Abi Lowe BSc Biology, 2016

My placement was at the National Botanic Gardens, Wales in Carmarthenshire and I lived at home during the year. It covered plant biology but with an element of zoology too as I was looking at using DNA barcoding techniques on pollen to investigate the foraging patterns of honeybees.

As well as my ten month placement in the Gardens, I got the chance to go to Borneo on a field course as my supervisor is also a lecturer at Aberystwyth University. I jumped at the chance to get involved and even got to see orangutans out there

The Gardens cover a wide area so first I had to study all the plant species and find out where different kinds were found. It was very worthwhile as I’m now applying for different kinds of plant biology PhDs and I know my experience will be very useful in my application.

I also attended an international conference in France as part of my work on honey bees and was one of the few undergraduates to take part. It was a great opportunity to find out what research is really like and talk to a lot of people working in many different areas. I learned a lot.