Hello everyone, my name is Rebecca Orr and I was born and raised in Northern California and am currently living in the small town of North San Juan . My major is in biological sciences and I am enrolled at Sierra College in Grass Valley, California. For as long as I can remember, nature has always held a special allure for me. I spent part of my childhood in both the city and the country but have always felt more at home surrounded by old majestic trees or crashing waves then towering sky scrapers. My innate curiosity for all things living and the ecosystems they create has pulled me back to the world of academia and science to follow my passion and build a new career path that will allow me to study and learn more about the subjects I love. I am so excited to be here at OIMB and I am looking forward to learning new tools and research skills that will help me in my quest for knowledge.
This first week has been a whirlwind of meeting new people and learning new information. I am thrilled that both areas have exceeded my expectations and calmed my fears. Everyone here from the Professors to the staff, graduate students and fellow interns have been welcoming, kind and open-minded. All questions are welcomed, and ideas and thoughts are openly shared. I am feeling especially lucky to have been grouped with my fellow interns here who seem to share that same open-minded passion for learning and fascination with the workings of the world around them. This has led to many great conversations and also the added benefit of getting to learn more about the unique details of each interns experiment from different labs. Each of the mentors and labs seem to have their own specialty and niche which creates a diversity of interests and materials to learn from and has provided unique opportunities to get a glimpse into the different types of research, perspectives and/or ideas. I am working in the Maslakova lab which specializes in the biodiversity of Nemerteans using both morphological identification and DNA sequencing. This is an amazing opportunity to learn the process, start to finish for creating a biodiversity survey and identification guide for a particular group of species (or taxon) in a particular area. This project covers a variety of areas that I am interested in since the process involves field work (collecting Nemerteans from their various habitats), lab work (processing, storing, and preserving the tissue for DNA sequencing and morphological vouchers) and data management (creating a comprehensive identification guide).
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Rebecca OrrHi, my name is Rebecca I’m from Northern California. My major is in biological sciences. I am so excited to be working in Dr. Svetlana Maslakova’s lab and learning the protocol and procedures for completing a modern biodiversity survey. Archives
August 2021
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