My work in the lab has had its ups and downs during the past six weeks; some days are very productive while others are not so much. Working on a computational project in a lab that doesn’t do very much computational work has presented some difficulties. For example, there have been times when I am stuck on how to use a software or how to format data to input into a new software, so I had the opportunity to step outside my comfort zone and approach people in other departments for help with these questions.
Although slower than I initially expected, I am making progress on my project. I am learning that research projects are rarely as straightforward as they seem when first described. There have been setbacks along the way, from working with the wrong genome to looking for incorrect epigenetic marks. However, my project has made more progress recently and I have learned so much about the vast range of computational tools available, and how to use them. One thing I have figured out this summer is that in computational biology it’s much harder to just go through the motions without knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing. This is something that I have enjoyed about my project so far, because I the methods I’ve been using have pushed me to understand the data that I am working with and think about how I can manipulate that data in various ways to reach the next step of my project.
