User:Spm32

Background

• I hail from the sleepy suburbs of Katy, TX. But, my itinerant family embraces an eclectic culture, having lived and traveled between 11 countries and 20 states (to date). So, every year, when first day packets ask me to summarize myself in a single box, my father repeats his mantra, “We’re citizens of the world.” So, I pencil in a new box – for “Pangaean.”

Current Academic Interests

• During my years at Duke, I intend to study biomedical engineering and cultural anthropology in order to improve medical technologies’ cost-effectiveness and affordability for underserved communities.
• Ultimately, I intend to pursue a MD/PhD in hopes of becoming a teaching physician/research practitioner.
• Before this summer, I felt that my interests resolutely lay in tissue and biomolecular engineering. But, a summer research internship in imaging physics at the MD Anderson Cancer Center converted me from cells to wires in just a few months. So, I’m excited to see what other curve balls these next four years throw at me!

Current Extracurricular Interests

• During my senior year in high school, I hosted public health seminars for inner city school districts. So, I’d like to continue my public health crusade, either by continuing seminars in Raleigh or by writing on health for a local paper.
• After hearing about the calamitous repercussions of colony collapse disorder, I kindled a now passionate love for bees. So, I began beekeeping with my environmental science teacher’s personal hives, and I even grafted new hives this past year! Now, I’m in the process of joining the Durham County Beekeeper’s society and will continue to keep the hives in the Sarah P. Duke Gardens.
• I spent a large part of my free time tutoring and mentoring kids at my high school. And, I plan to extend my mentorship to disadvantaged students in Durham.
• During my high school summers, I performed research for a variety of labs– from biomolecular to systems biology to bioinformatics to medical physics. At Duke, I definitely want to continue biomedical research, and I intend to discuss possible avenues with Dr. Mark Palmeri.
• This past year, I served as a chair of the Relay for Life and spearheaded a local 5K fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. I’m currently also remotely directing next year’s race and advising American Cancer Society representatives on starting other state-wide community fundraisers.
• Of course, I plan to de-stress with Chopin, Liszt, and the like on the piano, and I don’t intend to cure my chain-watching Netflix addiction any time soon.

NAE Grand Challenge Article - HW1

Rise and Demise of Bioinformatics? Promise and Progress, Christos A. Ouzounis, PLOS Computational Biology, updated 26 April 2012, accessed 14 August 2014 (Advancing health informatics Grand Challenge)

Favorite Demo - HW2

Although I viewed a hefty number of demos, my favorite was the Volume Visualization one. This is because my area core interests in BME currently lie in imaging, particularly MRI and US/PAUS. So, seeing how MATLAB can help clearly visualize and manipulate these images excites me. I also found it interesting that you can highlight certain areas of concentration in the image and enhance or alter those areas by changing their color or dimension. For example, the demo highlighted certain face colors and edge colors. The tutorial also applied meshgrid, building on earlier tutorials. So, I thought it was especially cool how the volume visualization features in MATLAB, as demonstrated by this tutorial, so directly applies to medicine and biotechnologies. For example, I can see applying this to tumor or other ROI visualization in my future work.