Grace Chen
Grace is an incoming senior at Redmond High School and interns in the Moritz Lab.
Grace discovered her passion for STEM early on in her high school career when she took her first advanced math and science courses. She became fascinated by scientific thought, falling in love with how science does not only require logic, but creativity as well. She began to explore its many different sides, picking up skills in programming, bioinformatics, database research, basic lab techniques, and more. Through Microsoft’s DigiGirlz conference and the Northwest Association for Biomedical Research’s Camp BIOmed, Grace had the opportunity to job shadow many STEM careers, use databases, discuss bioethics, and learn about the computational side of biology.
Grace also attended a youth leadership conference hosted by the Asian Liver Center at Stanford University about raising awareness for hepatitis B (HBV), a disease that disproportionately affects the Asian and Pacific Islander community. The conference inspired Grace to found a chapter of Team HBV at her own high school. This summer, Grace was selected to attend the conference again, this time as an assistant team leader. She was also a member of the Team HBV International Outreach Committee.
When Grace was given the opportunity to intern at the Institute for Systems Biology, she was extremely excited to have the chance to further explore her passions for health and medical science and discover how she could utilize her skills to make a real impact.
Grace began interning in the Moritz Lab in April. Her first project was a program that manipulated transition lists for mass spectrometry to make them compatible to import into Skyline, a software used to graph and analyze the data. Her project aided in the efficiency of analyzing mass spectrometry data by eliminating the need to manually manipulate hundreds of rows of information. This summer, Grace has learned about and used various techniques to study drug interactions and protein biomarkers. She did her project on using thermal proteome profiling and mass spectrometry to discover new treatment methods for tuberculosis.
Synchronized swimming, orchestra, Science Olympiad and, of course, spending lots of quality time with her cat are just a few more things Grace enjoys doing in her free time. Grace will soon swim her 9th year with the Seattle Synchronized Swim Team. Her team has placed multiple times at nationals, including a bronze medal in the 16-17 age group category. She actively advocates for the sport and was elected to serve as athlete representative for the Pacific Northwest Association for Synchronized Swimming, acting as a voice for the athletes in her region at the annual United States Aquatic Sports Convention. Grace is a violinist in her school’s Chamber Orchestra as well. Some of her achievements include qualifying for state competition with her sextet and being selected to participate in All-State Orchestra.
In the future, Grace hopes to pursue a career in medicine. She is confident that her time at ISB has been an invaluable learning experience that will help her profoundly in her endeavors.
