From our big alumni:

• “My experiences in BIG (laboratory skills and research experience) have helped me get two jobs and be accepted to a graduate program”

• “My pipetting skills, learnt in BIG, is something I use as I work in a chemistry lab. It sounds small but you wouldn't believe how many of the other materials scientists have never used a pipett. Team work, managing expectations and reporting results to managers are all skills I use every day at work and practiced during my time with BIG”

• “My involvement in BIG through iGEM and the SLM program is the main reason I was hired after graduation (my boss even told me so afterwards). The hard skills like Gibson, flow cytometry and qPCR continue to be useful in my biotech job, but what really makes a difference are the soft skills. As journal club lead I learned how to talk about complicated scientific ideas and find answers in the literature when I had research related questions. My presentation skills developed rapidly as a SLM and board member- something I didn’t really practice much in my classes. Lastly, being a part of an all student research team is something completely unique to BIG in my experience at Davis. School should be a time to make mistakes and learn from them in a safe environment, and BIG gave us the freedom to do that. I use these skills every day at work as a researcher, and never would have learned them in a textbook”

• “BIG helped me gain related lab skills like equipment usage, assay development, protocol development, project planning, and growing cultures. I got experience with soldering, the raspberry pi platform, and 3D printing”