Undergraduate Institution: Washington University, St. Louis
Fellowships: Beckman Graduate Student, National Science Foundation (NSF)
Current Position: Post Doctoral Fellow- NYU

I decided to attend the Watson School for a number of reasons, which have only been reinforced since coming her. First, the research here is truly first-rate. I’m continuously amazed by the impact of problems that get worked out, despite there only being about 50 labs on campus. Also, broad fields of study are represented in this small community, particularly in cancer research where labs don’t simply study cancer as a model to research, but also try to understand a broad set of model organisms from yeast and plants to mammalians, and apply basic knowledge of biological systems to understand how cells function and why they dysfunction. Second, I chose the Watson School because there is an unmistakable atmosphere of collegiality on campus, where it’s not surprising to see Nobel prize winners sitting at lunch or having a drink with graduate students. Finally, there are opportunities to broaden the scope of research, blurring the lines between biology, chemistry and physics. These interactions flourish at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory where neuroscientists, physicists, geneticists, cancer biologists and computational biologists all share lab spaces, in addition to interacting with scientists visiting for conferences.