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Maria is a thesis researcher supervised by Dr. Vasilis Promponas at the Bioinformatics Research Laboratory. Her work involves refining position-specific scoring matrix searches using PSI-BLAST on Ubuntu to identify motifs and proteins that share evolutionary relationships across databases. Conclusive insights are derived by contrasting conserved functions that differentiate between eukaryotic and prokaryotic genomes.

Undergraduate Researcher

Maria took on the task of verifying and updating road addresses in Cyprus’ Digital Twin, categorized the various road types, and continuously refined map labeling for utmost accuracy under Andreas Georgiou’s mentorship for twelve weeks. She explored the uniform standardization of attribute data using MMQGIS and OpenRefine's clustering algorithms to merge similar addresses and integrate the non-standardized attribute table with a designated reference CSV database through shared join fields. The total workload summed up to 80 hours.

Project Support Specialist

Maria inquired into synthetic-aperture radar data, contributing to developing a system automating the selection of area-appropriate, industrially manufactured foundations for diverse soil compositions under Ignasi Perez Arnal’s mentorship for twelve weeks. She determined the fundamental equations that needed parameter optimization and depicted the automated system's decision process using a flowchart. She pinpointed a set of parameters that define areas suitable for the intended foundations. Using ArcGIS, she illustrated the selection of these areas in a natural park in Spain. The total workload summed up to 144 hours.

Geotechnics Intern

Maria received an internship offer from the Development Control and Enforcement Branch, responsible for overseeing urban planning and regulatory compliance within the city. Due to unforeseen external circumstances, the internship was ultimately not realised.

Urban Development Intern

Interns were exposed to contract negotiations, project coordination, and cost management through the Tanzanian Government Building Agency under Marco Nyangasa’s mentorship for four weeks, and performance was evaluated through weekly written assignments. The total workload summed up to 13 hours.

Project Management Intern

Participants assisted doctoral student Emilie Lafleche at the Lunares Research Station’s lunar analog habitat with project GRAVELS, where experiments were designed for additive manufacturing of geological sampling tools for lunar conditions. Maria modeled, printed, and stress-tested the instruments and collected data to optimize filament and filling pattern selection. She assisted with project TEMPL, where meteorite powder fertility-testing experiments were designed. She collected data for viability assessment of spinach and lettuce seedlings growing under controlled laboratory conditions.

Research Assistant

Trainees practiced conducting literature reviews and preparing respective research proposals concerning programming, machine learning, and computer vision applications for medical robotics.

Research Trainee

Trainees practiced conducting literature reviews and preparing respective research proposals concerning imaging and behavioral assays for cellular and molecular systems and cognitive neuroscience.

Maria shadowed a team of scientists, focusing on identifying genes contributing to cardiovascular diseases, for 55 hours. She familiarized herself with preparing and executing gel electrophoresis and centrifugation processes. Maria understood the complexities of DNA analysis, linking genetic markers to diseases, and the potential avenues for developing targeted therapies. She also learned about laboratory protocols, equipment handling, and safety procedures.