Contact: Maridith Geuder
Alan Boyle
While many of his classmates are enjoying a summer away from their studies, Mississippi State junior Alan Boyle of Starkville is helping advance research in the field of genomics--the genetic material of organisms.
The computer science and biochemistry double major is among 13 students nationwide selected for summer fellowships at the non-profit Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Md.
Boyle, a 2001 Starkville High School graduate, is specializing in bioinformatics, a field combining the study of biological data such as the human genome with the tools of computer science. A President's List Scholar, he was among three MSU students selected earlier this year to receive national Barry Goldwater Scholarships, which recognizes outstanding academic achievers in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering.
"Alan is a summer fellow in bioinformatics and has responsibilities for Web development and programming designed to present information to the public," said Jennifer Jenkins.
A TGIR technical training specialist, Jenkins said Boyle's completion of a "genomics boot camp" last week was followed by his first assignment. He was asked to develop Web pages that will assist in training both the institute's new bioinformatics analysts and external Web-site users in a specific procedure called eukaryotic annotation, she explained.
"By the end of the internship, Alan will begin to understand how TIGR goes about translating genomic sequences into practical data, what kinds of proteins are encoded by specific genes, what the proteins do, and how to analyze their organization," Jenkins said.
Boyle said he's happy to begin his internship with the application of computer science skills he acquired at Mississippi State.
"In addition, what I have learned in biochemistry allows me to understand the genomic aspects of the work and has put me a step ahead of the other bioinformatics summer fellows," he said earlier this week in an e-mail interview.
Having just completed the Web-site tutorial for annotation software, he's now working to automate part of the pipeline involved in analysis of genomic data.
Boyle said the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a part of an internationally recognized research institute is teaching him about aspects of bioinformatics he hadn't previously considered.
"Being involved in actual projects here will help me overall in my attempts to become a better researcher and to be more successful in life," he said.
Boyle is the son of Dr. and Mrs. John Boyle. As a senior at Starkville High, he was the lone state representative to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, where he won second place for a research project involving--what else?--bioinformatics analysis.