Emily is a rising senior at Kentridge High School and Bellevue College. She loves to explore new topics whether in United States Academic Decathlon or Chemistry Club (where she develops chemistry lessons for elementary students). A yogi and an All-State vocalist, Emily enjoys leading her school’s Multicultural Club and acting in musicals. Emily also finds joy in assisting at senior memory care homes and working at food banks with Key Club and National Honor Society. One of her biggest challenges in high school was transitioning to running start at Bellevue College. Looking back, the stress involved was worth it; she now gives back as a notetaker for students with disabilities and has created a fantastic learning community in her biology and chemistry classes.
From an entire ecosystem to a single peptide, research takes place on endless scales and approaches.
Emily has always been interested in biology and scientific research. She is amazed at the complexity of biology and how, from an entire ecosystem to a single peptide, research takes place on endless scales and approaches. In addition, Emily is fascinated by the platform that research provides for diving into unknowns and new directions—especially in medicine. ISB gave her the opportunity to explore clinical applications of biology through the Lyme Disease project and an overview of P4 Medicine. With Lyme Disease being her main project, Emily spent most of her time working with Shannon under the mentorship of Li Tang and Yong Zhou in the Hood-Price lab. She was also introduced to the coding and data analysis programs, R and Skyline. ISB’s talks were a fun place to learn more about the changes and findings happening at the institute. As a result of these and other ISB experiences, Emily gained invaluable insights to the process, atmosphere, and future directions of biological research.
Overall, Emily is grateful to all of the teachers and scientists that she worked with at ISB. They enriched her knowledge of science in ways that she had never studied or experienced—whether that meant how to optimize a protocol, effectively read a scientific paper, or approach learning in the intensive and complex field of proteomics. Not only that, but these mentors shared their shared their stories and showed Emily show to be open minded and “dream differently.” She feels fortunate to have these takeaways and cannot wait to apply them as she pursues a path in biomedicine.
Contact: e.huynh247@gmail.com