Spring semester students
The spring semester is coming to an end, and it is time to put the amazing students that interned at our lab in the past months, in the spotlight! Some known faces who have been mentioned on this website before and stayed with us for a long time, some new faces who just finished their short projects with us. Below, they all introduce themselves, and we thank them all for their great work! If you are interested in taking a research internship with us for your studies, you are welcome to contact us!
Ramneek
I’m Ramneek Singh, an exchange student from the SRM Institute of Science and Technology (India). I have been doing my last semester project/master thesis under the supervision of Hudson. My work is based mostly on the interaction of adenovirus with heparan sulphate and studying its kinetics of attachment and detachment with the host cell. The lab here is cool with really chill people who like interactions on a one-to-one basis. My area of interest resides in the fields of Molecular Biology and Genetics.
Tove
My name is Tove Karlsson and I am from Eskilstuna, Sweden. I moved to Umeå for my bachelor in Biomedicine and I have been in the lab from March until May 2024 for my bachelor project. I’ve had Hudson as my supervisor and have been working on developing a biometric platform for investigation of phage-bacteria docking. This has been done with QCM-D. I saw the site for the lab on Umu.se and have always thought that viruses are interesting things and that it would be great for my final project of the bachelor. I have found the environment and support of the lab to be very helpful and focused on me learning to do the experiments on my own and understanding how to interpret the data. I have very much enjoyed working in the Bally lab this spring.
Ludvig
I am Ludvig Florman from Stockholm. Just like Tove, I did my bachelor thesis in Biomedicine in the Bally lab. I worked with Gosia and Dario, on cloning the spike protein of SARS-Cov-2, to eventually produce virus-like particles carrying this spike protein. We made different chimeric versions of the spike, taking different domains from either the Wuhan or the Omicron variant. What I really liked about the lab was the diverse work and large projects that you do. Besides that, everyone is very helpful. I learned a lot, while having a good time in the group and the department!
Laura
I’m Laura Salinas Ruiz-Castillo here from Alcala University, Spain. Since January I have been here on an ERASMUS internship in the Bally lab, doing my bachelor thesis with Dario. I created fluorescent coronavirus particles and did some first experiments on tracking their movement on live cells with the advanced TIRF microscope. I really liked the combination of both lab work and advanced computer work to process the data, and learn about all the biophysical theory that comes into play with particle tracking studies. It was really cool that I could represent the group with a poster at the TRC Day 2024!
Sofie
Sofie Bechaouch here, and old and new ERASMUS student from the Hanze Hogeschool (University of Applied Sciences) in Groningen, the Netherlands. After an internship with Kerstin last year, last winter semester I returned to do my bachelor thesis in Biology and Medical Laboratory Research. I just now finished my work with Lifeng, on cell sloughing caused by the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). I used both the wild-type and a recombinant version of RSV with the fluorescent protein DsRed, to characterize infected cell clusters. It was exciting to make new discoveries on viruses, in a lovely group. I signed up for a master in Ecology in Umeå after the summer, so, needless to say, I really liked it here and the group made me right at home both times!