At the Heart of Research

A few days ago I was able to present the research I had been conducting over the past year in the bioinformatics dept at City of Hope at a neurology lab meeting in front of a group of around 10 very accomplished scientists and departmental heads. For my project I was working on using a neurology lab's set of experimental data and analyzing it from a purely mathematical/computational way, implementing machine learning methods. Though biology was integrated into the information science side throughout the project, the scientists in the lab meeting looked at our computational analysis and derived biological relevance. The purpose of our analysis was to prompt thought and spur further experiments to validate the trends that we found in the data. I have been looking forward to this meeting since I began this project. Seeing the biological, therapeutic applications of the work that I have been pursuing was very rewarding.

Presenting my work in front of such an esteemed group of scientists was an honor. The experience again confirmed my aspirations of becoming a bio-medical scientists. Throughout the entire hour-long meeting, the room was buzzing with input from every person within the room. I could feel the intellectual energy in the room as ideas, arguments, hypotheses, questions, and more were thrown out and answered. When the hour came to an unfortunate end, my mind was nearly bursting with all the new thoughts and angles that were presented by the brains in the room. THAT is what I love about research. The discussion, debate...presenting ideas and having them challenged or inspiring tangentially related ideas... the collaboration of minds is truly at the heart of research. The advancement of our society depends on the combination of its members' brain power.