A UNIVERSITY of Worcester student has secured a prestigious summer internship at one of the most reputable research institutes in the country.
Kristijonas Raibuzis, who studies Biology, will be working with the Francis Crick Institute, in London, as part of a team researching how coronaviruses package their genome. He was one of only 20 people accepted onto the placement programme.
An international student from Lithuania who has just finished the second year of his studies, Kristijonas will be working with post-doctoral researchers on a specific project related to coronaviruses.
A virus is a small particle which has a genome, but if it’s not packaged correctly, it will not be able to infect and spread.
The researchers want to understand more about this process and how viruses can infect new hosts so effectively. This knowledge could help to further improve vaccines or antiviral treatments.
Kristijonas hopes the experience will help him develop as a scientist, using different laboratory techniques, but also allow him to see if a researcher role is what he wants to pursue as a career.
“It’s connections, it’s getting skills and seeing how it is,” he said.
“They offered a wide variety of opportunities for learning. It’s going to be training for a few weeks and then it’s going be working independently with their supervision. I can learn what techniques I want, so I will be able to find a better job and improve my dissertation.”
The placement starts at the end of the month and will last nine weeks and Kristijonas is now busy doing some background reading to prepare.
