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Genomics offers unparalleled opportunities for scientific discovery and career growth in medicine, agriculture, and biotechnology. The Plant Genomics: Anytime, Anywhere program is designed to be highly flexible, allowing students to engage in research activities at their convenience, regardless of their ability to be physically in the lab. We actively identify, recruit, and train motivated undergraduates, showing them doors to graduate programs and industry positions. The Ou Lab provides collaborative or independent undergraduate projects to bridge the gap between students’ native curiosity about real-world problems (like environmental challenges to crop production) and professional training in plant genomics.
Below are several projects led by undergraduate researchers in the lab. If you are interested in learning more about our undergraduate research and exploring opportunities, please contact Dr. Ou with your CV and research interests.
Kuppan Subramanian (2023, Sophomore, Molecular Genetics) self-taught bioinformatics in Summer 2023 and performed TE annotations in multiple grass genomes using our high-performance server in Linux command lines. He characterized TE content variation among LTR retrotransposon superfamilies and their potential contribution to genome size evolution. He presented a research poster at the 2023 MolGen Open House event.
Tianyu "Sky" Lu (2023, Sophomore, Computer Science Engineering) was proficient in coding and Linux command lines when joining the lab. He took on the challenge of restructuring the TIR-Learner program for annotating Terminal Inverted Repeat transposons in eukaryotic genomes by: 1) moving most programmatic file operations to memory; 2) accelerating using multi-threading on pandas dataframe; 3) adding a new TIR search engine by integrating TIRvish; and 4) updating to the latest dependencies. The overhaul of the program resulted in the release of a new version of TIR-Learner. Tianyu also delivered an oral presentation at the 2024 Ohio Supercomputer Center Research Symposium. Tianyu also led the development of RandSeqInsert for the simulation of TIR insertions and deletions in artificial genomes.
Meera Rajagopal (2023, Sophomore, Molecular Genetics) has been engaged in independent research since the fall of 2023. She learned bioinformatics and the Linux command line to reanalyze transcription data of maize under various stress conditions. Meera was able to quantify TE expressions using whole-genome sequence and reduced-representation libraries. She also led freezing stress treatments and tissue sampling in the lab. Her research outcome resulted in poster presentations at the 2024 MolGen Open House, the 2024 Ohio Supercomputer Center Research Symposium, and the 2025 Maize Genetics Meeting.
Undergraduate Alumni
Undergraduate Alumni
Tianyu "Sky" Lu, 2023, Sophomore, Computer Science Engineering
Kuppan Subramanian, 2023, Sophomore, MolGen
Melwan Izem, 2023, Sophomore, MolGen
High School Interns
High School Interns
Elena Zhu, 2025, Junior, Upper Arlington High School.
Adeep Marini, 2024, Junior, Olentangy High School.
Saanvi Padala, 2023, Senior, Olentangy High School
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