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The Interview:

Karen: How did you first get involved in undergraduate research?

Gabriella: I've been with the McKinnon-Rosati Laboratory since spring semester of freshman year, which is about 2 and a half years now. I first found out about their lab because they had sent out a request for undergraduate researchers through the Honors College. And when I saw that email, and noticed that they had 2 projects, particularly one that required a background in computer science… I thought I might be a good fit so I emailed Dr. McKinnon back. And that's how got started! I feel very lucky that I got this opportunity early on.

What do you currently work on?

Yes, so the project that I started concentrating on last year involves bioinformatic analysis of data related to pulmonary cryptococcosis, a fatal lung mycosis that is a high-risk disease due to its common misdiagnosis leading to treatment delay. I was responsible for refining the analysis pipeline and aiding in the preprocessing and downstream analysis of raw data in both lung granuloma (infected lung) and healthy lung datasets. I annotated cell clusters from canonical gene markers from literature and presented my findings across datasets leading to broader insights of gene expression.

What's your long-term goal?  

I will be applying for PhD programs—mostly in the biological sciences. I plan to focus on bioinformatics and computational biology and see where that goes. I really like what I'm doing right now in the lab, so I want to try to continue doing something in a related field.

How has being involved in research enhanced your education overall at SBU?

It is such a big part of my entire university career, especially having dedicated so much time to the lab. I was able to learn and apply new techniques and concepts in the lab, and more often than not, they were reflected in my classes, and vice versa. I definitely felt like I got more out of my Biochemistry II class because I could see how this information was being relayed to a real-life lab setting, and it made me more motivated to gain a deeper understanding. For my research, and my classes, what I was learning for each enhanced the other.

I also think that you get a sense of responsibility and maturity when you're in the lab for so long. You kind of gather increasing responsibilities and have a duty to the lab for the project to go forward. So I think that helps you to mature, and prepares you a lot for the next phase (whether that’s going into grad school, or becoming a lab tech).  

How have your mentors helped you?

They've both helped me so much when I have questions or am learning something new. I mainly work with Dr. McKinnon on the computational biology work, and any time that I would have questions and be stuck by obstacles, or trying to figure out how things worked, I would always be able to go to him for advice and guidance, , or we would figure it out together, see what's going on, and try to solve a problem. Dr. Rosati has also helped me a lot with the wet lab work and giving me general guidance on my career. I was happy that Dr. Rosati was able to attend the recent URECA symposium:  she started networking me around, introducing me to other people and making connections with students who were doing similar work to me. She also got me so involved in the lab and Single Cell Genomics Facility.  From both, I’ve learned so much about what’s going on in the field and that has instilled in me a desire to pursue a career where I can be at the forefront of these new technologies. They helped me take a hold of the opportunities I have and make the most out of them.

Do you enjoy presenting research?

I love the poster symposia! My first presentation was through the Explorations in STEM program, and that was really fun. And at URECA, I love walking around and seeing what’s going on with other people, asking questions. It also made me aware of how my research comes off to other people and how I can try to make it more understandable to people with different backgrounds. In my lab, I’ve had opportunities to interact with many different high school kids.  I really enjoy teaching them about computational biology, what’s going on in our lab, and how to do some data analysis. I have to be able to explain what's going on in the lab in a way that they can understand, without having taken college courses. And so I think the more chances you have to explain, the better you get at thoroughly understanding what you’re working on.

What's the most challenging aspect of doing research?

There are always obstacles that you encounter in the lab. Sometimes experiments don't work out great. You might have contamination issues that can take weeks to resolve. Or when I was writing programs, for instance, I was coding a dimensionality reduction method from scratch, I ran into a problem where I wasn’t able to make any progress for what seemed like forever.

And when that happens, that’s usually when I go to my mentors, and I ask for help. But then I get it. And once you overcome those hurdles, you eventually learn not to panic, but to remind yourself that it will work out, that you will be able to get past these obstacles and it will be fine. You know that if you just keep working on it, that it will be resolved, in some way. I think I’ve built up a lot of resilience because of going through these processes.

What has been one of the best moments of research?

I really enjoy being able to explain what work I do.  I love being able to share what knowledge I have with others, including the high school students that I am mentoring. And even in the journal clubs. I really like being able to explain things to my PIs and to give presentations. I enjoy being able to say, “This is what I found, and this is why it’s important.”

I was able to kind of make a program that would save us some money, that helped us know before we sent the data out whether the experiment was good or not …And so just knowing that what I worked on was helpful to the lab was such a great feeling. Knowing that you are contributing to the lab is very rewarding.

If you were talking to other students, what advice would you give them about undergraduate research?

I would say the hardest part is starting. You have to just send that email or look at programs and get past thinking “maybe I’m not qualified enough.”  My advice is to apply to programs and give research a try to see if you’re interested.

And then, once you are just starting as a new member of  a research lab, it's easy to get overwhelmed by the new information, the new environment, and having these new responsibilities. I think it takes time to kind of process and get comfortable and be able to gain that confidence. So it is important to remember that this doesn't happen overnight.

What was the most beneficial aspect of being involved in a summer research program?

For me, Explorations in STEM kind of kick-started everything in terms of my research. During the summer I was able to go into the lab every single day, and that really impacted how much I was able to learn and get done.  I also learned so much from going to and hosting the journal clubs and reading a lot of papers. It helped prepare me for explaining academia and how to make a poster – and eventually with applying for external scholarships such as the Goldwater scholarship.

Getting a stipend for doing research over the summer was so helpful too because I was able to focus only on research without doing a whole bunch of other jobs to try to keep myself afloat. You can dedicate all your time 100% to the research lab, without having to worry about other jobs or activities diverting your focus. And by doing that, I realized “Oh, this is not really a job for me. It's like, wow! I can get funding to do things that I like or that I want to do.”