Research

Domestication and Shifting Recombination Rates in Dogs and Wolves

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I am exploring the rates of recombination in dogs and wolves to explore how they have shifted since the domestication of dogs. Recombination is a process during the production of gametes (eggs and sperm) that shuffles parts of chromosomes that were inherited from different parents. This shuffling leads to pairs of traits that can now be co-inherited in future offspring. It turns out where and how often recombination happens is variable on the levels of species, populations, and individuals. As a result, these variable rates and locations can be acted on by evolutionary forces such as drift and natural selection.

Does UCLA’s Competitive Edge Bridge Program Give Underrepresented Minority Students an Edge?

UCLA offers a bridge program called Competitive Edge to help support underrepresented minority (URM) PhD students make the transition to graduate school. Competitive Edge provides workshops and programing on various topics such as fellowship application writing and navigating your advising relationship with your mentor. I plan to examine the learning objects of each component and measure how student’s confidence in those objectives after the program. I will also survey students who do not participate in the program to understand how Competitive Edge students compare. I hope to identify areas of growth and strengths of the program to increase support for incoming URM PhD students.