Alfiere Victoria Peña is a third-year biology student at Mariano Marcos State University. She experienced being an intern at UPLB – Museum of Natural History from February 12 to March 15, 2024, with her chosen track: Mycology and Microbiology rendered her service with a duration of 2 weeks per track. She photographed related to nature since she is in High School this is also the reason what excites her to use microscopes to study microorganisms. She loved going on nature trips like beaches, falls, mountain and anything that surrounded her with nature that is why she also got interested in free diving.
It was still pandemic when she was an incoming college student. She believes that in the Philippines we need more epidemiologist doctors. During these tough times she thought about entering BS Biology. Watch scientific documentaries especially microbiology related. Her internship experience here at MNH was a great opportunity for her.
She gains laboratory techniques to work on research under the NICER-Caves Project. Handling cave microorganisms by media preparation, streaking, identification, gram staining, DNA isolation and purification, and the molecular part: Pipetting, DNA extraction and PCR. The DNA and PCR products run in gel electrophoresis and visualized in UV trans-illuminator.
In mycology track, she never imagined would appreciate their taxonomic classification. During their field work she enjoyed looking of macro-fungi. It helps her to identify by looking their characteristics in person. She saw different species of macro-fungi present in Mt. Makiling. By re-inventory she can familiarize where does the specimen obtained, date of collection and the collector from the given data. She might be considering studying Macro-fungi distribution in the Philippines since there are still fewer collections/studied from other parts of the Philippines.
After 200 hours of work, Alfiere was influenced to pursue her hobby of capturing nature and become a biologist researcher. She is grateful to have the opportunity to be part of the UPLB – Museum of Natural History.