People of Medicine by Design

"I realized that I would also be helping people if I pursued science, and if I did it well, I might help hundreds of thousands of people."

"I think working together to tackle problems using different tools and perspectives is the way to new discoveries that will shape the future."

"Whether regenerative medicine is headed towards translation or even more fundamental discovery, I think now is a time of just an explosion of possibilities."

"I wanted to be a researcher since I was 14. As I studied more, I became inspired by the idea of developing treatments for challenging diseases that have limited treatment options. That's why I chose a PhD in spinal cord injury and a post-doc in abdominal aortic aneurysm."

"We have an aging population. Our biggest problems are degenerative diseases that we need to learn how to stall or turn around. It's an amazing set of problems to work on because of the potential for impact."

“I've always been fascinated by the brain. I’m fascinated with questions of basic science, but I’d like my bigger impact to be teaching and educating young scientists.” 

"What’s exciting to me is the development of new bio-informatic tools, and the interface of computational biology with basic science. The sky is the limit to what we can do now, even compared to when I was PhD student. We can re-ask questions that were asked in the 1990s or 2000s, or even the 2010s, and answer them in a different light."

"As scientists, we don’t want our research to sit on the shelf in a journal. We want to translate our discoveries and technologies as quickly and efficiently as possible so they can benefit society."

"I have two main ambitions. I want to democratize medicine so all these amazing breakthroughs in regenerative medicine, immunotherapy and synthetic biology are accessible to communities that need them. I also want to inspire a diverse generation of young people to pursue science and entrepreneurship."

“My proudest accomplishment is training the future generation of scientists. I see how creative they are and how much they’ve bridged the gap between different disciplines. I can’t wait to see what they discover.”