Reflecting on the URAP Experience and Presentation at the 2024 Undergraduate Symposium for Scholarly and Creative Work
Mina Jung April 27, 2024
Reflecting on the URAP Experience and Presentation at the 2024 Undergraduate Symposium for Scholarly and Creative Work
On April 17, 2024, I attended the annual Undergraduate Symposium for Scholarly and Creative Work to present the work I had contributed through the Undergraduate Research Associates Program (URAP).
The annual Undergraduate Symposium is hosted by the Office of Academic Programs and is an opportunity for undergraduate students to present a wide variety of research and creative work, including posters, art exhibitions, and electronic media. I had the opportunity to present the poster titled “A rigorous benchmarking of alignment-based HLA typing algorithms for RNA-seq data” under the Life Sciences category in the TCC Ballroom. The presentation encompassed the overall findings of the study as well as my current contributions to the project. It was a rewarding experience to present to judges, receive questions and feedback from them, and also see my peers’ work.
The Undergraduate Symposium culminated with an Awards Ceremony the following day at the grandiose Town and Gown. I was surprised to see a live jazz band and a full course menu provided to attendees! These provided a really nice experience that encompassed listening to descriptions of awardee’s work in a variety of categories and talking to other student writers and researchers about their work.
Overall through the URAP program under the Mangul lab, I learned a wide range of skills and knowledge relating to bioinformatics analysis and how to conduct research. While I definitely experienced a learning curve at the beginning when onboarding for the project, I was able to push through thanks to the mentorship and help from other lab members. Being responsible for installing and analyzing one tool as part of the benchmarking project was instrumental to my understanding of varied concepts, from handling packages to sending jobs to USC’s cluster to learning how alignment-based methods operated. While the URAP 2023-2024 year has ended, I look forward to continuing this project and learning more about bioinformatics as part of the Mangul lab.