Katherine Bassil, a final year biology undergraduate with the American Lebanese University, made contact with Edinburgh University through Jane Haley (Edinburgh Neuroscience) to set up a lab placement at the Roslin Institute in Rona Barron's lab with final year Eastbio PhD student Kirsty Ireland.

During her brief visit in January Katherine gained a wealth of lab experience in techniques including western blotting, immunohistochemistry, neonatal brain harvest, whole brain organotypic slice culture, confocal and light microscopy. Katherine worked alongside Kirsty on her PhD project investigating amyloid seeding in the brain organotypic slice culture model. Katherine enjoyed the experience immensely and has since secured a research Masters project in cognitive and clinical neuroscience at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. The placement set up with the Roslin Institute benefitted both Katherine, giving her hands on lab experience, and Kirsty, providing her with student supervision experience and also raised the international profile of the institute.

If you would like to host an undergraduate student Jane Haley regularly has a number of students looking for placements.