of Texas at Austin. My area of interest was drug design and medicinal chemistry. The reason for choosing UT Austin was because of the department of pharmacology and toxicology, which was closest to my area of interest. Coming to the academic point of view, the lab at UT Austin was doing amazing work in field of DNA repair. But my mentor there, Dr. Karen Vasquez, had the best interest for me and gave project based on my strengths such that both of us benefit in a mutual way. I had the opportunity to carry out Bioinformatics work at a lab which was more inclined towards bench work.

Shrija Srinivasan

Speaking from my experience, the internships provided me with one of the most stimulating summers I ever had. The guide provided me a conducive environment for me to carry out my research. My team was given with a topic called “Speech stuttering and the genetic impacts on Down’s syndrome” to work on. Tracking down the physiological effect due to such syndromes is a challenging task. It was surprising that only etiological works were found till date. I dealt with database development and lab work while my friends with sequencing and other computational works. We also tried to do homology modelling computationally but the sequence identity was low. My internship has definitely given me a better understanding of my skill set, and most importantly learnt that I’m not learning alone. I understood what it is like to work in a research environment, and perhaps most importantly, provides one with good experience and tools that I’ll need to get a full time gig in the near future.

Ramita Rajaa

Ramita is a Senior Content Marketing Manager at MoEngage, a global tech company. Her previous experiences include stints at BrowserStack and Zoho, where she honed her expertise in content marketing. For her final-year project, she worked at the Drug Design and Bioengineering lab at IIT Madras, for a project that determined the effects of fenugreek on diabetes. You can hit her up for anything related to content marketing, writing, gaming, or biking.

Harini P

My first internship, in a new place and a new city. The idea of the project was that S. cerevisiae, a species of Yeast underwent whole genome duplication about 6 million years ago. Now, 70% of the duplicated genes were destroyed, yet 30% remain. We assumed that these genes should have obtained new functions (neofunctionalisation) or should have undergone subfunctionalisation. So we compared it to other strains of Yeast like K. Lactis, K. Walti, A. gossippi and S. Kluyveri which did not undergo whole genome duplication. The main take-away from this internship was the importance of documentation. We were writing too many scripts everyday with different input and output files. So naming was a huge problem. And as soon as naming went out of the window, we lost track of which script does what and how we got that input. Then we realised we should have documented all the programs from the very beginning. The second was Excel sheet skills.

Sowmya R K

I did my Visiting Student Research Programme (VSRP) 2018 fellowship at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research – Tata Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences (TIFR-TCIS), Hyderabad, under Dr. Raghunathan Ramakrishnan, Theory Lab. I learnt quite a lot of stuff about the unexplored topics in Molecular modeling, as my project was based on Disconnectivity graphs. I also developed a big data analytics platform for quantum chemical molecular structures and properties – MolDis (http://moldis.tifrh.res.in) and a couple of collaboration projects. I got the golden opportunity to visit the TIFR Mumbai (Colaba) campus and interact with the professors and graduate students working there. The Internship made me learn the expectations of the scientific community from a Bioinformatics student and how to formulate solutions for seemingly unsolvable computational problems.

Sunanda S

It was great fun filled experience where you had handled the finance and arranged for talks during this time. Deciding which scientist we should invite for the talks and making arrangements for that was a great learning experience. Inviting prof.Michael gromiha to give the talk for combigs inaugration lecture (for that year) and that happened successfully was a moment that I will always cherish. It gave me ample opportunities to have discussions with everyone in the department (department mates,juniors and seniors) and also the faculties in the department. This experience did help me later in my career to organize EMBO conference at instem,ncbs during my PhD.

Subasini T

My guide and my lab mates were so kind and they were ready to help me with whatever I needed. I was provided with all the facilities that were needed for my work. For the first few weeks, I was given research articles to read. And then slowly my work progressed towards developing a framework for three dimensional modeling of RNA. It was a great thing that happened to me, that I got another opportunity to work in the same lab with the same guide during my third year summer break. Again I read research articles. This time our work plan was to develop an algorithm for prediction of secondary structure of RNA. This had a lot of coding to do. During both internships, I attended mid-year meeting of IAS, where I happened to attend lectures of professors from all over India who are working on different research areas. These internships gave me great motivation to pursue higher studies.

Sowndharya S

I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to do my final semester project at “Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), USA”. My project was on Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) for Neuroblastoma disease, where a Polygenic Risk Score was calculated to find genes which are susceptible to the disease in addition to already found genes. I was able to attend, observe and learn from various forums, talks and discussions related to the research going in and around CHOP. Listening to various Leading Scientists from UPenn, John Hopkins, Harvard, etc gave me a lot of confidence and gain knowledge in various fields of research though it was very tough get along with their flow. By attending the Symposium on Advances in Genomics, Epidemiology and Statistics – SAGES 2018 and the 2018 Annual retreat organised by the Institute for Biomedical Informatics Genomics and Computational Biology Graduate group I was able to interact with various research scholars and scientist from top most universities.

Experiences

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