Do you have any advice for interns such as us who are applying to college and figuring out their passions?
Eric says to try new things in order to figure out what you want to pursue as a career, it is really difficult to figure out a career path just from taking high school courses so getting a taste of real world experiences is better.
What is the most mischievous thing you have done as a child?
Eric says, as a child, he used to “borrow” the For Sale signs his neighbors would have on their front lawns and move the signs to a neighboring house.
Instead of a transcript, we created a summary of Eric’s interview.
Eric grew up in Massachusetts and developed an interest in science from an early age. He enjoyed using his father’s microscope to look at specimens from a pond behind his house. In addition, he had great science teachers which fueled his interests and propelled his career forward. Later, Eric studied physics at Johns Hopkins University and went on to pursue a PhD in astrophysics at UW. After completing his PhD, he looked outside the field of astrophysics and started at ISB in 2001. There, his work centered on measuring RNA using microarrays. While he enjoyed this work, he was soon convinced by a colleague to turn his focus toward proteomics. He ended up enjoying proteomics more as he was able to work with data and analytics. Overall, Eric loves to play around with data and see what can be learned from it. He has a passion to learn and design new things with others around the world.