Rosana Alves – My Fulbright Experience
One of the best years of my life began in September 2015 when I started my Fulbright Program at UC Berkeley in the lab of Prof David Drubin as a Research Student.
Before I embarked on my adventure to California, I had the great opportunity to attend the Fulbright Gateway Orientation at George Mason University, in Virginia. There I met an amazing group of Fulbrighters from all over the world and, during one week, we were prepared to study and research in the US while introduced to the wonderful cultural and history of the capital region. This was my first time in the US and this experience deeply shaped my view of America in a very positive way.
Upon my arrival at Berkeley, I fell in love with the town almost instantly. Thanks to my host family, the best I could ask for, and the amazing people on my lab, my adaptation couldn’t be easier. Located in close proximity to the city of San Francisco, Berkeley is a truly sanctuary for fine arts, culture, food and science, being one of the most intellectually stimulating places to live and study in the US. The campus is so vibrant, there are always so many things going on, that it isn’t hard to have the best time of our lives out there. At the Drubin’s Lab, the excellent training environment and the top-notch facilities helped me to successfully achieve the goals of my research project, which consisted in generating several cancer cell lines using the CRISPR-Cas9 system in order to study intracellular trafficking.