I am deeply honored to have been able to conduct research through the Chancellor’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship. My understanding of the research process drastically changed through the Chancellor’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship. At the beginning of the program, I thought that the research I was working on would work the first time I tried it and that following a paper protocol would go smoothly. This was far from the truth, as I realized that research involves a lot of failure. Even by following the protocol, my PCR did not work, no matter how many times I tried it. This resulted in me stepping back, reviewing what I had done previously, and reading more literature. Through reading more literature, I found new protocols and realized why some of what I did earlier did not work. Through this process, I learned that you will encounter many obstacles during research, some that you expected and others that you didn’t. Finding solutions to those obstacles and learning from them is vital to becoming a good researcher. Looking back through my notebook, I now realize that I could have avoided so many mistakes if I had known what I know today. That understanding and realization is what I think is really special with research. You are constantly learning, whether it is about what you are researching or the techniques and methodology; research is a constant learning experience. My advice to other undergraduate researchers is to come into a project with an open mind, realize that there might be obstacles, and approach those obstacles as ways to learn rather than being frustrated and thinking they are barricades. The next step in my research is to continue this genotyping project and perfect my protocol, as it does not run as well as I wanted it to. I plan to accomplish this soon and then genotype all the samples from the summer of 2022. I also plan on genotyping samples from the summer of 2023 and begin to analyze these two sets of data for trends. I am very grateful for the opportunity to be a part of the Chancellor’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship, as although my research did not work as well as I wanted it to, I have learned so much about the research project and what it means to be a researcher. I recommend students who are interested in research to join a lab that sounds interesting and try research, as even if you do not have results, you will still learn valuable life skills, such as overcoming failure, throughout your time in the lab.

A picture of one of the gels that I ran to test my PCR Primers. This one worked as can be seen from the bands