Boulder
I grew up in Boulder, and in retrospect, the town has had a big influence on who I am. Coming from Boulder, I could not help but try cycling at some point. So when I was 7, and my Dad was starting to race, I decided that I wanted to give it a try too. One race was all it took; I was hooked. Then began my dream of racing my bike in Europe.
Cyling
Being a professional cyclist has to be one of the best ways to explore the world in the shortest amount of time. Lots of forgettable airports, hotels, and hostels, but memorable scenes of vistas, castles, and coastlines. However, my favorites were the mountain roads, in Girona, Spain especially. I loved marking on a map all of the roads I had ridden and my own challenge was finding a new climb just a little higher than the last. Of course, it had to be a day trip, so less than 60 miles to the top, one-way (Valter 2000).
I was incredibly lucky to have such accomplished teammates as part of Garmin-Slipstream and realize my dream of racing some of the biggest races in Europe part of the UCI ProTour. My teammates taught me so much more than just how to be a good cyclist.
Osteoporosis
Almost by accident, I found out that I had been ignoring a part of my health by pursuing cycling since I was 7 years old. It only took slipping on a wet cobblestone sidewalk, when practically at a standstill, to break my femur at the intertrochanteric neck. This fracture might not be unusual for an elderly person, but at 25, it was alarming. Enough so for me to get a DEXA scan to check my bone density. I feared what the scan would show. I had a T-score indicating osteoporosis in my hip and lower back.
I recently did a patient testimonial with Panorama Orthopedics discussing my successful treatment under Dr. Paul Miller. Check out the video on YouTube.
Computer science to neuroscience
After my last season racing professionally in 2009, I went back to school full time at the University of Colorado (CU) at Boulder to finish my undergraduate degree in computer science. By 2011, I had completed the requirements for my BS degree and moved to Knoxville, TN to start at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a storage system administrator.
I knew that I wanted to play a part in improving the computer systems that powered scientific discoveries such as those at Oak Ridge, and I recognized an opportunity to do that through computer science research. Then in 2014, Dr. Richard Han, who had mentored me as an undergrad at the University of Colorado, invited me to join his NSF grant for a project I had been involved in during the early stages. I jumped at this opportunity and formally enrolled as a doctoral student under Dr. Han's guidance in 2014. I defended my thesis on "FluidMem: Open Source Full Memory Disaggregation" in Jan 2019.
The most interesting set of applications that I explored for my thesis were genome assembly applications. By running on FluidMem, large genomes could be sequenced on commodity cloud computer hardware, because the memory on one system was no longer a limiting factor. This avenue of research, something that could affect human health, was deeply motivating to me. As my interests became intertwined with medicine, I became fascinated with the applications of computer technology in neuroscience.
Since completing my PhD, I joined the lab of Dr. Stephanie Jones at Brown University as a postdoc in computational neuroscience. Our current project is the Human Neocortical Neurosolver (HNN) software with applications in clinical psychiatry and neurology.
Medical student (applicant)
I took a one-year break during my PhD to attend a postbaccalaureate premed program at Goucher College in Baltimore. The intense program packed in all of the premed prerequisites (organic chemistry, physical chemistry, biology, physics, biochemistry). As the year progressed, and I volunteered in the Baltimore area, I became more certain that a career in medicine was the right match for my diverse interests.
Now, I'm an applicant hoping to enter med school in 2020. Here we go!
I grew up in Boulder, and in retrospect, the town has had a big influence on who I am. Coming from Boulder, I could not help but try cycling at some point. So when I was 7, and my Dad was starting to race, I decided that I wanted to give it a try too. One race was all it took; I was hooked. Then began my dream of racing my bike in Europe.
Cyling
Being a professional cyclist has to be one of the best ways to explore the world in the shortest amount of time. Lots of forgettable airports, hotels, and hostels, but memorable scenes of vistas, castles, and coastlines. However, my favorites were the mountain roads, in Girona, Spain especially. I loved marking on a map all of the roads I had ridden and my own challenge was finding a new climb just a little higher than the last. Of course, it had to be a day trip, so less than 60 miles to the top, one-way (Valter 2000).
I was incredibly lucky to have such accomplished teammates as part of Garmin-Slipstream and realize my dream of racing some of the biggest races in Europe part of the UCI ProTour. My teammates taught me so much more than just how to be a good cyclist.
Osteoporosis
Almost by accident, I found out that I had been ignoring a part of my health by pursuing cycling since I was 7 years old. It only took slipping on a wet cobblestone sidewalk, when practically at a standstill, to break my femur at the intertrochanteric neck. This fracture might not be unusual for an elderly person, but at 25, it was alarming. Enough so for me to get a DEXA scan to check my bone density. I feared what the scan would show. I had a T-score indicating osteoporosis in my hip and lower back.
I recently did a patient testimonial with Panorama Orthopedics discussing my successful treatment under Dr. Paul Miller. Check out the video on YouTube.
Computer science to neuroscience
After my last season racing professionally in 2009, I went back to school full time at the University of Colorado (CU) at Boulder to finish my undergraduate degree in computer science. By 2011, I had completed the requirements for my BS degree and moved to Knoxville, TN to start at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a storage system administrator.
I knew that I wanted to play a part in improving the computer systems that powered scientific discoveries such as those at Oak Ridge, and I recognized an opportunity to do that through computer science research. Then in 2014, Dr. Richard Han, who had mentored me as an undergrad at the University of Colorado, invited me to join his NSF grant for a project I had been involved in during the early stages. I jumped at this opportunity and formally enrolled as a doctoral student under Dr. Han's guidance in 2014. I defended my thesis on "FluidMem: Open Source Full Memory Disaggregation" in Jan 2019.
The most interesting set of applications that I explored for my thesis were genome assembly applications. By running on FluidMem, large genomes could be sequenced on commodity cloud computer hardware, because the memory on one system was no longer a limiting factor. This avenue of research, something that could affect human health, was deeply motivating to me. As my interests became intertwined with medicine, I became fascinated with the applications of computer technology in neuroscience.
Since completing my PhD, I joined the lab of Dr. Stephanie Jones at Brown University as a postdoc in computational neuroscience. Our current project is the Human Neocortical Neurosolver (HNN) software with applications in clinical psychiatry and neurology.
Medical student (applicant)
I took a one-year break during my PhD to attend a postbaccalaureate premed program at Goucher College in Baltimore. The intense program packed in all of the premed prerequisites (organic chemistry, physical chemistry, biology, physics, biochemistry). As the year progressed, and I volunteered in the Baltimore area, I became more certain that a career in medicine was the right match for my diverse interests.
Now, I'm an applicant hoping to enter med school in 2020. Here we go!
