PINC students talking to Dr Priya Moorjani (lower left, with grey jacket on her chair).
Dr Priya Moorjani is a population geneticist and assistant professor at UC Berkeley. You can read about her and her group on their website: https://moorjanilab.org/
Yesterday, she came to SFSU to give a talk in our seminar series and to meet with student from the PINC program. The PINC students had many questions about PhD programs, computer languages, how to deal with failure and how it is to be a woman of color in the academic world.
Thank you, Priya, for visiting us!
Dr Moorjani (upper left) with a group of PINC students. Selfie by Pleuni Pennings.
We try to keep track of where PINC students go and recently, many PINC students have been successful in getting into PhD programs or interesting jobs.
Last year, Cecelia Brown did an internship at IBM Research and started a PhD program at Stanford. Ezequiel Lopez started a job doing data analysis for the SF BUILD program on our campus. But graduation from PINC doesn’t necessarily happen at the same time as graduation from SFSU, so many of the PINC 2018 students are now graduating and going different places.
Nicole Rodrigues (PINC 2018) got accepted in the Biochemistry, Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology program at UC Davis. She also received an honorable mention for her GRFP proposal! Francisca Catalan (PINC 2018) got accepted into the Bioinformatics PhD program at UCSC.Sita Chandrasekaran (PINC 2018) is going to be a PhD student in the UCSF-UCB joint Bioengineering program.Ryan Winstead (PINC 2018) will be doing an internship at IBM Research this summer. Mayra Banuelos (PINC 2018) was selected for the Opportunities in Genomics Research Undergraduate Scholars Program at Washington University.Emily Fryer (PINC 2018) started a job at the Carnegie Institute’s Department of Plant Biology on Stanford’s campus as a Bioinformatics Research Assistant.Alia Edington (PINC 2019) is going to do a PhD at UT Southwestern. Hailey Garma (PINC 2020) is going to the SIREN REU program (Summer Intensive Research Experiences in Neuroscience) at the University of Michigan.Maria Flores (PINC 2020) is going to the Jackson labs this summer for an REU program.Caroline Solis (PINC 2020) is going to do an internship this summer at the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Dr Carla Pugh is a surgeon, researcher and educator. In her lab, she builds anatomical models with sensors that interface with computers to help medical professionals learn how to use touch better, in other words, to train their haptic skills. Touch is key for many medical examinations (e.g., finding a lump in a breast) but it is hard to train people to do such examinations correctly. To learn more about her work have a look at this Ted Talk: https://www.tedmed.com/talks/show?id=292997
On March 4th, 2019, Students from the PINC program at SFSU and the Howard West Program at Google were invited to visit her lab and learn about her work.
A special treat for the PINC students was that we got to talk to Cecilia Brown, a PINC alum who is now a PhD student at Stanford.
PINC students and Howard West students at Stanford, with Alycia Onowho and Dr Ilmi Yoon (lower left corner), Dr Carla Pugh (in the middle with the blue top) and Cecilia Brown (next to Dr Pugh, with the Stanford hoodie). Photo by Cassidi Goll (Stanford). PINC and Howard West students listen to Dr Ilmi Yoon (SFSU), Dr Olumide Malomo (Howard West) and Dr Carla Pugh (Stanford). Photo by Cassidi Goll (Stanford). Oned of the students tries out one of the training models. Photo by Cassidi Goll (Stanford). Cassidi Goll shows two breast models with sensors that are used to train haptic skills (touch). PINC students and Howard West students listen to Dr Carla Pugh in her lab. Photo by Cassidi Goll (Stanford).
SFSU PINC Program Blog 