In the fall of 2o17, Lauren will be a senior at Mead Senior High School in Spokane, Washington, where she is a high achieving student in both STEM and arts subjects. After training as a ballet dancer for thirteen years and playing the flute for five, Lauren combined her devotion to dance and music into color guard performing. As the captain of her school's color guard team, Lauren is actively involved in marching band competitions and after school rehearsals. Along with her participation in color guard, Lauren is a National Honor Society officer and one of the only girls in the Project Lead the Way engineering program at her school.
Lauren's favorite classes in school include those that prompt her to critically analyze the world around her. Classes such as organic chemistry and civil engineering challenged her to look at her surroundings differently than ever before. In these classes, Lauren values the hands on learning experiences such as building bridges for stress test experiments and separating different chlorophylls in thin layer chromatography.
Outside of the classroom, Lauren likes to spend time with her family and is actively involved in volunteering. Lauren volunteers at her local hospital front desk, urgent care, local elementary school, and church nursery. From assisting hospital patients to teaching young children how to read English, Lauren finds a sense of purpose in helping others. She also cherishes afternoons with her grandmother and morning breakfasts petting her Samoyed. Her joy in serving other people first drew Lauren to the field of medicine.
During her summer internship, Lauren worked on a project involving anaerobic microbial communities living under environmental stress conditions. In partnership with Georgia Jellen, she worked to understand how certain transcription factors regulate genes in Desulfovibrio vulgaris Hildenborough. Participating as an intern at the Institute for Systems Biology was an invaluable experience that showed Lauren the excitement of collaborating with other people and gave her an idea of the fascinating field of scientific research.
In the future, Lauren would like to combine her love of science, math, and engineering with her drive to make the world a better place by pursuing a bachelor's degree in bioengineering. Continuing after that, she hopes to obtain a professional degree as a doctor, pharmacist, or biomedical researcher. Through her work, Lauren strives to make a positive difference in the lives of other people, whether that be by treating patients, developing a new medicine, or learning new insight about the world.
