Bowen Jiang

Hello! I am a recently-graduated senior from Mira Loma High School in Sacramento, California and an incoming freshman at Stanford University. I first began my journey in science when I was very young by raising butterflies (the study of which I still pursue as a hobby), but I found my current interest - algae - after my fifth grade birthday, when my parents bought me a microscope as a present. I quickly began a habit of making weekly trips to local ponds and lakes to collect water to explore at microscopic proportions, and I began to cultivate their microorganisms and use them in simple experiments. In my 9th and 10th grade years, I worked with Dr. Gordon Wolfe at California State University, Chico on a variety of studies with temperate marine microalgae, as well as a few independent projects. I started my first Experiment project in the spring of 2017 to help me fund my own research into green algal genetics, through which I hoped to improve DNA barcoding methods for identifying species and samples of green algae without the need for expensive or complicated microscopy methods. This project is still ongoing as I work on editing and analyzing the sequences I've obtained from my lab work, and I hope to keep updating this project for the next few months at least.

As I continue my studies and research at the undergraduate level, I hope to further my work with the Experiment platform by creating and sharing new projects here. In addition, I aspire to introduce other high school students to this site so that they can realize their personal projects or paths of scientific exploration that previously, like me, they might have been unable to pursue on their own. Most of all, I look forward to seeing and contributing to a future of exciting science in which everyone who is interested can participate!

April 2017