Summer student placements - it's more than just the lab work!

Hey everyone, my name is Shaun and I just finished my second year of my Undergraduate. I am doing a 3-year Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry at Imperial College London. I am currently on the Wellcome Trust Biomedical Vacation Scholarship and am attached to the Roychoudhuri lab till early September.

I have always been interested in the field of Immunology and Inflammation and was lucky to find the Roychoudhuri group on the Babraham website. The research carried out in the lab was aligned to my interests, which led me to applying for a summer studentship. While the Institute is certainly located a couple of miles from the city centre, the working environment is definitely one of a world-class research institute. I gained first-hand experience working in a research laboratory carrying out experiments generating Crispr-Cas9 knockouts to characterise novel modes of immunosuppression within tumours.

Surprisingly, the most interesting part of the placement so far was the lab meetings, where group members get together to provide updates on ongoing projects. I thoroughly enjoyed the discussions and sharing of ideas during these meetings, especially learning about the various experiments going on in the lab.

Everyone in the lab has been amazing and I am grateful for the opportunity to be here. I believe my experience here will provide me with some of the skills and knowledge required for a PhD in the future, which I will be looking to upon graduation.