| What is your most memorable childhood experience? | When I was 8 years old, my mom took me to her lab at work for the first time in my life. I recall how an invisible world revealed itself when I took a glimpse into the microscope. Human cells prospered in the nutritious media managing thousands perhaps even millions of operations every second and the complexity of it all fascinated me. From this very moment, I was interested in understanding human biology to improve the field of medicine. |
| What immediate family member do you closely identify with and why? | While I share many traits with many of my family members, I most closely identify with my mother. She nurtured my passion for biology from an early age by taking me to her lab and allowing me to observe how she conducted experiments. Because she exposed me to this fascinating world of science, my house was littered with various scientific magazines such as Scientific American, Nature, and Science that I read on a regular basis. Each magazine was a series of stories to be unfolded before my eyes that seemed to be straight out of a sci-fi movie such as how disabled man with a severe spinal cord injury was able to lift a can of soda with the help of a brain implant. For these reasons, I most strongly identify with my mother as she developed significant parts of my identity throughout my life and one of the main reasons why I am interested in becoming a researcher in the future. |
| What character traits do you admire in an individual? | I admire someone who has a remarkable ability to apply his or her knowledge in intriguing ways to make the world a better place through strong initiative. Moreover, I value an individual who is open to many different points of view and is also willing to admit having a misguided understanding of a certain perspective. With the use of all of these traits, I value someone who is able to implement the use of his or her intellect ethically and for the progress of humanity. |
| What is the funniest thing ever to happen to you? | During my physics class in high school, one of my flip flops spontaneously broke and was unfortunately unusable for the rest of the day. I then came up with the sophisticated strategy of using a ridiculous amount of tape to stick it back onto my foot. One of my classmates then commented on how me fixing my flip flop is like him trying to get his life together. A few hours after class, the tape holding my flip flop together fell apart and then I saw my classmate and jokingly remarked, “There goes your life again.” Right at that moment, he bumped into a random girl carrying a cup filled with iced soda and turned into an icy and sticky mess. I still hope that he gets his life figured out to this day. |
| If time and money were not an issue, where would you travel and why? | I would travel to China because of their rich cultural history and rapid technological development. Recently, I have been fascinated by videos of Shanghai at night and I believe that actually visiting Shanghai would be far more meaningful. Moreover, learning Chinese history was a significant part of some of the history courses I took in high school. I would like to visit China to experience it not through the textbooks I read in high school but by directly seeing China in a genuine light that can’t be described through paragraphs of text. |
| When and if you ever have children, what would you like to pass on to them? | If I was to ever have children, I would like to pass on my hunger to learn, introspective abilities, empathy, and genuine kindness to them. With these traits in mind, I would like to raise children who are not only confident and successful adults but who also have the ability to understand the difficulties of others and have meaningful impacts on the lives of many. |
