{"id":2489,"date":"2025-10-20T09:57:36","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T16:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/sciencecoop\/?p=2489"},"modified":"2025-10-20T14:36:48","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T21:36:48","slug":"priyas-co-op-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/sciencecoop\/priyas-co-op-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Priya’s co-op journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Priya (she\/her) spent a full year working as a molecular biology research assistant in the\u00a0<\/span>Molecular Genetics Lab with\u00a0the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>in Nanaimo.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The biochemistry student helped manage a coast-wide fish health surveillance project involving thousands of samples. She also contributed to pathogen challenge studies, sterile containment work, and bacterial growth curve experiments.<\/p>\n

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Contributing to fish health studies<\/h2>\n

Priya took on responsibilities that supported nationally funded fish health and pathogen surveillance projects.<\/p>\n

When a senior technician went on leave, she stepped in to manage sample processing, ordering reagents, and overseeing quality control for a major study, which helped prevent project delays.<\/p>\n

She also trained new students, created long-term control samples that will support diagnostics for years to come, and generated high-quality RNA and cDNA for viral discovery sequencing, ensuring critical data could move forward for disease monitoring and policy development.<\/p>\n

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Essential research<\/h2>\n

“In this photo, I\u2019m transferring RNA samples that have been normalized to a specific concentration into a new plate, where I\u2019ll add VILO with reverse transcriptase.<\/p>\n

This step, followed by a PCR thermal cycler reaction, synthesizes cDNA from the RNA. The resulting cDNA is then used for gene expression analysis on the Fluidigm system.”<\/p>\n

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Supporting marine studies<\/h2>\n

“This co-op gave me the chance to apply what I\u2019ve learned in my Biochemistry courses at UVic to real-world molecular genetics research.<\/p>\n

It strengthened my technical skills in qPCR, RNA extraction, and molecular workflows while also developing leadership, problem-solving, and teaching experience through training new students and managing major projects.”<\/p>\n

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The impact of co-op<\/h2>\n

“This experience not only deepened my understanding of molecular biology but also shaped my academic focus and future research interests, making my learning more meaningful and connected to real scientific impact.”<\/p>\n

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The co-op advantage<\/h2>\n

I\u2019d tell other students that co-op is a great way to gain hands-on experience, learn new skills, and make a real impact.<\/p>\n

Be proactive, ask questions, and take on responsibilities\u2014you\u2019ll learn more than you expect both in and out of the lab.”<\/p>\n

Find more science co-op experiences here.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Priyanka (she\/her) spent a full year working as a molecular biology research assistant in the Molecular Genetics Lab with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada in Nanaimo. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":856,"featured_media":2481,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-journeys"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/sciencecoop\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4910\/2025\/10\/story-priya-kahlon-microbiology-1440x8101-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/sciencecoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/sciencecoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/sciencecoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/sciencecoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/856"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/sciencecoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2489"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/sciencecoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2504,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/sciencecoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489\/revisions\/2504"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/sciencecoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/sciencecoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/sciencecoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/sciencecoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}