Kristen Dienst (Undergraduate Student)
I am a third year Animal Biology student at the University of Guelph, and I have been a part time work study student in the Hajibabaei lab since January 2015. I aspire to become a veterinarian, and I am applying to the Ontario Veterinary College this year. Before coming to the Hajibabaei lab, I worked as a summer research assistant in the Pathobiology department on a project investigating collagenous lectins in horses and cattle and their relationship with innate immunity and infectious diseases. In my second year of university, I worked in the Population Medicine department on a video analysis project looking at the welfare and behavior of cats and dogs in veterinary clinics. I have also spent time volunteering at the university’s fish nutrition research laboratory, and currently volunteer at a wildlife rehabilitation centre. So far, my work in the Hajibabaei lab has involved decontamination, water filtration, DNA extraction and sequence alignment.
