acknowledgement.tex

% ************************** Thesis Acknowledgements **************************

\begin{acknowledgements}      

First and foremost I would like to thank my mentor and supervisor Kiran R. Patil for his insightful guidance, constant encouragement, and boundless optimism, both during my PhD at the MRC Toxicology Unit in Cambridge and also throughout our time at EMBL in Heidelberg. Second, I am grateful to my undergraduate biophysics professor at UC Davis, Volkmar Heinrich, for advising me through my first steps towards graduate school and encouraging me to attend Chalmers University of Technology. Looking back at my time in Gothenburg, I am indebted to my previous mentor and supervisor, Aleksej Zelezniak, for inducting me into the world of metagenomics and encouraging me to stay in Europe to continue my graduate studies. I am also grateful to my friends, colleagues, and mentors from the iGEM2018 Chalmers-Gothenburg team, for exposing me to the exciting field of synthetic biology. I would also like to thank Eduard Kerkhoven for introducing me to the field of genome-scale metabolic modelling, as well as Daniel Machado for his patience and willingness to share his wealth of knowledge regarding model reconstruction and community simulation. Throughout my PhD I had the pleasure of collaborating with a variety of interdisciplinary researchers who enriched my edification. I am grateful to the enthusiastic discussions regarding auxotrophies with Markus Ralser and former lab members including Clara Correia-Melo, Jason Yu, and Mohammad Tauqeer Alam. Additionally, I would like to thank Chrats Melkonian, Ghada Yousif, and Achuthan Ambat, for the long zoom calls and great discussions regarding microbial ecology, auxotrophies, and experimental methods. Similarly, I would like to thank Christian Kost, Ahmad Zeidan, and Joy Scaria for their valuable insights, feedback, and support. Furthermore, I would also like to thank two indispensable postdocs, Arianna Basile and Rui Guan, for their assistance and advice throughout our various collaborative projects. Thanks also to Luis Miguel Martins for advising me throughout my PhD. Moreover, I would like to thank all my lab-mates and colleagues: Stephan Kamrad, Nonantzin Beristain, Sonja Blasche, Anna Lindell, Nisha Marwaha, Behzad Karkaria, Naomi van den Berg, Indra Roux, Rebecca Boston, Simone Mozzachiodi, Kate Williamson, Xiaoteng Jiang, Tara Davis, Rob Bradley, Francesca Eichacker, Simran Aulakh, Aditi Madkaikar, and David Scheidweiler for their enthusiasm, moral support, and lively interdisciplinary discussion. Finally, I am deeply grateful to my family for their constant love and support.

\end{acknowledgements}