nekolove

Maryam Binti Mohamed Hanafiah
E-mail: m.hanafiah@nekoai.com

Education

2008-2009	School of Pharmacy, University of London	MSc Pharmacognosy
2004-2008	Nanyang Technological University	BSc (Hons) Biological Sciences

Work Experience

June-September 2009	School of Pharmacy, University of London
As my dissertation project I investigated the anti-plasmid properties of several plant extracts and compounds. I performed crude extractions of several Plectranthus species and tested them, together with other extracts and compounds, against strains of E. faecalis, E. coli and S. aureus to determine their antibacterial activity and minimum inhibitory concentration. Then I tested the extracts against plasmid-containing E. coli strains to determine whether they inhibit plasmid conjugation.
August 2008	Viscion Media (Singapore)
I was a Beauty Intern for a month in August. I helped with writing beauty product reviews and had reviews of graphic novels published in the October issue of Smitten magazine. I attended product launches and assisted with fashion shoots. I also performed various administrative roles such as handling phone calls and mailing packages.
January-April 2008	Bioinformatics Institute (Agency for Science, Technology and Research)
As my honours project I ran molecular simulations and energy calculations to investigate how human defensin molecules dimerise. I used APBS to determine the dimer conformation with the lowest static binding free energy and visualise the electrostatic surface potentials of the dimers, and AMBER to simulate dimer formation and determine the conformation with the lowest dynamic binding free energy.
May-August 2007	Centre for Economic Botany, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
During my internship at the Centre for Economic Botany, I was mostly assisting with a Chinese medicines book, and helping with photography and image editing for a project on the history of Cinchona and cross-referencing historical articles about Cinchona with specimens and images. I also helped to update the Ethnomedica database.
July 2006	St Francis Methodist School
I taught English at a summer camp for Taiwanese students from the ages of 8-18.
August 2004 – January 2006	Roberts Piano Company/Kawai Music School
I taught piano and music theory part-time to children from the ages of 7-10.

Volunteer Work

2002-2003	Cheshire Home for the Severely Disabled (Singapore)
I volunteered at the Cheshire Home as a companion for two years. I helped in charity sales, and assisted with feeding, day excursions, and general companionship.
2002	Kandang Kerbau Women’s and Children’s Hospital (Singapore)
I volunteered for a year at the children’s playroom. I specifically helped with the arts and crafts.

Technical Skills

Comfortable with natural product extraction, aseptic technique, bacterial plating, MIC testing, immunoassays, and gel electrophoresis methods.
Familiar with analytical spectroscopy, PCR theory.
Comfortable with using the following computational biology tools: PyMol, VMD, RasMol, AMBER, APBS.
Computer skills: Linux/Unix, MS Office, SPSS, Photoshop, HTML, CSS, Bash.

Languages Spoken

English (written/spoken): fluent
Malay (written/spoken): fluent
French (written/spoken): working knowledge

Interests
I am interested in ethnobotany, plants, and music. In my spare time I also make felt animals.

My CV in PDF format (opens in new window).

After graduating in 2008 I interned at Viscion Media for a month, and the graphic novel reviews I wrote for October's book reviews were published in Smitten Magazine. Unfortunately Viscion Media has now closed down, but I have scans of my reviews:
I did the layout and some graphics for my school's life sciences magazine in 2004