I am a recent PhD graduate from the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto. My doctoral research was in nutrigenomics and personalized nutrition. I conducted a unique intervention study using a randomized controlled trial to investigate the impact of disclosing genomic information related to nutritional response on dietary intake behaviour. My project required me to study nutritional genomics, dietary assessment, health behaviour change and clinical trials methodology in great detail and I absolutely loved my doctoral program (I’m willing to bet I was the happiest PhD student in my department).
I am currently arranging my plans for a post-doctoral fellowship and am still involved in genomics research in my old lab. In addition, I am a sessional lecturer for a 4th year undergraduate course at U of T, “Nutritional Toxicology”. This position has been extremely fulfilling and I feel the start of a new passion brewing within. I am taking this instructor training course not only to improve my research-related computing skills, but also to develop myself as an educator.
My life at the moment leaves me little free time, but I do manage to fit in activities outside of my laptop and the lab/classroom. I am a proud member of the Toronto Lithuanian Youth Choir and travel around North America performing Lithuanian songs at heritage events.
What I found hardest about using Git the first time was…
I have been using Git/GitHub for about 6 months and am mainly using it with a colleague to coordinate a project we are working on. It has made collaboration so much easier. When I was just starting with Git I had trouble with adding/committing changes effectively. I would make many edits to many files and then do one large add/commit. This wasn’t very useful to our project’s log and I realized it was more effective for me to commit smaller chunks of edits more frequently.