San Diego, California, United States
Hello, my name is Nathaniel Wood and I am a recent graduate from UCSD looking for a position in biotech or research. I recently obtained my master's in biology and also have a bachelor's in microbiology and a minor in literature - writing, all from UCSD. My main research interests lie in the microbiome and virology. I am interested in learning and studying the various interactions between microorganisms, with larger organisms, and with the world around them. It is just fascinating to me how such simple organisms can have such diversity and carry out complex functions and interactions. My actual lab experiences lie in genetics, virology, and biochemistry. I have volunteered in the Pride Lab to help develop a new assay for assessing how effective phage are at infecting bacteria. For my master's program, I worked on jumbo phages, protein quality control in yeast, and metabolic pathways in yeast. As an undergraduate, I took multiple courses in chemistry, genetics, and microbiology. As such, I have a good wealth of skills that I am eager to hone and grow. Outside of the sciences, I am passionate about communications and writing. Most scientists I know shun these aspects but for me, they are important and just as interesting as they are how we communicate our works to others and thus inspire new generations of scientists. My interest in this area led me to Model United Nations where I worked for 3 years on building a new conference for college students to compete in besides competing in and staffing other conferences. Lastly, I just love to write and create new worlds and ideas. This, plus my interest in communications, is what led me to pursue my minor in writing.
I am currently a volunteer at the Pride Lab at UCSD. I am assisting in comparing the traditional efficiency of plating assay used to test phage efficacy against a novel ATP assay used by the lab.
For the second part of my master's program, I worked on various projects for the Flagg Lab. My original project was to characterize missense mutations in the aro7 gene in order to understand protein quality control in yeast. However, after some work on developing a liquid co-culture assay, I helped elucidate the pathway behind the supposed SUMOlyation of PRS2 in yeast in conjunction with both the Flagg and Wilhelm Labs.
For my master's program, I initially worked on characterizing genes in the nucleus forming bacteriophage Goslar for the Pogliano Lab. I studied three uncharacterized genes in this phage in order to uncover what roles these genes played.
I was elected to oversee the second iteration of our collegiate Model UN conference, SGMUN II. In this role, I managed the conference budget, developed a timeline and schedule for the conference, contacted and registered school MUN teams, chose staff members, hosted weekly meetings with my leadership team, booked rooms to host the conference, coordinated with local businesses for discounts to those competing or staffing the conference, maintained a webpage for the conference, developed topics for the conference, and bought merchandise and supplies for the event.
I was later promoted to be the director general of SGMUN I. In this role, I was the main point of contact for the participating schools. I coordinated payments, provided them with assistance, and maintained the website for the conference, as well as procured conference supplies and assisted the secretary general with anything else that needed to be done.
I was the crisis director for two of our high school conferences, TritonMUN XXIII and TritonMUN XXIX. In this role, I trained staff in how to run a specific type of committee called crisis committees, led the crisis committee staff for both conferences, and helped develop the crisis committees for these conferences.
For one summer in high school, I volunteered at Twice Treasured. I sorted through donated products and put them out for display.