Age: 34
BS computer science ’05
Principal investigator, assistant professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York)
My Greatest Accomplishment
I was awarded the prestigious Gates-Cambridge Scholarship from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to pursue a doctoral degree in human genetics at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.
How Drexel Helped
Receiving the Gates-Cambridge Scholarship could not have occurred without the many Drexel faculty and fellow students who have shaped my interests, challenged my thinking and opened doors of opportunity. Drexel’s co-op program gave me the opportunity to do cutting-edge genetics research in a world-class lab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Where I’ll Be In Five Years
The long-term goal of the research in my lab is to use computational and genetic approaches to characterize the genetic architecture of Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, with the ultimate goal of finding a cure. It is my hope that in the next five years, we will have better understanding of the cause(s) of neurodegeneration and translate some of our findings into new therapies.