This week we have a special edition of our senior science student spotlight, highlighting our visiting international student, Rana Petre from Erasmus University College (EhB) in Brussels (Belgium).

Thanks to a recent student exchange program between their college and Bellevue University, Rana worked at Bellevue University as Science Lab Assistants for 12 weeks and gained practical experience aligned with her Erasmus studies in the area of biomedical and pharmaceutical lab technology.

EhB each year has ‘international days’ and for the past three years Dr. John Kyndt yearly gives a presentation to the second-year students about the ongoing research at BU, as an invitation for students from EhB to join for an internship. Dr. Kyndt is originally from Belgium and earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Ghent and build the connections with EhB through former colleagues that are Faculty at that University.

Rana is graduating this Spring with her Bachelor’s degree in Pharmaceutical Biological Lab Technologies!

Rana has been involved in several projects during her research stay at BU and spent countless hours performing DNA extractions and completed over a hundred library preparations for Illumina and Oxford Nanopore sequencing. In particular, she has played a crucial role in helping complete the skin microbiome sequencing project with one of our senior students Kaziah Terrell (featured last week!).

The results of this study provide further insight into the ability to alter or manipulate one’s skin microbiome and has potential applications in clinical and forensic microbiome studies. Rana will be presenting her final thesis on this topic in Belgium in June this year!

Rana is continuing her education in the next two months with an additional internship at AB InBev, which is global brewing company with approximately 400 beer brands produced and sold throughout the world. Their flagship brands are Stella Artois, Brahma, Beck’s, Corona, and Leffe. Rana is looking to continue her career with a position in a chemical or pharmaceutical company after graduation.

We wish you the best of luck Rana, we are thankful for all the hard work you put in and for the scientific and culinary knowledge you shared with our local students!