Building biotechnology's transistor.

Lab led by Peter Swain.Expanding my understanding of yeast physiology in stress response, cell division cycle, nutrient sensing, and transcriptional regulation. Learning and developing advanced techniques related to microfluidics and fluorescence microscopy.

Laboratory Metabolic Systems Engineering led by Prof. Radhakrishnan MahadevanAdd yeast to grape must and after several days of fermentation you have wine. Imagine adding engineered yeast to starch or sugar and recovering diesel, oils, nylon, plastics, or medicine. That is the aim of our research in Prof. Mahadevan's lab. We use computational models, molecular biology, and engineering principles to advance the metabolic engineering field.The specific scope of my research was to understand how important fermentation traits evolved in yeasts to engineer strains that can grow faster, healthier, and convert more sugar to valuable chemicals.Over the course of my Ph.D. studies, I have learned to optimize metabolic networks using Linear Programming in MATLAB (Flux Balance Analysis), designed and constructed plasmids to engineer yeast strains with CRISPR-Cas9, configured existing fermentors with a mass spectrometer to monitor off-gas (process analytical technology), taught myself how to use bioinformatics tools to reconstruct the evolution of yeast metabolism, and learnt Python to automate tasks and reduce time spent analyzing data.I was a Teaching Assistant in 7 courses and have mentored two undergraduate summer students.

My time at BCH was spent in two roles. My first role was in Safety by Design where I worked various capital projects to implement BC Hydro's Safety by Design program. This involved collaboration with other engineers, plant staff, and project managers. Prior to BCH, my work experience was often limited to an independent project with a defined scope, but my time with SbD allowed me to broaden my experience with complex scopes, multiple stakeholders, and sometimes unclear objectives. In my second year at BCH I worked within Thermal Generation. I was based in Burrard Generating Station, but also worked at the Fort Nelson Generating Station. Most of my work was related to conducting engineering reviews of the water treatment plants for optimization.Lessons learned: concise and intuitive documentation is critical in large project teams and companies, sometimes how you say it matters more than what you say. Human factors, designing for end users, risk management, engineering control measures.

I worked in the pricing group of Lubricants and Specialities to optimization Imperial Oil's distribution network for lubricants. I identified $2.6 M in savings opportunity for freight expenses and managed a continuous improvement project to optimize freight logisticsThe greatest lessons I learned in these 4 months were: programming in Excel to efficiently analyse copious amounts of data, and a greater understanding of the value chain in the petroleum industry.

Carried out test inspections on lubricant formulations for Ph.D. chemists and technologists.

Designed and machined components for a nanoparticle experiment with the help of experienced machinists.http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~kcorreia/Supplement.html