I am honored to be one of the recipients of the Schull Yang International Experience Awards. I am the first in my family to attend college, and the award was very important in supporting myself during my research internship this summer.
I am a student in the Faculty of Science, with a double major in Biology and Computer Sciences with an emphasis in computational biology. I plan to pursue a career in the medical field after graduating from 苹果淫院. Thanks to my experience this summer, and the support of the award I received, I am one step closer to my goal of applying to medical school upon graduation.
This summer, I worked in the lab of Prof. Enrico Petretto, Associate Professor at DUKE-NUS medical school. Prof. Petretto鈥檚 research focuses on applying computational techniques to dealing with clinical issues. The research lab I joined focuses on the systems-level integration of genetic, functional genomic, and phenotypic data to identify causal determinants and pathways of complex traits and disease, focusing on cardio-metabolic, inflammatory, and neuropsychiatric disorders. For this project, I developed machine learning models based on numerous biomarkers detected from the blood samples of patients who suffered from heart disease and found the importance of ranking biomarkers. By doing this, we can hopefully find the determinant biomarkers which may predict risk of heart attacks and protect patients in advance by simply testing their blood.
As I dream of becoming a doctor, my main learning objective for this international experience was to communicate with doctors and researchers in different countries, to better understand their demands and see the opportunities in this field. Prof. Petretto has labs in universities in different countries, and working in this lab made me aware of potential improvements through the development of algorithms which could perform well in a global health setting.
I am a student born and raised in China, I study in Canada, and I worked in a highly multicultural lab this past summer. All this helped me realize the importance of thinking about the implications of what we do not only for our immediate environment, but for everyone who shares this planet. To be specific, when we are constructing a model based on a dataset collected from one specific region, we may preprocess data in such a way that could reveal insights about other populations, and then people in other regions may also benefit from the study.
I have learnt a lot from this summer research experience, and being awarded the Schull Yang International Experience Awards has lightened my financial burden, and allowed me to focus on my interest. The MIEA founders鈥� generosity has inspired me to help others and give back to the community. I hope one day to be able to help others achieve their goals just as they have helped me.
Once again, I鈥檇 like to thank Mr. Schull and Ms. Yang for this award that helped me earn credentials at Duke-NUS medical school, and brought me one step closer to my goal, as I remain committed to the health care field.
