Student spotlight: Erin's Living Lab biodiversity internship

Earlier this summer, Environmental Sustainability at York (ESAY) welcomed two Living Lab biodiversity interns, Erin and Millie, to the ESAY team. They were tasked with researching and enhancing engagement of our campus biodiversity with the wider University community.

Following their internships, we caught up with both Erin and Millie to find out what they learned from their experiences.

Erin, who is going into her 3rd Year as a Biology student, was working as a Biodiversity Research Assistant. We asked Erin to share more about her internship:

Tell us a bit about what you were doing as a Living Lab intern.

During my internship I was working on making an interactive map of the birds on campus, which was done using R Shiny, a framework for creating web applications. I did as much of the data tidying in R as possible so that the scripts could be reused in future with new/updated data.

Tell us something you have enjoyed about this internship.

I enjoyed learning more about the species on campus, in particular about the wide variety of birds! I also enjoyed working with the other people in the office and learning about their research focuses.

What have you learned from this experience? 

I’ve improved at using R and learned to use Shiny, as well as improving my independent working.

Finally, what are you looking to do in the future?

I am going to continue studying for my biology degree, and in the future I hope to work more in ecology and environmental research.

A huge thanks to Erin for all her hard work over the summer. We look forward to sharing her outcomes with the wider University community soon!