Research experience during the Covid shutdown

The advent of COVID-19 changed lives drastically. From businessmen to farmers, from students to daily wage workers, every life was impacted in inexplicable ways. I am an international Master’s student of Biochemistry at TU Dresden sharing my research experience here. Constant discussions with my father about science and the complex life around us shaped my interest in Biological Sciences. It instigated me to a pursue biology as a major in high school and zoology during my Bachelor’s. The final crucial year of my Bachelor’s was immensely affected by the Corona outbreak. There was no allowance for practical hands-on courses in research labs for almost an entire year. This motivated me to work on an online project titled “Bioinformatics characterization of Albuminome in tumour progression”.

I got experience in using a plethora of bioinformatic software, but my ultimate goal of performing wet-lab experiments was not fulfilled. Consequently, I got rejected from the labs I applied to due to a lack of research experience. Currently, I’m working in a biophysics lab to characterize and purify tumor fusion proteins. I am grateful for the opportunity of a postgraduation fellowship at the TU Dresden and after my Bachelor’s.

I joined a lab where I’m currently gaining experience that I could not get my hands on during the Bachelor’s. The shift towards all-online courses had its own merits and demerits in my opinion. The online classes could not foster the interest of the students and the exams and tests merely became a formality. The wet-lab experience was denied to us budding researchers in this formative time of our careers which is always going to showcase in our CVs. At the same time, the pandemic made me appreciate the importance of technology in our daily lives and research. It has brought my mind to combining my research with software and programming languages. The corona outbreak made the common mass appreciate the long-term undermined efforts of scientists and doctors.