Studying Bioinformatics, Bacterial Brooklyn and the Human Brain

Angelina Volkova attended college for two years in her native Siberia before moving to Brooklyn to continue her education.

She started at Kingsborough and then came to Hunter, majoring in chemistry with a concentration in bioinformatics and two minors:  computer science and mathematics. She also worked in the lab of her academic advisor, Professor Akira Kawamura, sequencing the DNA and assembling the genome of a newly discovered bacterial strain that is found in soil, has anti-inflammatory properties, and may have biomedical uses.

The summer after her junior year, Volkova was chosen to participate in a highly selective program at MIT. There she joined a neuroscience lab that uses MRIs to compare the brains of people with autism and those outside the spectrum. Returning to Hunter in the fall, she joined Professor Kawamura on a new project – looking at soil samples from Central Park, the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, and a toxic waste site bordering Brooklyn and Queens, to see if the soil held bacteria with antibiotic-resistant genes.

She calls both Professor Kawamura and Professor Weigang Qiu, a Hunter biologist who conducts genomic surveillance of emerging infectious diseases, “fantastic mentors who’ve guided me through my Hunter experience.”

In August, as an NSF fellow, Volkova will enter the PhD program in biomedical informatics at NYU’s Sackler Institute.

“I want to be a professor who teaches, conducts research, and helps other women succeed,” she says, adding that while she found great support at Hunter, “women still experience a lot of discrimination in the STEM fields.”