Maximize Value and Leverage Computer Science Skills for Research

Date: March 15, 2015

Place: The Dolphin Bookshop (299 Main St, Port Washington, NY)

Time: 11:00am to 12:00pm

Maria Nattestad, a PhD student in Computational Biology at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, will discuss how high school and college students can set themselves apart in their research experiences at each stage of their career. She will talk about how research experiences are different for high school, college, and graduate students, and how to gain as much from each of these experiences as possible. She will argue that learning computer science can be a great way to maximize your value for research and community service in high school and beyond.

The FIREsciences group is a forum and speaker series for cutting edge science discussion led by top researchers in the sciences on Long Island. The program’s goal is to connect students with the knowledge and resources needed to conduct research in their fields of choice.

Maria Nattestad researches genomes of humans, plants, and cancer cells. She is currently focusing on developing computational tools to detect key differences between the DNA of cancer cells and healthy cells, many of which are located in areas of the human genome that are very difficult to study. The goal of this work is to improve cancer research and diagnostics as well as scientific understanding of the perturbations in cancer genomes. Apart from her passion for genomics research, she has organized a number of workshops and courses in computer science and bioinformatics, and she is the managing editor of the popular science magazine Current Exchange. Maria is also a member of the national honor societies of Phi Beta Kappa, Mortar Board, and Phi Kappa Phi.