Greetings from sunny Be’er Shevah.
My name is Sam and I am a rising senior studying microbiology at the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. I am on a program called Onward Israel, which provides highly subsidized internships to students from around the world who want to experience working life in Israel.
And my name is Leyla I came from Turkey and my major is molecular biology and genetics. My school requires that students do a mandatory internship for 30 days. And I searched many programs and university in my field. And then Prof. Itzik accepted me to their lab group.
Our project for the summer has two components. First, we are working to build the lab’s GC-MS metabolite library, so that they can analyze their metabolomics samples with a greater level of accuracy than they currently can with an outside library. Second, we are both learning a variety of anaerobic culture skills and are using them to help support the lab’s massive experiment looking at how bacteria form communities to degrade fibers.
We are enjoying the family like community that this lab has- from weekly breakfast meetings to an evening BBQ, dairy farm visit, and algae collection trip. Outside the lab, we are taking in all that Israel has to offer- from attending concerts at the Negev museum to traveling to places as far away as Eilat, Kinneret, and Jerusalem.