Congratulations to our six Phage Foundry undergraduate researchers who presented at the Arkin Lab Spring Semester Undergraduate Poster Session!
The semi-annual poster session was hosted by co-investigator Adam Arkin’s Lab at the Innovative Genomics Institute at UC Berkeley on Tuesday, April 29, 2025. During the poster session, Phage Foundry undergraduate researchers from both the Arkin and Mutalik Labs had the opportunity to present their research findings, share their work with a wider audience, and receive feedback from peers and other research staff.
These poster sessions provide a reliable platform for undergraduate researchers to receive recognition for their work and constructive feedback from colleagues and experts. Poster sessions are also a valuable opportunity to improve research and presentation skills, both of which are crucial to success in graduate school and STEM careers. Thank you to the Arkin Lab for hosting and continuing to host these important sessions.
Quality undergraduate research experiences are only possible with quality mentors. Thank you to Avery Noonan (LBNL, Arkin Lab), Mohamad Alayouni (LBNL, Mutalik Lab), and Denish Piya (LBNL, Mutalik Lab), for serving as research mentors and empowering our undergraduate researchers.
Posters
Phage Foundry undergraduate researcher Cristina Prieto (UC Berkeley, Arkin Lab) presented a poster titled “Neural Network Architecture for the Prediction of Phage-Host Interactions.”
Phage Foundry undergraduate researcher Jonathan Ngai (UC Berkeley, Arkin Lab) presented a poster titled “gLMs as Genomics Features for Phage-Host Interaction Prediction.”
Phage Foundry undergraduate researcher Krish Patel (UC Berkeley, Arkin Lab) presented a poster titled “Phage-Host Interaction and Microbial Community Phenotype Prediction.”
Phage Foundry undergraduate researcher Madeline Svab (UC Berkeley / LBNL, Mutalik Lab) presented a poster titled “Semester in Review | Spring 2025,” summarizing their research projects, involvement as a mentor for the Berkeley Lab Director’s Apprentice Program, and experience participating in NASA’s Bioreactor Design Competition.
Phage Foundry undergraduate researcher Ryan Johnson (UC Berkeley, Mutalik Lab) presented a poster titled “Knockout of non-essential regions of P1 phage genome for genetic screening against Dub-Seq and RB-TnSeq Libraries.”
Phage Foundry undergraduate researcher Taylor Chan (UC Berkeley, Mutalik Lab) presented a poster titled “Engineering phage tape measure protein to module tail length and study its role in infection.”
Congratulations to our undergraduate researchers for a successful and productive Spring 2025 poster session!