What do you find most rewarding or enjoyable about the LSM program?
My favorite part about LSM is being a coordinator for the LSM Pipeline Project. Through this program, LSM students get to teach high school students from West Philadelphia about the intersection between life sciences and business. We take what we learned in LSMP 1210 to craft understandable and insightful lessons on topics like the opioid crisis, clinical trial development, managing discovery, and more. My favorite part about the project is getting to know the students over the course of 10+ weeks!
If you have completed an LSM internship, where did you work and what did your work involve? What was the most rewarding feature of your internship?
So far, I’ve completed my life sciences internship where I worked at the Department of Genetic Medicine at Weill Cornell. In the lab, I worked on minimizing promoter size for AAV delivery of a gene editing technology treating Alzheimer’s Disease. Outside of the lab, I observed ongoing clinical trials for therapies developed in the lab. The most rewarding part of this internship was being able to be a part of the entire translational process from understanding basic science, to conducting research myself, and being able to see the path to commercialization for treatments from the lab.
Are you doing research currently? If so, where and on what, and what do you like about it?
I’m member of Peranteau lab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia where we work on fetal gene therapies. The goal is to ultimately be able to treat babies in the womb for otherwise life-threatening conditions, like Spinal Muscular Atrophy and Friedrich’s Ataxia. My favorite part of being in the lab is learning about a very niche, and cutting-edge therapeutic strategy that you otherwise wouldn’t get to learn through coursework.
What main extracurricular activities do you do at Penn?
I’m a part of Snider Consulting where I consult for early-stage life science companies through Venture Lab. I’m also a teacher for the LSM Pipeline project, a member of Wharton Women’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee, and a dancer on PENNaach, an all-girls South Asian dance team.