Personal Statement for Bioinformatics Graduate Program

For Bioinformatics Graduate Program - Personal Statement Example At High School, my plans for the future centered on my becoming a practicing doctor, with the skill of healing patients. I must admit that I had to overcome the disadvantage of a relatively weak foundation in Science, as a result of my Middle School curriculum in China, which did not include Biology. The language barrier also proved difficult to break during the initial years of my arrival in the USA, and my focus then was on mastering English and Mathematics, and understanding American culture. The scientific terms in Biology were difficult to come to grips with! However, my determination to enter the field of Medicine kept me going. The same determination is now my tool in my effort to overcome any shortcomings in my academic career. I am very aware that my GRE writing score of 3 could have been higher, and am determined to identify and address this through repeated practice of writing skills. A career in medicine continued to be my goal as I stood on the threshold of my freshman y ear at the University of California, Davis. However, the first Molecular Cellular Biology class I attended at the UC Davis, discussing gene therapy, proved to be a revelation to me: I had discovered the interest of my life! I was fascinated by the intricacies and application of genetics: especially in the area of finding epigenetic information. Here was a new front in the battle against chronic disease. As I continued to take additional technical electives in Molecular Biology, Microbiology, and Biotechnology, I came to realize that genetics is one of the most powerful tools available to humanity in the field of medicine. Gene association studies and single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) detection can be used in disease prediction, thus potentially preventing disease formation. Genetics is the cutting-edge of health-care research and personalized medicine. The next step in my academic evolution was my realization of the power of technology. As the only child of immigrant parents who were focused on earning a living, the computer has been a good friend of mine, right from the age of twelve, when I moved to the USA. While working as a Laboratory Assistant at the Immunology and Histology Lab of UC Davis Veterinary School in 2009-2010, I became deeply aware of the vast amount of medical information stored and retrieved by accessing a database. This personal experience of the power and efficacy of computers impressed on me the importance of technology as a tool in research. I discovered that the hands-on processing of data gives me immense satisfaction. Gradually, my earlier interest in science and research shifted focus from the traditional bench sitting to a computer oriented approach. Therefore, in my junior year of college, I declared my major as Biotechnology, with a Bioinformatics option that combined my interests in both technology/informatics and biology/genetics. The Applied Bioinformatics course I took in the fall of 2010 confirmed that my special interest lay in the field of bioinformatics and its application in genetic/genomic studies. Craving further practical experience in this field, I opted for internships at different laboratories: Theg Lab, UC Davis; Molecular Anthropology Laboratory, UC Davis; Dubcovsky Wheat Genetic Lab, UC Davis;