Postdoc Features

Written by Siru Liu, Ph.D. I was born and raised in Chengdu, China—a large city known for its pandas, a chill attitude towards life, spicy cuisine, tea culture, and folk music. In high school, I got involved in biomedical informatics research at West China Hospital, where I witnessed the transformative… Read More

Written by Katie Young, Ph.D. When I was in preschool, I was sent home with a teacher report labeling me as a “happy, busy, and curious” student. While that combination of words seems to describe a handful of a four-year-old, I would say the phrase still does an excellent job… Read More

Written by Matthew Plishka, Ph.D. Every year, over 100 billion bananas are consumed globally. In 2021, the average American ate 26.87 pounds of bananas a year, or roughly 100 bananas. Bananas are everywhere. The vast majority of those bananas, especially in the United States, are Cavendish bananas, which since the… Read More

Written by Bhawik Jain, Ph.D. I grew up in a small town in the northwestern part of India which is surrounded by beautiful hills where we speak mostly regional languages and Hindi. I still remember that during my childhood I always wondered how small living organisms evolved into complex… Read More

Written by Jeanne Ishimwe, Ph.D. I was born and lived in Rwanda for the first 17 years of my life before moving to the United States to pursue a college education. For most of my childhood, I suffered from chronic bronchitis but had limited access to proper medication. As a… Read More

Written by Rev. Aaron Stauffer, Ph.D. After a months-long intentional process of planning, recruiting, and gathering congregants to listen to one another about their core values and most pressing community issues, the church invited our local council member to hear what we discovered about our congregation and community. We had… Read More

Written by Kortney Melancon, Ph.D. When most people think of the periodic table, they remember a large poster hanging toward the front of a lecture hall. They might imagine a looming, asymmetric expanse of symbols that remained relevant from year one to year four. Even though this massive chart on… Read More

Written by Loic Fort, Ph.D.  Some people are driven from a very young age toward a specific career path; it can be related to the education they received, their parents’ jobs, or the heroes they used to admire. However, nothing destined me to become a scientist. When thinking about the… Read More

Written by Michelle Perdomo, Ph.D.  Like many kids that grew up with immigrant parents in the US, the first language I learned was not English. By the time I started grade school, I had some working knowledge of English, but I was still placed in an ESOL (English to Speakers… Read More

Written by Benjamin Gold, Ph.D. Music has always been very important to me. I learned how to read with a sing-along book, and have relied on music to help me process and express my emotions for as long as I can remember. When I learned that scientists were harnessing… Read More