Bimo Rizki Abdusshamad, a 2020 IUP Biology UGM program student, has succeeded in becoming a NIGINTERN 2023 intern at the National Institute of Genetics (NIG)/Department of Genetics, SOKENDAI, Japan, based on an announcement made on the NIGINTERN official website last March 1. After returning from the USA through the IISMA (Indonesian International Student Mobility Award) program and becoming an exchange student at UC Davis, Bimo’s curiosity about programs and opportunities for international exposure continues to increase. Bimo’s interest in and passion for coffee is very high. He feels that the potential for Indonesian coffee in the industrial world and exports have proven to be enormous. Therefore, he will also study coffee not only in the business field but also in the research sector, namely in the field of plant biotechnology which has a well-known laboratory at the Faculty of Biology UGM where Bimo is currently studying.
In early January, with the recommendation letter from Prof. Dr Endang Semiarti, M.S., M.Sc. and Nur Indah Septriani S.Sc., M.Sc., PhD, Bimo persistently enrolled as an intern at NIG (National Institute of Genetics). At the institution, he will undergo the intern program for one and a half months in the Plant Cytogenetics laboratory. The selection rate for this internship acceptance is very tight. Every year, only nine people from all over the world get accepted and will work at NIG. This year, more than 1,000 people, both undergraduate and master programs from many universities around the globe have registered, and Bimo is the only Indonesian chosen in 2023. Bimo will leave for Japan on June 15, 2023, fully funded by NIG company. Bimo thought this was a great opportunity to explore Japan for the first time, and also to meet fellow exchange program friends from Japan while he was attending the IISMA program at the University of California, Davis, USA.