about.html

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title: about me
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  <br><i>
  Bacteria are the major organisms on this planet – in numbers, in total mass,
  in importance to the global balances. Thus, it is microbial ecology that
  matters most; it is microbial ecology that is most intimately and importantly
  connected to the earth's exterior. And it is microbial ecology that is most in
  need of development, both in terms of facts needed to understand it, and in
  terms of the framework in which to interpret them.
  </i><br>

  <p align="right">
    <b>-Carl Woese</b>
  </p>
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<p>
  I currently work as a research assistant studying microbial ecology in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington. I first became interested in microbial ecology as an undergraduate student, where I had the opportunity to work in an extremophile microbial ecology lab. I was very fortunate to be able to <a href = "http://laugeomicro2015.blogspot.com/">participate in a deep-sea study of hyrdothermal vents investigating their microbiology & geochemistry</a>, and obtained funding through the <a href="http://spacegrant.oregonstate.edu/">Oregon NASA Space Grant Consortium</a>. I'm also a first-generation college graduate, and a proud <a href="https://mcnairscholars.com/">McNair scholar</a>.
  <br>
  I later graduated with a master's degree in Bionformatics from the University of Oregon. I had a great experience with this hands-on, internship-oriented program. You can learn more about it <a href="https://bioinformatics.uoregon.edu/">here</a>. This program helped launch my interests in programming, data science, and even learning about hardware and electronics projects. My training gave me the confidence to attend hackathons, teach biology to undergrads, and even inspired me to be an organizer for the first ever <a href="http://portland.sciencehackday.org/">Science Hack Day in Portland, OR 2016</a>.
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