Anna McCartan, from Leawood, KS, is pursuing a MS degree in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University College Cork in Cork, Ireland, and is representing District 5710 very well.
Here is Anna’s August report in her own words:
“Hi Mr. Graham,
Yes, the summer has been great! I really enjoyed experiencing some warm, sunny weather after a year in drizzly Cork.
Remote work has gone well—I have a supervisor whom I meet with roughly once a week to check in, but otherwise I can work from anywhere, which is nice. The thesis is coming along! I’ve found some interesting patterns relating Age, BMI and pregnancy status to the relative abundance of Lactobacillus species, as well as overall microbial diversity. A major challenge of this project has been merging data from 17 different projects into a single table of classified bacteria and their individual abundance values. Because each project had a distinct aim and methodology associated with it, there are batch-level differences that I have had to consider and correct for. Each project also differs in terms of what data is available (for instance, the range of ages that it covers, or whether age was recorded at all). However, even after accounting for project-to-project differences, there are some strong associations. With over 2000 samples in the database, there is a lot of statistical power to work with.
At this time next month, I will be wrapping up the writing portion and finalizing the thesis for submission on October 1st. I’ll then give an oral presentation in mid-October, and I will also have the opportunity to hear from some of my classmates.
The next month is likely to be a bit of a grind with getting everything complete and edited, but I think I am in a good place to be able to consolidate and contextualize my results now, which is exciting!
All the best, Anna McCartan”
Thanks to District 5710 leadership for funding the Global Grant Scholarship program. It is always exciting to have an excellent scholar studying abroad and representing District 5710.