Michael J. Konefal

My First Research Topic:

In my sophomore year, soon after joining the Science Research program, I had decided that I wanted my research to be related to CRISPR-Cas9, a subject which I found very interesting.  With some effort, I was able to narrow the scope of my research from just CRISPR-Cas9 to the medicinal applications of CRISPR-Cas9.  I eventually decided on researching the applications of CRISPR-Cas9 on Huntington's Disease.  However, moving forward into my junior year, I was reading more and more articles on the subject, but was still unable to find a mentor who was close enough to me that I would be able to work with them.  This lead to me changing my topic drastically.

My Current Research Topic:

After not being able to find a local mentor for my previous subject, I started my research from scratch, deciding this time that I would prefer to do research related to computers.  I began by researching AI Ethics, but quickly decided that that was not the subject for me, as it was not as interesting as I had expected it to be.  I then moved on to cybersecurity.  Cybersecurity was far more interesting than AI Ethics, so I researched encryption until I eventually asked my father to be my mentor in my research of cybersecurity.  He agreed, and helped me to narrow my research topic to the use of digital twins across industries.