During the summer of 2021, 13 interns from UC Merced spent eight weeks working virtually with JGI mentors to investigate rigorous research projects, hone science presentation skills, and participate in professional development enrichment activities.

For some students in the 2021 cohort, this was their first internship experience, while others further along in their academic career enjoyed the chance to develop new skills needed for their PhD research. And for the first time in this program’s history, two interns returned to re-engage with their mentors from the previous year and continue working on their research project!

The JGI-UC Merced internship program was founded in 2014 with the goal of inspiring students to embark on a career in genomics and to help foster a diverse future workforce in science. To learn more about each intern’s experience during their internship, check out their stories, told through print narratives, videos, a podcast episode, and presentations below.

Narratives

Blurring the Line Between Plasmids and Phages
an intern standing in front of a house with the background blurred
Oscar Davalos, Mentor: Stephen Nayfach
Read more
Polymorphisms Created by Transposable Elements
an intern standing in front of a bush
Jacob Espinosa, Mentors: Li Lei and
Virginia Scarlett
Read more
Evolution of the Mitochondria Internship
an intern standing in front of a building
Jimmy Nunez, Mentors: Frederik Schulz and Juan C. Villada
Read more
Cross Species Integration of Single Cell Transcriptomes
an intern standing with arms crossed
Lorenzo Scaturchio, Mentors: Margot Bezrutczyk and Ben Cole
Read more

Videos

Exploring and Visualizing P. hallii Mutant Library
an intern posing for a headshot
Beryl Arinda, Mentors: Matt Mingay
and Sharon Greenblum
Watch here
Evaluation of Binning Tools for Microbial Eukaryotes in Metagenomes
an intern posing for a headshot
Lucia Bazan-Wiliamson, Mentors: Igor Grigoriev
and Asaf Salamov
Watch here
Functional exploration of Phage Impact on Microbial Root
an intern posing for a headshot
Cristian Espinosa, Mentor: Jonelle Basso
Watch here
Cross Species Comparison of Plant Single-cell Transcriptomes of Rice and Arabidopsis Roots
an intern posing for a headshot
Maria Mendoza, Mentors: Margot Bezrutczyk
and Ben Cole
Watch here
Making Big Data Metagenomic Clustering Scalable
an intern posing for a headshot
Sean Saki, Mentors: Zhong Wang
and Bryce Foster
Watch here

Genome Insider Episode

Check out the podcast episode, “Dispatches from the JGI Interns.”

Cataloging Lineage Specific Conserved Genes in Giant Viruses
an intern posing for a headshot
Clarence Le, Mentor: Frederik Schulz
Listen here
Pan-genome Graphs: Approaches for Complete Categorization of Genomic Variations
an intern posing for a headshot
Rahul Ravi, Mentor: G. Albert Wu
Listen here

Presentations

Comparative and Functional Genomic Analysis of Genus Roseovarius
an intern posing for a headshot
Sierra Roberts, Mentor: Shwetha Acharya
View here
Implementing a Scalable JGI-RQC Pipeline on the Cloud
an intern posing for a headshot
Sandra Chacon, Mentors: Bryce Foster and Zhong Wang
View here
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