Rafael Picazo Espinosa is a PhD student in Ecology and Environmental Sciences at Marine Research Institute, Klaipėda University, Lithuania. He was awarded with an STSM grant to visit the CIIMAR – Centro Interdisciplinar de Investigação Marinha e Ambiental, at Universidade do Porto, Portugal.
During his research stay, Rafael had an insight into the EcoBioTec group, learning new Bioinformatics skills that allowed him to study in depth the biodiversity of fungal and bacterial samples from the Baltic Sea and Curonian Lagoon with a combination of RStudio, qiime2, picrust2 and iTOL tools, alongside plotting packages vegan and ggplot. Rafael had also the opportunity to participate in laboratory work, learning to use Iodonitrotetrazolium Violet for the determination of petroleum metabolisation by bacterial strains isolated at EcoBioTec group, and adapt a biosurfactants assay to study the production of bacterial biosurfactants during the petroleum biodegradation.
The new skills learnt with the guidance and assistance provided by Prof. Dr. Ana Paula Mucha, María Bôto and Rafaela Mendes, and the observation of the dynamic working environment of the CIIMAR have made his research visit a very stimulant and enriching experience, which he recommends to other researchers, and that will lead to further collaboration between the two groups, providing him with new tools and a renewed perspective to his studies on Synthesis, characterisation and application of cellulose aerogels for aquatic oil spills clean-up.
