In a world with fluid contours, humanists, designers and technologists working together can move beyond considering what can be done with the tools at hand to ask: “What can we imagine doing that may not yet be possible?
Burdick et al. “One: Humanities to Digital Humanities,” in Digital_Humanities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012)
This quote resonated with me because it connects to both my academic and professional interests. I’m fascinated by how technology can help us push the boundaries of biology. I like to imagine how we could use computational tools to explore questions that aren’t possible to answer yet, and how creating the right tools might open doors to discoveries we haven’t even thought of.
During my internship last summer at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, I got a little taste of this firsthand. My job was to build cloud tools for researchers. This not only involved collaborating with scientists to make their work more efficient, but also anticipating what they might need in the future. That experience showed me that technology doesn’t just support research, but can also drive scientific discoveries by providing researchers with new tools, helping them analyze data in new ways, and making it possible to ask questions that were previously out of reach.
This term, I am most eager to learn about Modeling and Analysis. Right now, my academic interests are in the intersection of biology and technology, which naturally leads me to explore the tools and methods that make it possible to study complex biological systems. I’m really interested in data and how it can reveal patterns, which is why bio-informatics and hands-on work appeal to me. Modeling and Analysis are exciting to me because they let us dive into the data, experiment with different approaches, and make sense of complex systems in a way that feels both creative and practical.
