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By Jessica Gillies
Bhatia
A bachelor of science with honours and co-op in biochemistry wasn’t Simran Bhatia’s original goal.
When she arrived at UVic, her plans for a chemistry degree changed.
“I really liked biology as well, so I felt biochemistry was the best medium for me. I knew that I wanted to stay in science, and biochemistry is one of the most novel sciences. A lot of upcoming biochemistry research is related to health research, so bringing chemistry and biology together takes on a new perspective in science,” she says.
Deciding to enter the co-op program in biochemistry and microbiology changed Bhatia’s path again, she says.
“I think my experience would have been really different if I hadn’t done co-op. It helped shape not only what I want to do in the future, but also how I decided to do my honours—everything kind of fell into place after I did co-op. If I hadn’t done it, I would have ended up with either a completely different degree or not nearly as great an experience.”
Bhatia credits biochemistry professor Paul Romaniuk with supporting her and encouraging her to do the honours program. After her first co-op work term at the University of Alberta, where she worked at the National High Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Centre, she spent three work terms studying zinc finger proteins with Romaniuk at UVic.
“As you can tell from the name, they’re kind of shaped like fingers, so they’re good for grabbing and holding different mechanisms in the cell. They’re really important for signaling, and in the future, if we know more about them, it’s possible they could be used for drug therapy. Dr. Romaniuk wants to know how they work, how they bind and how they interact with different things in the cell, so he basically gave me a protein and told me to alter parts of it and see what happened,” she says.
“When I first started my degree, I had no intention of doing my honours, so it was kind of funny how it worked out that he asked me to stay and continue working on the same project, and now he’s going to publish this work that I did in the honours program and co-op. His asking me to stay and convincing me that I could continue what I was doing and do it well was a huge factor in my success.”
After taking this semester off, Bhatia will head to the University of Ottawa Heart Institute in January to begin her master’s degree.
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