I enrolled in the Single-cell Transcriptomics + Habenula Neuron Characterization VTP to learn about scRNA-seq analysis with the intention of applying it to my own research to characterize olfactory neurons in mosquitoes.

The project was super edifying: I learned a lot about the principals—and nuance—of scRNA-seq analysis and its applications to cellular neurobiology. This VTP was really critical in better understanding the insights that scRNAseq can offer, and in evaluating it’s strengths and weaknesses in strategizing how to best use it in my PhD project.

I also found the VTP workload/schedule to be accomplishable/flexible, which was important given my time-commitments as a graduate student.