Notable achievements

Bioinformatics. Medicine.
Why user experience?

I studied Bioinformatics because I knew that research and healthcare would put me at the forefront of a person's most pressing problem: their health. I found it fulfilling to help people at their most vulnerable and erase their pain and fears.

By the time I graduated college, I had three academic publications to my name. Now, I have four. I worked to optimize and develop software tools used by top biopharmaceutical companies, such as Amgen, Pfizer, and Eli Lilly. Science research taught me how to iterate through data driven steps, pay attention to details, and organize complex systems of information. But - there were so many layers between me and the people I was supposedly helping.

My experiences have been vibrant: start-up operations, healthcare, academic research, front-end development, website design, marketing, journalism, yada-yada. It helps empathize deeply and broadly with a truly unique product perspective. With that, I leverage user stress - one feature at a time.

My diverse and vibrant experiences reflect my strengths in unique business-product perspective
start-up operations, marketing, content writing reflect my strengths: genuine curiosity, courage to venture the unknown, and a resulting unique business-product perspective that let's me think out of the box.

In my past profession, I dedicated myself to immunology, health informatics, and biology research at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI), UC San Diego School of Medicine, and UC San Diego School of Biological Sciences.

My achievements in bioinformatics are a symbol of how devoted and sure that it was *the* career for me. When I graduated college, I had 3 publications and 4 years of research experience under my belt. By the time I decided to switch into design, I also contributed to a second-author publication from LJI, where I worked on optimizing machine learning algorithms to improve an immunology tool for a tool base used by top biopharmaceutical companies like Amgen, Pfizer, Moderna, Merck, and Eli Lilly.

I went into biology to help others, but zeroing in on the molecular mechanisms zeroed out my feeling of purpose - I wondered: why was data always so unfriendly, always needed cleaning, and always a messy chunk of text with no interface? I wanted to be more frontline in helping people. Design lets me holistically consider every touchpoint and tangibly erase people's pain, fears, and stresses from the system within, one feature at a time. My multifaceted work experiences and creative hobbies finally converged into a unique science-informed business-product perspective that has served me strongly as a designer. And I love it. ◡̈