Mentor & Lab: Brock Wooldridge – Shapiro Lab/Raimondi-Carr Lab
Positions: 1-2 interns
Tentative dates: Summer 2025 – Lab/computer-based project, dates flexible
Project Location: Lab on Coastal Campus
Project Background: The huge size of marine invertebrate populations (e.g. abalone) has been thought to serve as a buffer against overexploitation. Nevertheless, population collapse in such species has been a common occurrence over the past two centuries. Whether such events are severe enough to increase extinction risk remains a difficult and important question to answer. This project aims to directly quantify the genomic effects of decline (e.g. inbreeding depression) in the black abalone (Haliotis cracherodii) through the analysis of ancient and modern genomes. Interns involved in this project will learn to conduct computational analyses of existing abalone datasets to identify genetic signatures of decline and natural selection in wild populations.
Intern duties: Guided by practical conservation genomics goals, interns will work closely with the mentor to learn the fundamentals of working on a computing cluster and performing statistical analysis and visualizations in R/python. Interns will also be encouraged to participate in lab meetings and events, interact with students on other projects in the department, and present their work at the end of the summer quarter.
Intern qualifications: While this project will be a good training opportunity, a bit of coding experience in R and/or Python will be needed to get started. Regardless of experience, enthusiasm for bioinformatics is a huge plus!
Do you recommend the intern(s) volunteer in your lab during Spring quarter?
Contact/involvement from before the summer is recommended but not required.