I was a teaching assistant and advisor for the 2023 collegiate and high school iGEM teams. I helped supervise and manage students in the wet laboratory and gave guidance as needed.The 2023 collegiate team's project was called Club Squared (Club^2): Engineering a Direct Detection Assay for Clubroot Pathogen in Canola Soil and Roots. More information about the project can be found on their wiki here: https://2023.igem.wiki/lethbridge/The high school team was also working on detection, with their project titled Chromosense. They were looking at designing a biosensor based on colour-changing chromoproteins to detect Velvet disease in fish. Visit their wiki for more information: https://2023.igem.wiki/lethbridgehs/We attended the 2023 iGEM Grand Jamboree in Paris, France, where we competed against other iGEM teams. The collegiate team attended in person and was awarded a gold medal. The high school team attended remotely and was awarded a silver medal. These teams worked incredibly hard this season and these awards were well deserved! Also, I was interested in helping out at the Jamboree more, so I volunteered to be a judge. This was a great experience and it was amazing meeting so many other like-minded individuals!

My project involved the purification and characterization of a novel starch degrading enzyme.

Worked as an independent study student in Dr. Hans-Joachim Wieden’s laboratory. My project involved genome engineering using the lambda-red system, and protein purification of Listeria monocytogenes HflX.

Biogeochemistry Agricultural and Environmental Chemistry Student Research Assistant under Dr. Ben Ellert. Studied soil carbon and nitrogen, and helped maintain long term experiments. Involved collecting environmental samples such as water, air, soil, and plant materials. Worked in the laboratory, using soil chemistry techniques such as gas chromatography, pH, EC, and colorimetry using an autoanalyzer.