Story
Science and music have been with me throughout my life, developing alongside each other. Science is my main profession, where my focus is drug discovery, genomics, computational biology, and biotechnology. Music is my creative profession expressed through writing, recording, and performing. Though they seem to be different paths, they are joined by a purpose:
Science helps us understand and treat disease. Music helps us understand and care for people. Together, they serve a larger mission: helping people live fuller lives and connect with each other.
Not so impossible
Before I was formally a scientist, I had already begun experimenting. I created videos, repaired technology, and tried to figure out how magic tricks were performed. When I could solve how the effect was possible, I built my own version of it with household materials. That inclination to understand how it worked remained with me, later appearing in scientific research and in recording music. I often wonder: how can we make this idea into something real?
Science doesn’t stop
Science became more than a subject for me when friends and family faced disease. Some recovered because the medicine worked. Some stories were harder. Those experiences changed how I think about science, and they are why drug discovery and development matter to me personally. Medicine may look clinical from the outside: a bottle, an infusion, a treatment plan, a company name on a label. But behind each treatment is a long chain of people, experiments, failures, breakthroughs, decisions, and care.
I want to work with our newest tools to understand the toughest diseases, discover and develop better treatments, and help scale up the process so care reaches people worldwide. My background in chemical engineering, with experience spanning biological engineering, computational biology, genomics, and process development enables us to produce global solutions. Chemical engineering is about more than discovering what works; it is about building the biggest factories to produce enough for every patient, so let’s make medicine and a lot of it!
The live version says more
Music entered my life around the same time as science. I balanced work during the week and played on weekends, using science as a way to understand and music as a way to feel connected. I wrote, performed with bands, and recorded music to tell stories when words were not enough, and to preserve moments in song. I still care about releasing music because it captures pieces of life that would otherwise fade.
Music is not medicine, but it is a part of healing when we sing for each other. Science may help us live longer, but music gives us strength and helps remind us why life’s worth living.
Beyond what we can imagine
My journey started in Hopkinton, a small town in Massachusetts, though not to run the marathon to Boston. My first destination was the University of Massachusetts in Amherst for a Bachelor of Science, and then across the country to the University of California in Santa Barbara for a Doctor of Philosophy.
The forests in Massachusetts and beaches in California were different by far, but both felt deep, endless, and filled with unknown. These places lived close together with the laboratory. I explored through conducting experiments, then stepped outside to look at the vast land or sea, and returned ready to welcome results I may not expect. Part of growth is taking the left path, just once, to feel lost inside the night, and to keep going until learning something from it the right path could never have taught.
Not all discovery happens in research. Some happen through listening to stories from across the world, traveling to share our culture over food and conversation that joins us.
Direction found from far
After finishing my PhD, I reached the intermission to recover, rebuild, and assemble the stories of science, music, and exploration from my journey that had never been fully written. Memories can slip away if we do not care for the songs, stories, and pieces of life that hold them. If we wait too long, what was once bright can fade beyond recovery, and so we must remember to take care of ourselves and each other before we exist stuck, disconnected from who had believed in ideas so impossible. Our stories carry the roots of who we are, guide how we think, and lead the chapter we build next. When revived, they are not just alive again, but transformed with new meaning.
Where it leads
Today, my focus is on drug discovery, genomics, computational biology, and biotechnology, especially where our newest tools can help us understand disease and develop better treatments. At the same time, I continue to write, record, and release music. Together, they return to the same story:
The goal is not only to live longer. It is to live fully, remember what shaped us, and help create a world where people can heal, grow, and connect.
Science helps us understand and treat disease. Music helps us understand and care for people. Both are part of helping people live fuller lives, together.