Students at the University of Guam's College of Natural and Applied Sciences are excelling in their efforts in applying for off-island summer research and study grants. Several undergraduates will be gaining valuable training at research institutes and universities in Boston, Washington DC, Missouri, and Costa Rica.

Eduardo Biala, a biology major, will be working in the Department of Biology at Northeastern University in Boston as part of an interdisciplinary research team. The program, Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) supports the training of ten students for ten weeks over the summer.

Biala believes that the skillset he has been acquiring while working part time propagating plants at the Tissue Culture Laboratory, a collaborative effort between UOG and Guam Department of Agriculture, was what made the difference.

USDA’s Specialty Crop Block Grant Program provides funding for the Tissue Culture Lab. “Education and Training of Local Workforce Through Tissue Culture Production of Healthy Bananas on Guam" is the title of the grant overseen by Alicja Wiecko.

“Learning lab skills in tissue culture plant production, such as using an autoclave, aseptic techniques, testing plants for viruses through ELISA and preparing growing media allowed me to include these very unique skills on my application to REU. The faculty at Northeastern told me that this knowledge gave me a competitive edge over other candidates,” said Biala.

The ten students from around the country that are accepted into the REU program will receive room, board and a generous stipend. They will be working with an interdisciplinary team of scientists investigating research questions from varying perspectives. Biala has requested to work with the scientists investigating mechanisms of UV-induced skin repair on Axolotl Salamanders. “I was drawn to work on this project because I could not find very much information on it and thought it would be a novel research topic,” explained Biala.

Working at REU will help Biala decide what direction he will take in his professional career. He is considering medicine, but he is also interested in conducting biomedical research. He hopes the opportunity to travel to the US mainland and work on cutting-edge research with scientists in diverse fields will give him the experience to make an informed decision.