Patrick Root Email & Phone Number

Ever since I was young, I remembered that I loved science unlike most of my classmates who wanted to study in other programs. Some people who enter school are unsure of what they want to do. I was the same exact way. While it has taken a lot of time to figure out, I have now found what I want to accomplish in life.My main goal in life is to help others and work in a laboratory research setting. My passion lies within microbiology and immunology and the causes of infectious disease. I have always been fascinated with why the human body reacts to certain pathogens the way it does and how to counteract those mechanisms through vaccine or other therapies. I want to improve on testing methods and reduce false positives as well as creating vaccines. I am also interested in the research and development of new treatments to slow the spread of antibiotic resistance and to prevent the spread of superbug infections which may cause several outbreaks as antibiotics are becoming less useful. I strongly feel that we should not only take a look at what microbes are resistant to antibiotics, but to understand the genetic basis behind any such genes for antibiotic resistance, as well as the mechanisms involved which causes an infection to begin. By understanding these, we may begin to understand the full story behind counteracing these, such as using bacteriophages.I have performed 2 research projects at the University at Buffalo during my undergrad career. These research projects were mentored by one of the professors I had for the genome annotation course. Based on the coursework I did, it sparked an interest for me and I talked to them several times over the beginning of the semester. One such project was examining bacterial colonies from waterways in Western New York. The second research project involved validating gene calls in the Kytococcus Sedentarius genome which were predicted through a computer pipeline called GENI-ACT.Now, I have been recently accepted to the MS Microbiology and Immunology program at University at Buffalo, and am currently looking for a mentor for an MS guided research project.

• 

  University At Buffalo

  Biotechnology, Biological Sciences