ASE PhD student Denise Ong second student ever from Singapore to be selected for prestigious training at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

ASE PhD student Denise Ong

"Alamak! I am the second student from Singapore?"

Denise Ong, an ASE PhD student from the Genomic and Ecology of Eukaryotes laboratory (the GEEK lab) lead by Asst Prof Adriana Lopes dos Santos, has been awarded with a scholarship to participate in the prestigious Microbial Diversity training course run by the prestigious Marine Biology Laboratory at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US.

The course offers an intense immersion into the world of microbial diversity and teach how to discover, cultivate, and isolate diverse microorganisms while using the latest state-of-the-art imaging, data science and DNA sequencing techniques. Several prominent microbiologists and microbial ecologists from MBL and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are and were instructors of the course which was awarded in 2013 by American Society for Microbiology (ASM) for its contribution to the field.

Since 1971 the course has trained a generation of outstanding microbial ecologists (20 students are selected from around world per year) and according to MBL Denise will be the second student from Singapore to attend the Microbial diversity course. Besides bring a breath from this side of the world, Denise will be able to present and discus the work she is developing at ASE and foster future collaborations. Denise PhD is focused on how the plankton biodiversity influences the marine biological carbon pump, a natural process responsible from removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and burring into the deep ocean waters. 

 

Written by Adriana Lopes dos Santos