Fountain Valley
Fountain Valley High School (Graduating; University unselected)
A few summers ago, I had the opportunity to experience scientific research firsthand. After expressing to my math mentor my interest in conducting research, he introduced me to a series of fascinating problems in bioinformatics, and I soon began coding programs in Java, at first to explore and understand the problems, and then to address each one more directly. I was excited to be making some promising progress, even as a few weeks later I began to arrive at the more demanding problems. Java programming was relatively new to me then, and there were a few points where I struggled for hours with the more complex algorithms, such as those that dealt with the dyad symmetry of palindromic DNA sequences. I wrote an abstract and created a presentation stating the purpose, data, analysis, and conclusion of my research, which I then presented before my mentor and a large audience of professional volunteers.
It was not until attending an intensive, three-week residential computer science course offered by the Northwestern University Center for Talent Development program that I was able to complete my research project with the new knowledge and experience I was quickly developing. Ultimately, I the summer program greatly improved my Java skills and provided tremendous help to my bioinformatics research.
Since then, I’ve completed several research projects in bioinformatics and computational biology and won several awards from local and collegiate science competitions. I’ve partaken in research under the supervision of my school’s research teacher, a professor at CSULB, and a professor from UCI. In the previous summer, I published my first research manuscript on palindromic sequences in the SMAD4 gene in the Journal of Experimental Secondary Science. In addition, I’ve written a few research manuscripts that I will eventually submit for publication and I’m currently in the process of designing the first ever Human rhinovirus database to aid in searching for a common cold vaccine (somewhat of a Holy Grail in virology).
The spectacular field of bioinformatics continually attracts my undying passion with its goals of understanding the last frontiers of science, such as genetics, by applying computational sciences and discrete stochastic mathematics. I plan on pursuing a career that deals with this particular biomedical science, which truly is the way of the future.
My short term goals include building on my current research projects and applying to summer research programs and internships to enhance my experience in bioinformatics. As a career choice, I see myself becoming a physician-geneticist as I aspire to help and heal others with both physical and genetic remedies. Genetic disabilities tend to affect people throughout their whole lives and a better understanding of genomics is the way of the future in aiding those with genetic disorders.
Through directly remedying patients and conducting research in bioinformatics, I wish to aid society by innovating the future of healthcare through bioinformatics. One of my lofty ambitions is to instigate the technological integration of the healthcare field with biotechnologies such as bioinformatics. I see a future in which physicians are knowledgeable in technology and would store patient records (including genes) on universal online databases. With these electronic databases for individuals, doctors and other healthcare specialists may work more closely with pharmaceutical companies and researchers in not only detecting and curing genetic disorders but also creating personalized medicine.
