I'm Alina, I'm a
postdoctoral fellow in the Silver Lab at Harvard Medical school. So within my postdoctoral
project I'm trying my best to make human artificial chromosomes that you can put really large
amounts of genetic information into and hopefully recode cells and I think that's the first
step towards getting a much better understanding as to how all genome functions. I grew up
in Singapore and then I moved to Canada for my university education and I did my PhD at
University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC and after that I moved to where I am right
now at Harvard. I think my parents were really great in raising my brother and I. We were
both taught to think about things scientifically from as young as I can remember. So with anything
we were encouraged to ask questions and figure out why things work in a really evidence-based
scientific manner and that's just the way I live and breathe. And so it seemed natural
to follow science. It really helped that when I was in high school my teachers really encouraged
me to pursue science and math and so I think for women especially that is super important
because you feel like there's support for it and you see that they're mentors and you
feel like you can fit into a place like this and you can have a future in science. So for
me with my project in making artificial human chromosomes the long-term, really long-term,
hopefully within my lifetime but possibly maybe in the next century is to sort of be
able the engineer mammalian and human cells and maybe, you know, make tissues or cells
that can make therapeutics or even one day-- this is kind of taboo-- maybe re-engineer
humans or animals and so it's something I think we need to talk about a society. I really
like discovering new things and also changing the world with your profession and so science
was a great way to join those two interests and with science I feel like every day I'm
doing something new. Of course this is not applicable to all professions in science but
if you’re at least in academia you have some flexibility in choosing your projects,
choosing the questions you're excited about and going ahead and figuring out the answers
to those questions. I think it is really exciting when you can see your work become reality,
not just fellow scientists but to the public. In the future, I hope to be a professor, so
to be a principal investigator, have my own lab and be able to choose my research direction
and my projects. If you really think that science is for you, and you again do your
research on potential jobs then it's just about networking with scientists that you
know. So you're trying to someone who's already in science and/or a few people in science
and talk to them and figure out, you know, what's the best path to take and good people
in science to work with and that way you have the best support you can have to pursue a
career in science. Definitely reach out to the nearest University around you even if
you're a high school student, you should talk to you a professor. Just email them and see
if you can volunteer for a month or a summer. You know, don't be afraid to do it, what do
you have to lose? Especially when you're that young, you should definitely dive and do it
and figure it out. And see if you like it. If you really like that lifestyle, then, you
know go for it.