{"id":1003,"date":"2018-08-17T22:12:46","date_gmt":"2018-08-17T22:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/?page_id=1003"},"modified":"2018-08-22T17:50:24","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T17:50:24","slug":"priyanka-baloni","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/priyanka-baloni\/","title":{"rendered":"Priyanka Baloni, PhD"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Things we learned:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none\">\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">It is important to learn coding if you want to pursue study and research in computational biology. Python, R, and Java are all good languages to get started with<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Makes weekly to-do lists and uses them as a way to balance her FOUR projects! <\/span><\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Communication is vital in a scientific position and she uses it daily<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Her favorite part of ISB is how easy it is to talk to someone and gain expertise from an expert; people are always talking about science, not just during working hours<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Pursue whatever really interests you, and think carefully about your path. Don\u2019t let your peers persuade you into doing something that\u2019s not for you<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The most difficult part of pursuing her major in zoology was the dissections<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">She likes the computational side of systems biology because she can use various approaches to get the solution and also work on it from anywhere, like at home, which isn\u2019t a flexibility that everyone in research has<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>Where are you from? Where did you grow up? How did this affect your path to get where you are today?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Undergrad in Zoology<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Masters in Microbiology and PhD in Systems Biology<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">All schooling in India<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In high school, you have to opt for either Science or Commerce in India<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Both parents are professors in Commerce faculty and her siblings studied various streams of science (Chemistry, Physics, and Biology)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Best decision was choosing science in high school and pursuing her career in the field of Systems Biology<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">India has lesser resources that the US has for research. US has more state-of-the-art facilities as compared to India<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Originally wanted to be a medical doctor but did not get qualify via a test. If given the option to become a medical doctor now, would not because of the education time<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Came to ISB 2 years ago after meeting Nathan Price in India<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Most difficult part of pursuing a science degree was the dissections during bachelors, running gels during masters and learning programming languages during PhD <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>What are your projects at ISB?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Works with constraint-based models, making these models context-specific, multi-omics analysis, networks and statistical analysis<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">PhD was on understanding host-pathogen interactions during latent tuberculosis infection<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">My first project in ISB: Construction of rat liver metabolic model to understand effect of diet restriction and drugs<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reconstruction of human brain metabolic networks to understand the role of bile acids in Alzheimer\u2019s disease. The data for model is obtained from post-mortem brain tissue of Alzheimer\u2019s patients. They also use metabolic information from plasma samples of Alzheimer&#8217;s patients. Based on the outcome of the analysis, they are hoping to experimentally validate their findings<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">She is also working to reconstruct human placenta metabolic network to understand metabolic changes in placenta during pregnancy<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>What advice would you give to someone interested in the STEM field?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Pursue whatever really interests you, and think carefully about your path. Don\u2019t let your peers persuade you into doing something that\u2019s not for you<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Try and establish a good foundation in science and you can build on it later<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Important programing languages to learn: Python, R, Java<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>What are your short\/long term goals?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Would like to pursue her career in academics and had the opportunity to teach undergrads in UW, Seattle as part of the STEP program. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>Work environment: <\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Her colleagues are helpful and it\u2019s easy to discuss the scientific issues with them<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Works in the office at ISB but also gets to work from home, since she\u2019s focusing on the Computational side of things<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Working from home is an advantage because it is helps when she has to do lots of writing work<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Her job requires her to be good at communication, coding, science, etc.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>Favorite part of ISB:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">How easy it is to talk to someone and gain expertise from an expert <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">People are always talking about science<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Her team is very friendly<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>Fun facts:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Owns a dog, border collie mix, who was adopted from a shelter<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Doesn\u2019t have a favorite superhero, but thinks Captain America is the most good-looking avenger<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Likes to read fictions and favorite novelist is John Grisham<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Loves cooking Indian food<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Things we learned: It is important to learn coding if you want to pursue study and research in computational biology. Python, R, and Java are all good languages to get started with &nbsp; Makes weekly to-do lists and uses them as a way to balance&nbsp;<a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/priyanka-baloni\/\">&hellip;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":1004,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1003","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1003"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1189,"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1003\/revisions\/1189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baliga.systemsbiology.net\/see-interns\/hs2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}