Twenty-four undergraduate students are spending the summer conducting research.
They are called INBRE scholars and are part of the largest grant in UNMC history.
Today we meet Alyssa Marian from Grand Island, a biology major with chemistry and Spanish minors at Nebraska Wesleyan University.
Tell me about yourself. Who are your heroes?
I wouldn’t say I necessarily have scientist heroes, but rather people I look up to. Those people are the fellow students I see work so hard and achieve their goal and get into medical school and dental school, or the graduate students who are so excited and passionate for what they are working on.
What are your career goals?
My goal is to become a marine biologist. The ocean is the most diverse and unknown place in the world, and I have always been fascinated by it. Cage diving with a great white shark has always been on my bucket list, and I would really like to have a career helping the conservation efforts in our oceans.
How did you become interested in science?
I have always had an interest in science. From an astronaut to a doctor, I’ve wanted to be it all.
What do you hope the INBRE program will do for you?
What I am really hoping to get out of the INBRE program is experience. What better way to figure out whether or not I actually like doing research than by actually doing it? This program is a perfect opportunity for me to really get a feel for what a job in research might be like. Also, I am hoping that the skills I learn in this program will give me a leg up when applying to graduate programs and later jobs. And as an added bonus, it is just a really cool and interesting program and I get to study arachnids, which is something I would not have done or had the chance to otherwise.