Tag: teaching

Bioinformatics Opportunity for UMass/Five Colleges Undergrads

Update: the position is filled! Please check back in January 2021…

The DeAngelis Lab is seeking an undergraduate research assistant to collaborate on research investigating microbial evolution in response to environmental warming. The goal of this project is to describe adaptation of soil bacteria to long-term warming using computational (e.g. comparative genomics) and laboratory approaches (e.g. microbial physiology). The ideal candidate has a passion for microbiology/microbial ecology & evolution, strong problem and critical thinking skills, and a desire to learn new techniques. While lab experience (including coursework) is desirable, previous experience is not required. Training will be provided for all required tasks. The candidate is expected to contribute to on-going projects and design and execute independent work.    

***Underrepresented and minoritized students are highly encouraged to apply.

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The Jellybean Diversity Activity

One of the activities that is very common for teaching diversity or microbial diversity is the candy activity. In this activity, a sample community of candy is explored and used (and later, eaten) to make measures of diversity in a simple (and delicious) form. I elected to use jellybeans, since the known diversity would help us do this quickly. In this case, our richness is 49 (if your species definition includes flavor).

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