I grew up in Seattle, Washington, and did my undergraduate studies at UC San Diego. During my undergraduate studies under the Bioengineering department, I developed an interest in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, and I hope to continue pursuing my interests here at Columbia.

During my undergraduate work, I did research with Dr. Trey Ideker where we worked on integrating computational predictions for microRNA target-sites and human transcription regulatory networks. Our reasoning lay in the fact that biological networks often exhibit something called a “network motif” which are interaction patterns that recur throughout the networks. We believed that stronger predictions for microRNA target-sites would participate in one or more significant network motifs, as well as be part of the same biological processes. The results of our analysis showed that certain prediction algorithms were more effective in making predictions with these characteristics than others.

After graduating in 2007, a spent some time at a biotech company working with Machine Learning tools to build quantitative models of hormone-like proteins for therapeutic purposes. The results of our work were applied to a drug-discovery pipeline for a biopharmaceutical company based in San Diego.

I’m very excited about my move to New York and Columbia. I know that the area will provide unparalleled opportunities to meet new people, and try new places, foods, and activities. In my free time I like to explore bookstores and shops, as well as snowboard, cooking and karaoke.