Undergraduate stories
From GersteinInfo
Below will be some narratives written by current and former undergraduate students - this section is in development.
Case study: Ian Gonzalez
"I came to the Gerstein lab as a sophomore undergraduate with very little experience in programming and no experience in research. I had just started classes in both the biology and computer science majors at Yale, and I was a little unsure about what I wanted. The Gerstein lab seemed like a great opportunity to combine both of my major academic interests. I was placed into a project that involved creating an R package, something I'd never done before in a language I'd never used. Although the project was challenging, it was an incredible introduction to creating a piece of software from the ground up, and I gained an in-depth knowledge of the R language. I ended up staying on for the summer and one more semester, and I really enjoyed my time in the lab. Ultimately, I ended up using the skills I learned in the lab to succeed in the computer science major, and now I'm headed into industry as a full-time software engineer at Google. I'm greateful to the whole lab for providing a welcoming learning environment."
Case study: Will Meyerson
"I had a long-standing interest in biology but found when doing biology bench research as a Yale College junior that my favorite part was analyzing the data. When I learned that there was a whole field that specialized in analyzing biological data –bioinformatics- I figured I should check it out. So for senior year, a mentor of mine suggested I talk with Mark Gerstein, a top bioinformatician at Yale with a long history of mentoring students of all stripes. I had only taken one computer science course as a high school student, and one stats course in college that used R, and didn't know what a command line was, but I was mathematically inclined and knew that I could think rigorously and learn on the job. For my first project on genetic regulation, I found in Roger Alexander one of many postdocs who had a special interest in teaching and was available to show me the ropes of how to interact with Yale's supercomputer from my laptop and get me started on a worthwhile but manageable research project, which ended up inspiring my Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry senior thesis. After college, I returned to Yale for medical school and continued to work in the lab. I enjoyed my research enough that I applied internally into Yale's MD-PhD program to study bioinformatics in Gerstein lab where in 2016 I am now a PhD student. I expect that I will be able to combine my medical training with the skills that I'm learning now in Gerstein lab to analyze large data sets to help make medicine a bit more data-savvy - and this all started from a one-term research project I performed as an undergrad in Gerstein lab. Feel free to get in touch with me by email to ask me more about my experience."
