Name: Munir Nur
Current Position: Software engineer, Big Data
Education: B.S. degree in computer science, concentration in computational biology, University of California, Davis
Nonscientific Interests: Cooking, hiking, reading, animals, plants, music
Brief Bio: I grew up developing a keen interest in how we can build technology to better understand the world around us. Applications in ecology and agriculture specifically intrigue me, and as I learned more about computer science in my university studies, I became increasingly eager to apply it to the natural sciences. I soon dove into computational biology and bioinformatics courses, and I was fortunate to start working with
Kelsey Wood in
Dr. Richard Michelmore's lab at UC Davis, assisting with plant–microbe interaction research. I learned how to parse research papers, relevant background information about oomycetes, and how to apply academic knowledge to approach research problems. This opportunity allowed me to perform analyses and build tools for published research papers, and I'm grateful for the experience. I'm continuing a career in the data science field as an engineer and also helping to maintain the published tools we've built.
LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/in/munir-nur
Name: Kelsey Wood
Current Position: Postdoctoral scholar, Michelmore Lab, University of California, Davis
Education: B.A. degree in biology, Reed College; Ph.D. degree in integrative genetics and genomics, University of California, Davis
Nonscientific Interests: Music, poetry, art, fashion, travel, food, cats
Brief Bio: I grew up in Boise, ID, where I became fascinated with plants, animals, and mushrooms from a young age during camping trips and in the ecological habitat of my own backyard. I attended Reed College in Portland, OR, where I had my first taste of genomics research during my senior thesis on the behavioral genomics of cichlid fish with
Dr. Suzy Renn. After graduation, I returned to Boise, where I began working with potatoes at a biotechnology company called Simplot Plant Sciences. This was my first introduction to the microscopic battle between plants and pathogens, which I found irresistibly exciting and led me to pursue a Ph.D. degree at UC Davis with
Dr. Richard Michelmore, studying the interaction between lettuce and the lettuce downy mildew pathogen. I am continuing these studies as a postdoctoral scholar and look forward to a career in plant–microbe interaction research.
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/klsywd
LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/in/dr-kelsey-wood
Learn more about Munir and Kelsey's fruitful collaboration in their
InterView.
