preferred pronouns: she/her/hers dob: 11.29.1996 places i consider home: santa clara, california & bangalore, india & sunny san diegohobbies: reading, writing, hiking, binge watching tv shows, napping
Hi! My name is Uma and I was born in November 1996 to a young, immigrant couple from India. I was born and raised in California up until 2008 when my family moved to India. I attended high school there but decided I wanted to pursue higher education in the States. I committed to UC San Diego in 2014 and have been back in California ever since. I'm majoring in Bioengineering: Bioinformatics major and minoring in Design and Entrepreneurship & Innovation. I will be graduating in Spring 2019!
I am passionate about technology, biology, design, research, STEM, education, and any combination of the previously listed. I care deeply about the environment along with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts and movements. I enjoy spending time outdoors, discovering new music (and then listening to the same song on repeat for hours), listening to my favorite podcasts and NPR, reading good books, and attempting to turn my thoughts in to poetry.
I'm currently back in San Diego finishing up my remaining major and minor classes and will be there until the end of Spring. Apart from classes, I've started working at the Alexandrov Lab as a Undergraduate Student Assistant in charge of testing and documenting novel bioinformatics tools. I also volunteer as a peer-health educator through the Student Health Advocate. I am a current #BUILTBYGIRLS Brand Ambassador and GitHub Campus Expert.
Previously, I interned at Thermo Fisher Scientific at their Mass Spectrometry facility, working closely with the Instrument Control Software Team in the R&D division of the company with Rajesh Raina, Jacob Schwartz, and Vane Sanghvi.
Reading: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
Listening to: Sunflower by Post Malone, Swae Leet
Thinking about: cancer metagenomics, corporate social responsibility, longevity startups, personal wellness