Avneel H.

“To whom it may concern, As a research associate in the Bioengineering department at the University of California Merced (UCM), I am writing to you in support of Mr Avneel Hundal and his applications for the research assistant/ associate/ scientist positions in biotech industries. Avneel joined UC Merced as a summer intern 2017 in the prof. Victor Muñoz group and I had the opportunity to supervise his research during that period. Avneel worked on the project entitled, " Developing FLAsH labelled fast folding protein-based pH sensor ". During this, he has learned plasmid transformation in bacterial cells, E-Coli cell culture, protein expressions in E-Coli cells, detection of protein traces by gel electrophoresis and protein purification by using ion-exchange and reverse phase chromatography. He has also learned to use the absorption spectrophotometer for protein concentration estimation and fluorimeter for protein characterization using intrinsic and engineered fluorescence in proteins. This project helped him to build the basic understanding in spectroscopic techniques like absorption, and fluorescence used for protein characterizations. Up to the end of the summer internship program, he had successfully expressed, purified one the protein mutant required for the project, labelled the protein with the flash dye and characterised the pH-responsive behaviour using the FLAsH fluorescence. This successful execution of the project immensely helped to build his confidence in protein expression and purification methods and its application using spectroscopic techniques. At the end of the summer, he participated in the Intra-university research presentation conference, where he presented a poster on his research work over the summer, which was well appreciated by the committee members. During the internship, I had several interesting discussions related to his research as well as science in general, and I found him a very enthusiastic individual. He was the front-line participant in any lab-related work, even though it was not directly related to research. Avneel is a talented, hardworking, well-trained student with quick learning ability and good communication skills. He has a very pleasant personality and gets along very well with his colleagues. Avneel has expressed strong desire to pursue a career in biotech/protein industry. I hope that his training and experience in Muñoz lab would help greatly in his learning mission and enhance his experimental skills and scientific understanding. I strongly support his application for protein-biotech jobs worldwide. Sincerely, Dr Abhigyan Sengupta Postdoctoral Research Scholar Bioengineering Department The University of California, Merced (UCM), USA”