My intellectual passions are computer science and biology.
I enjoy problem solving, especially through programming. I like creating programs for solving various problems — such as a mobile app for games or a web app for performing a service (such as a school website). But I am really driven to solve problems that are hard to solve in reasonable time with even the fastest computers we have today unless advanced algorithms are used. These problems usually show up in competitive programming (such as the USA Computing Olympiad). These involve sorting, recursion, dynamic programming, graph algorithms (depth-first, breadth-first, find paths with certain property), data structures, and algorithms to perform operation on trees very efficiently. Here is a sample of my code for some interesting algorithmic problems on github that I’ve created over the past few years. Some other interesting sites that I visit (they have test cases to try out solutions) are Codeforces and Leetcode. I also enjoyed teaching programming and algorithmic problem solving to middle school girls through MIT’s CodeIt program.
I’ve observed that many algorithms that I’ve learned and several others are being adapted and heavily used in solving problems in genomics and other areas in biology. For me, the complexity and intricacy of the human body is fascinating. It is exciting to learn that recent breakthroughs have enabled much faster sequencing of the human genome, edit genes (starting with CRISPR and now recently with Prime editing), and also helped us understand the molecular basis of diseases, especially cancer, so that we can develop drugs specifically for each individual person (precision medicine). To whet my appetite for information, I usually refer to classic textbooks such as Campbell Biology and Genetics – Analysis & Principles, watch web video lectures from Khan Academy and Bozeman Science, or browse the Science magazine. The applications of algorithmic problem solving in medicine, especially individualized or precision medicine, is an area that I really want to pursue research in the long-term.