My 48th guest is Ti’ara, a PhD student studying genetic signatures in leukemia and an avid gamer.

Hi Ti’ara! First of all would you like to tell us something about you?

I am a 5th year PhD student at Morehouse School of Medicine. I study genetic signatures in leukemia with bioinformatics methods.

When did you start your Twitter account? How did you get the idea?

I made a Twitter account after noticing scientists adding twitter handles to their conference presentations. I was curious about the professional manner in which they use Twitter (it’s to share and learn the latest science).

Can you tell us something about how you balance work and private life? 

Ever since I started graduate school, I’ve been unable to achieve this. I was an avid gamer prior to starting grad school, but I haven’t had a lot of time for things I like to do for fun since then. I would sometimes go out to eat or watch a movie with my classmates after school. It is very difficult to achieve this as a computational scientist. I often work on improving code and analyses.

During your academic studies how many women were in course? Why in your opinion?

The majority of my classmates and teachers were women. This is probably due to the increase in the number of women pursuing biology degrees during the past 30 years in the United States.

Have you ever felt harassed or being kept apart as a scholar because you are a woman?

No.

How did you become passionate about science?

I naturally excelled in STEM courses, but did not become passionate nor decided to pursue a degree in it until I took a systems biology course in undergrad. The teacher of that course was very inspirational. His lectures were really fun and after asking me a question in class, he recognized that I had the natural talent to be a biologist. That day, I changed my degree to biology and never looked back.

Thank you so much for your time. Lastly, can you give any advice to girls interested in STEM?

If you’re interested in STEM, make sure you find and pursue as many training/internship opportunities to find exactly what you want to do as a career.

Follow Ti’ara on Instagram and Twitter.