Jin Ah Bellefuil is a rising senior at Ballard High School in Seattle, Washington. Ever since taking environmental science in freshman year, she has been interested in a career in STEM. Her statistics, calculus, and chemistry classes in junior year cemented this interest, leading her to pursue the ISB internship. She is also part of the National Honor Society and the Sunrise club for environmental activism at Ballard. Outside of school, Jin Ah works at a daycare and volunteers. She also enjoys drawing and music in her free time.
At ISB, Jin Ah worked with her partner Sophie and mentors, Dr. Eliza Peterson and Julie Do, in the Baliga Lab on optimizing and designing RT-LAMP primers for genes in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). This RT-LAMP assay will generate gene expression values for the Drug Response Assayer (DRonA), a machine learning algorithm that calculates a cell viability score, quantifying the degree of susceptibility of Mtb to combinations of antibiotics. She and her partner also studied Haloarchaea, microorganisms found in highly concentrated salt water. During the internship, Jin Ah and Sophie monitored the growth of Haloarchaea under different environmental conditions meant to simulate the Martian environment as Halo are proposed candidates for life on Mars.