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I can still picture it clearly—the Manila casing and clunky keyboard sitting on a desk beside the window, surrounded by all my mom’s plants. That computer, a hand-me-down from family friends after they upgraded their restaurant’s system, became my gateway to knowledge I hadn’t accessed before.

I quickly became adept at Microsoft Office, teaching myself how to write advanced formulas in Excel, incorporating lookup tables and IF statements. I spent hours scouring the internet, trying to unravel the mysteries of my extended family. I wanted to know what had happened to my great-aunt Mary and to finally uncover the identity of my father’s biological father. I reached out to various sources, sending emails and following leads, but these mysteries remained unsolved—at least until DNA technology advanced over a decade later. Still, those hours of searching taught me how to follow a research trail and construct effective search strategies. My research skills were further refined as a member of my undergraduate debate team. I am grateful to the debate community for the critical thinking, problem-solving, and analytical abilities I developed during that time.

My time in the Peace Corps expanded my technical abilities even further. During training, I received pamphlets covering topics from computer science. Upon arriving at my assigned school, I found a newly donated set of 20 desktop computers. I was responsible for setting up, testing, maintaining, and teaching students how to use them. Through hands-on experience, I learned about hardware, often swapping components between non-functional computers to create one working system.

After three years of service in Cameroon, I returned to the U.S. and immediately began my master’s program in Biological Sciences. It was there that I took my first formal programming course. Over time, I assisted my advisor—who taught the course—by tutoring other students. Upon completing my master’s, I entered a doctoral program at a different university with a research plan that balanced both “wet bench” and computational work. However, with the advent of COVID, my research shifted entirely to computational methods.

Throughout my dissertation, I have written every script myself. I have become a self-sufficient bioinformatician, capable of explaining bioinformatics research to those without a computational background.

In a rural farming community, the principles of genetics are introduced early. I first observed genetic variation in the litters of free-roaming farm cats and saw the effects of cross-pollination in gardens and fields long before I ever encountered the term "genetic diversity." Eye color was the trait that first sparked my curiosity about genetics. I bear a striking resemblance to my mother, which led me to jokingly claim that I was a cloning experiment—except they had "messed up" the eyes. While my mother’s eyes were a warm brown and my father’s a steely blue, mine were green. Determined to understand the pattern of inheritance, I charted the eye color of as many relatives as I could, trying to fit my findings into Mendelian genetics. However, the traditional rules couldn’t fully explain my "baby greens."

My first introduction to epigenetics came from a documentary discussing a study that linked a paternal grandfather’s nutrition to diabetes in his grandchildren. This research, known as the Överkalix study, fascinated me—it suggested that environmental factors affecting one generation could influence the health of future ones. The concept resonated with my love for genealogy and even offered a plausible explanation for my green eyes. Rather than being a direct inheritance from my parents, my eye color likely resulted from a unique combination of multiple epigenetic factors that regulated the loci for eye color.

In high school, I aspired to become a nurse, fascinated by the complexity of the human body. My paternal grandfather nurtured this passion, sharing his medical experiences with me—one of my fondest memories is our enthusiastic discussions about the mechanics of his urostomy pump. During my undergraduate years, I shadowed medical professionals and worked as a caregiver in a group home. This firsthand experience exposed me to the realities of short staffing and the business-driven nature of healthcare. I realized that while I was deeply committed to health and well-being, a patient-facing role would not be the right fit for me.

My passion for public health remained strong during my Peace Corps service, where I incorporated health-related topics into my computer science and math lessons and actively participated in HIV awareness and testing initiatives. While my graduate research was not directly clinical, it had significant implications for human health. During my master's studies, I investigated Meiotic Silencing of Unpaired DNA in a fungal organism—a process related to one in mammals that ensures proper chromosome pairing during meiosis. Errors in this process contribute to various genetic disorders in humans. During this time, I also taught anatomy and physiology to future healthcare professionals, an experience that deepened my understanding of human biology. I distinctly remember discovering a long-forgotten bucket of preserved sheep brains in the teaching lab—an unexpected reminder of the lab’s history.

In the early stages of my PhD, I focused on a novel variant of glycolysis, a key metabolic pathway. Preparing for my oral examinations required an in-depth study of glycolysis and its disruptions, reinforcing my long-standing interest in metabolic disorders, particularly diabetes. This knowledge became deeply personal when, while completing my PhD, I took on the care of someone with advanced diabetes. I worked closely with their doctors, advocating for them and collaborated in developing a medication regimen with which the individual was comfortable and managed their condition.

For several years, I attended a strict evangelical fundamentalist Christian school where the curriculum focused heavily on reading, writing, and arithmetic. When I transferred to public high school, I was placed in the science track, which limited my exposure to artistic pursuits. However, my mother was determined that I develop creative skills. She and most of her siblings engaged in various artistic endeavors, including jewelry making, oil painting, pencil drawing, and sewing—some of which were born out of necessity due to extreme poverty.

When someone at church offered discounted piano lessons, my mother found a way to afford them, allowing me to study piano for eight years. Whenever circumstances allowed, she pursued her artistic passions, from oil painting and sewing to crocheting and crafting. She often encouraged me to take part, sometimes out of necessity—such as repurposing fabric scraps to make school clothes. One of my fondest memories is constructing a shirt from a fabric with a pastel rainbow pattern overlaid with silver stars. The fabric was discarded at the end of the school year by the home economics class. Through these experiences, I learned many of her skills, though not to the same level of proficiency.

My creative skills were also shaped by playing card and board games. While many people associate games with analytical skills, such as counting cards or calculating point values, they also require creative thinking. Often, an unconventional approach can help a player overcome obstacles and achieve their goal more efficiently. My mom and her family are avid card and board game enthusiasts, and through years of playing, I developed the ability to see how different dynamics within a game connect, blending both analytical and creative thinking.