Summer in the Betancourt Lab with Nuffield and undergraduate students

The Betancourt Lab hosted several students this summer, including two Nuffield students.  These were Emily Clarke and Mecmillan “Mec” Rajaratnam, who used PCR to survey Wolbachia in flies.

Emily said about the placement:  “I feel that I have benefitted greatly from my Nuffield placement and I have enjoyed every minute. I have gained a whole new platform of scientific skills, knowledge and techniques as well as been given an insight into the work that goes on within research science. Before beginning the placement, I did not really know what research science consisted of on a day to day basis however, experiencing this first hand has educated me on the works of scientific research daily. The project that I completed I thought was really interesting and I looked forward to attending every day of the placement to get some more results; in order to be one step closer to completing the project. Overall, I am so glad I was offered this fantastic opportunity and I definitely feel like I have gained so much from the experience.”

The Betancourt Lab also played host to second year undergraduate student Harry Collier, who carried out a project looking at the phenotypic effects of transposable element insertions in Drosophila. Harry also learned to code in Python during the course of his project.

Chester pupil’s Nuffield placement in the Centre for Proteome Research

Guest post by Rosie Maher, IIB PhD student

This summer I welcomed a 16 year old student from The King’s School Chester who took part in the Nuffield Research Placement Scheme. Before starting her placement Charlotte had plans to apply for medicine after finishing her A-levels but was curious about other medical related professions within biomedical science and biochemistry. Charlotte was appointed a position with myself, working in the Centre for Proteome Research within the Institute of Integrative Biology. Her four week project was titled “Identifying Proteins in Saliva to Diagnose Disease” and was a continuation of work that I have completed for my PhD.

During Charlotte’s four week stay she learnt three techniques that are used routinely in our lab; SDS-PAGE, zymography and western blotting. By the end of her placement she had produced some very interesting novel data, complementing the work that I have completed. It was a great experience to teach and supervise Charlotte, especially in an area of medical related science that she hadn’t heard of. I am now looking forward to her presenting this data at the Nuffield Celebration Evening in October.

 

 

 

2017 Sée Lab Nuffield Students

In the summer of 2017, two year 12 students from the North West of England visited the Centre for Cell Imaging on their Nuffield research placements.

Their placement involved testing a semi-high-throughput screening method for anti-cancer drugs using cell-migration as their readout. They worked with a Glioblastoma cancer cell line during their time in the facility and shared the following comments about their experiences:

 

Charlie Fogg:

“I believe that this summer placement at the University of Liverpool was the greatest experience of my life, and I will always remember it as the reason I firmly decided that this was the career in which I needed to pursue. I believe that this summer was an eye-opening experience into the real world of science, specifically cell microscopy, and it gave me countless new ideas and theories which I will take away with me into the future, and hopefully begin to research into myself one day. The placement inspired me to want to carry on pursuing science for the rest of my life and fed my ambition to achieve in a new world which I now see with many more possibilities than I had originally perceived.”

Fahda Albaba:

“This summer was not the same of all my previous summer, it was amazing and interesting because I spent it in department which I’d like before to be on, I learnt a lot of useful things: using high demand microscope, experiment skills as well as the importance of organisation, planning  and time management for each project. This placement gives me the chance to recognise the enjoyable feeling of practical and research world. Also this project allows me to deal comfortably with analysed imaging software which I am never deal with before, these wonderful software will make me think more deeply about the experiment, is not the same of the past (just follow the instructions).”

 

U87 cells stably expressing a red nuclear marker. Timestamps are HH:MM

11 Nuffield students visited IIB this summer

This past summer, the Institute of Integrative Biology has once welcomed Nuffield students, just, many more than last year. Thank you to Jane Hurst, Michael Gerth, Philipp Antczak, Violaine See, Luning Liu, Dave Mason and Raphael Levy for providing these placements.

Welcome Chloe Rodgers and Jamie Patient to work in Liu Lab as Nuffield Placement students 2016. #nuffieldiib pic.twitter.com/ZMo7jDYZEf

— LiuLNLab (@luningliu) July 20, 2016

 

Looking fwd to hosting @NuffieldFound students at the @CCI_liv.

Can we use #cell & #nucleus shape to assess health? pic.twitter.com/CqG8J0QaQh

— Dave Mason (@dn_mason) August 8, 2016

 

Nuffield students Bibin @CarmelCollege and Jess @LiverpoolBCS acquired hundreds of images of cells @CCI_liv today! https://t.co/UFkTHUlo6R

— (((Raphael Levy))) (@raphavisses) August 19, 2016

Adventures in (nano)science – Nuffield Research Placements

Nuffield Research Placements (previously Nuffield Science Bursaries) provide over 1,000 students each year with the opportunity to work alongside professional scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians. Raphael Levy’s group has hosted students last summer and this summer. 

Last year we hosted Katie and Liam; this year we hosted Yasmin and Jack. You can find out more about what they did in the lab by looking at the Storify of their tweets:

Katie and Liam; Adventures in nano(science) [1]

Yasmin and Jack: Adventures in nano(science) [2]

Yasmin and Jack in the lab; summer 2015