When I returned home from my internship abroad in Botucatu,  Brazil I was a presenter at the Santa Fe College's Perry Center for Emerging Technologies in Alachua.This is festival celebrating scientific accomplishments in the community and beyond, to a conference room of approximately 50 people. A mixture of active scientists from their field, students, professors and the public, can attend to take part in scientific activities and hear about research. On November 15th, 2018:  I was one of those to present research I had hands-on experience working on  with the teams of scientists I met in Brazil on a number of varying research topics such as:

​

• Team 1: Molecular diagnostic work  of infectious disease for Porcine circovirus in pigs across Brazil. This was to help farmers to vaccinate their pigs if they were found to be uninfected, or to identify next steps if their pigs were determined to already be infected. This virus was also in the process/ completion phase of being fully mapped by these researchers. This work involved preparation of porcine blood samples, DNA extraction, viral quantification using qPCR as well as RNA extraction and cDNA production followed by RT-qPCR techniques.

Research group comprising Team 1: Dr. Joao Pessoa, and Dr. Angelo Jose Magro

​

• Team 2: Involved work on viral carcinogenesis and cancer biology work which aimed to identify the role of the human virus Epstein-Barr virus or EBV in the development of human cancers so as to better understand the underlying biology of malignant tumors.This work involved work with human embryonic kidney cells or HEK293 cells and was involved in aseptic cell culture manipulations, cell assays, and the plating of cells as well as these cell's transfection and migration assay and analysis with Luciferase assay. This work also involved RNA extraction, cDNA production and RT-qPCR for analysis and quantification.

Research group comprising team 2: Deilson Elgui de Oliveira (PhD- PI), Barbara G. M. Coan (PhD. Fellow), Brayan Sayed Lopez Castaneda (PhD Fellow), Bruno Felipe Ramos Caetano (PhD fellow), Beatrice Adrianne Silva Jorge (MSc Fellow)

​

• Team 3: Work on population genetics of Brazilian mosquitos using Next-Gen Sequencing involving nucleic acid extraction, library preparation, sequencing, and data analysis as well as PCR and plasmid cloning.This work also involved an Illumina sequencing and work using CRISPR-Cas9.

Research group comprising Team 3: PI Paulo Ribolla, PhD

​

• Team 4: Work on genetics in the management and conservation of forest species within the Brazilian Forestry Germoplasm Bank at Ihla Solteira by determining genetic differences between different species of endangered trees and plant organisms using amplified microsatellites, as well as work on genotyping using an automatic sequencer ABI3130xl.

Research group comprising team 4: Prof. Dr. Celso Luis Marino, Prof. Dr. Mario Moraes, Dr. Bruno Rossini, PhD students (Mayra, Marcelo, and Camila)

​

At the end of the festival I was there to answer any questions on the research, any international-subject queries and engage the public in a discussion of my travels, experiences, scientific knowledge gained, and every other aspect of the international experience.

​

​