Katelyn Kelchner name Outstanding Senior in Allied Health
Katelyn Kelchner, a Health Science major in the Medical Genomics and Counseling option, was selected as Outstanding Senior in Allied Health by department faculty. Kate was named as the College of Science and Technology's Honor
Graduate, the student with the highest GPA at the fall 2020 commencement
ceremony. Prior to receiving her BS in Health Sciences at Bloomsburg
University, Kate earned a BA in English, magna cum laude, from Millersville
University. Kate has been active in undergraduate research in genomics at
Bloomsburg University. In Dr. Abby
Hare-Harris's laboratory, she conducted a project on the "Development of an
Automated Pipeline for Identifying Poison Exons in the Human Genome” Kate used
bioinformatic research techniques to extract relevant genetic variants
from large genomic datasets in order to assess their pathogenicity. Kate's work
was supported by an URSCA grant. She presented her work at the College of
Science and Technology Research Day sharing honors for Audience
Favorite. Kate also conducted research annotating newly
sequenced Drosophila genomes in the Pathways
Project, a collaboration with the Genomics Education Partnership sponsored
by the University of Alabama, Washington University in St. Louis, the National
Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health. Kate was selected to
be a teaching assistant for the consortium. In this role she assisted
undergraduate students from participating universities in research
projects via virtual tutoring sessions. Her work was supported
by a Bloomsburg University Professional Experience Grant. Kate is currently enrolled in the 3 + 2 master's program and will continue to conduct research with her mentor Dr. Abby Hare-Harris.Katelyn Kelchner