Reflection

This research experience contributed to my development as a researcher quite a bit. I was able to see the lifespan of the project from almost the beginning through obtaining and presenting data. This gave me perspective into the process of science that I did not get through the 10-week summer research experiences that I have done. I was also able to get experience presenting the results from this project to a variety of audiences. This work was presented on a poster at URCAD, the 17th Annual Plant Biology Minisymposium, and UMBC's CNMS Symposium. At URCAD, I spoke mostly to people who might not know any biology, at the Plant Biology Minisymposium I spoke to professors and graduate students in the field of plant biology, and at the CNMS Symposium I mostly spoke to biology undergraduate and graduate students. In order to successfully present my work, I had to tailor my explanations to the different audiences based on their level of background knowledge. I also received practice describing my research in words, since I wrote a thesis on this project, which was published in the UMBC Review in 2017.

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GCSP Connection

This is a multi-semester research project that fulfills the GCSP research experience. This research project is not well connected to Engineering Better Medicines (though another research experience where I worked on transcription factor binding specificity is better connected). This project is moderately connected to Enhancing Personalized Learning, since I have presented my research to people with a variety of backgrounds and had to learn how to personalize the explanation of my work to my audience’s background.

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Discussion of research ethics contributed to developing integrity and perspectivism. Experimental design and analysis of alternative hypotheses contributed to developing realistic vision. Working with other people in the lab contributed to teamwork, while the frequent failures inherent in doing research contributed to persistence and flexibility.

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Learning objectives

• Express ideas in an organized, clear, concise, and accurate manner. I have had experience doing this with a wide variety of audiences when presenting at conferences and talking to people on campus.

• Write clearly and effectively. I demonstrated this by applying for a URA twice, and writing a paper on my results.

• Effectively connect multiple ideas and approaches. I do this when analyzing data and troubleshooting. I connected the two lines of research I have worked on when planning future directions for my research here.

• Formulate questions and hypotheses within the discipline. I do this when planning follow-up experiments and when planning future directions for my research here.

• Understand how practitioners think within the discipline and view the world around them. Since I worked in labs that used very different methods of science, I have gained an appreciation for the worldview of small-scale and large-scale science.

• Predict, recognize, and weigh the risks and benefits of the project for others. I determine the potential applications for my projects and use them in explaining what I study and why it is important.

• Show understanding of the criteria for determining what is valued as a contribution in the discipline. I gained this by critiquing papers for flaws, as well as by writing one of my own.

• Demonstrate growth from basic to more complex thinking in the discipline. Over my time in the lab, I moved from performing tasks for other projects, to managing a project of my own, and now I am part of 2-3 different projects in the lab to differing extents.