10.4 Create your CV

Estimated time: 10 min

Everyone who completes a C-MOOR project can add their experience to their resume or CV! We advise you and your students to do this as soon as possible after the end of class while your research project is still on your mind.

10.4.0.1 Resume or CV?

You may hear the terms resume and CV being used interchangeably. While both are drawn from the same information, they vary in brevity and focus.

A resume is a one-page (sometimes two-page) document of your experiences generally used for jobs outside of academia and research labs. It’s not uncommon for people to have more than one resume, as it’s best to tailor every resume to each specific role you’re applying to.

A Curriculum Vitae (CV) is an extensive document that can take as many pages as needed to list the entirety of your research and academic experience. It often includes sections that aren’t found in non-academic fields such as publications, conferences, and published papers.

Most positions will detail which they require from applicants and most colleges and universities will be able to help you build either at your library or career center. We suggest that current students and recent graduates interested add their C-MOOR research experience to either their classwork or projects section. Remember to acknowledge the contributions of your team members if applicable; this does not count against you in your applications! Here are some examples of how you might word your experiences; notice how they’re similar to an abstract in just one or two sentences:

  • An RNA-seq project: Along with a partner, examined differential expression data of the period (per) gene along the Drosophila melanogaster midgut from a published dataset (Marianes & Spradling 2013) using DESeq2 and ClusterProfiler. We discovered an elevated expression of per in the anterior region of the midgut where the primary digestion and absorption of carbohydrates occur. Our results were presented as a research poster at the 2025 Kuntz Research Day symposium and have implications for using Drosophila as a model for the connection between the circadian rhythm and metabolic disorders.

  • A 16S project: My group and I profiled the abundance of Archean ASVs in the gut microbiome from a published 16S study comparing the gut microbiota of people before, during, and after a standardized diet (Guthrie et al. 2022). As a part of this study, we created a PCoA and performed an alpha diversity analysis in phyloseq. Archean community members are often overlooked in microbiome studies; we found differential abundance in Methanobacteria between male and female participants regardless of diet and hypothesize this may be due to consumption of fiber reported by male subjects pre- and post-diet.

  • A WGS project: Public data (SRA#######) from Robinson et al. (2021) was analyzed in Galaxy using Trimmomatic, Megahit, and Krona to determine the viral abundance in samples from tap water from various North American Lakes and make comparisons to lake depth. Viral abundance was correlated with geographic distance between samples; future studies could examine if this pattern persists in samples sourced from Europe and Oceana.

Your blurb is a strong blurb when:

  •   You credit the source of your data (Citation, SRA #, Project #)
  •   You describe why your research project matters
  •   You list some of the computational platforms or software you used

Q: Will people think I am an expert in genomics and bioinformatics if I put my project on my resume/CV? I don’t want to look like a phony.

A: As a current student or new graduate, you are not expected to have mastery over any scientific domain. What you are trying to show is you have taken an idea and brought it to completion, your ability to learn new concepts and skills, and your previous exposure to research. You can explain more about your role in the project in an interview.

Q: Can I list things like R or Galaxy in my skills section?

A: You can, however we suggest being explicit in your experience and add the level at which you feel comfortable with each respective platform. Are you R (Beginner) or R (Proficient)? Can you teach someone else how to do your project? Can you perform your project with novel data? How good are you at troubleshooting? This answer may seem contrary to the previous one, but remember that other people who are listing these platforms in their skills section includes computer/data scientists (majors) and bioinformaticians (majors), so people may assume mastery. Think about it the same way you would a foreign language. Spanish (Beginner) describes a different level of skill than ‘just’ Spanish.

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