I am a trailblazer in my family, breaking barriers as the first to attend college, study abroad, and pursue a professional education. Yet, born and raised in Hong Kong within a conservative religious community, I cannot freely proclaim my truth as the only openly trans person in my family. As a result, my teen years were spent in self-loathing and shame, as I furtively tried to conceal who I was. On the other hand, my mom, though overbearing due to her beliefs, recognized the importance of education and tried her best to provide for me as a single parent. Growing up in a non-nuclear household, in a society where traditional family units are held in high regard, made me especially empathetic for those who are socially marginalized. Despite a stifling upbringing, moving to the United States for college was a pivotal change in my life. Finally embracing my identity as a trans man, I found acceptance and kindness. Instead of internalizing my long-held shame, I began realizing how social structures and norms could instill deleterious beliefs in people, and perpetrate divisions and polarization, and this ignited my commitment to promoting inclusion. I took on a leadership position in Delta Lambda Phi, a fraternity that builds supportive communities among queer folks. I was a legislative intern at WashPIRG’s affordable healthcare campaign, where we promoted protection against surprise ambulance billings and hospital mergers on campus, and even met with state senators to solicit support for legalizing healthcare access. Furthermore, my healthcare experiences as a trans man led to my awareness of shortcomings in medical inclusivity, manifesting as implicit biases, as well as a lack of representation and research for folks like me. I want to bridge the accessibility gap between academic research and disadvantaged populations by becoming an expert in biochemistry myself. I’ve long been passionate about biochemistry, so I’m hoping to become a biomedical scientist, but recently I’ve also decided to minor in informatics to address inequities in information systems. Currently, medical research and development are still dominated by cisgender and heterosexual voices, therefore implicit biases and lack of representation manifest themselves as disparities in medical technology and access for LGBTQIA+ folks. Motivated by these personal struggles, I aspire to reshape the narrative in medical research, by focusing my work on studying and improving healthcare outcomes and solutions for queer patients. Even if I’m the first, let me be the pioneer for change.

I am the proud bearer of several firsts in my family: the first to go to college, the first to study abroad, and the first to pursue an education for a professional career. I am also the first transgender person in my family, but this is a fact that I, unfortunately, cannot freely proclaim. I was born and raised in Hong Kong, and grew up in a conservative religious community that was rife with bigotry and control. My mom, though overbearing due to her beliefs, still recognized the importance of education and tried her best to provide for me as a single parent. Due to a hostile environment, my late teens were spent in complete misery and mental isolation as I tried to suppress this growing sense of disorientation within myself. Aside from my small group of friends who have, thankfully, been very supportive of my journey, the internet became a vital outlet for me to express myself, and slowly piece together my identity. Moving to the United States for college marked a pivotal change in my life. I was exposed to new ideas, interacted with people similar to or completely unlike myself, and was met with kindness and acceptance. It was a transformative experience for me. I started deconstructing and reconstructing my views about religion, the world, and personal values, and I marveled as my self-esteem improved exponentially. It turns out community is an effective antidote for alienation, and it is a space where people can thrive and actualize their full potential. As my outlook on life became more positive and enriched, my writing metamorphosed with it, too. At college, I took on a leadership position in Delta Lambda Phi, a fraternity that aims to build supportive communities and advocates for queer folks. I was also a legislative intern at WashPIRG’s affordable healthcare campaign, where we promoted protection against surprise ambulance billings and hospital mergers on campus, and even reached out to state senators to solicit support for legalizing healthcare access. More comfortable with sharing myself openly now, I began dabbling in poetry and creative writing, hoping that people could find a sense of comfort and solidarity from seeing similar sentiments or experiences represented in them. And it worked. My poems were published by new words press, a trans* and gender-expansive poetry and hybrid journal, and I was invited to be a guest reader for their next issue. My household had limited medical knowledge, which brought about a lot of misinformation and anxiety about healthcare and treatments. Such an upbringing drove my fascination with the workings of the body, those intricate biochemical pathways, and how they could be modified to improve our well-being. I’m currently majoring in biochemistry with the intent to become a biomedical research scientist, but recently, I’ve also decided to minor in informatics to address inequities in information and health systems. I am striving not only to create cures and innovative therapies to cure physical ailments, but also to provide patients with mental and emotional assurance. On a broader lens, leveling social disparities that disadvantage one’s access to care is pivotal for achieving healthcare literacy and equity. Currently, medical research and development are still dominated by cisgender and heterosexual voices, therefore implicit biases and lack of representation manifest themselves as disparities in medical technology and access for LGBTQIA+ folks. Motivated by personal struggles, I aspire to reshape the narrative in medical research, by researching and finding ways to improve healthcare outcomes and solutions for queer patients. Even if I’m the first, let me be the pioneer for change.

In the complex tapestry that is life, cellular pathways are the threads that weave together the story of our very existence. After all, they govern how we think, and feel, and behave. It’s truly perplexing to think of it this way, how these tiny proteins, ligands, chemicals and molecules that we can’t even see under a regular microscope should dictate how we interact with the environment, or the outcomes of our life. Understanding how they work is crucial— and complicated. First, one has to find out all the agents that are present, whether they are participating or spectating. Then you’d have to figure out how they interact with each other. This is what countless scientists and researchers have dedicated their lives towards, exploring answers to the befuddling questions of how cells communicate, replicate, respond to external stimuli, and even how we could tweak it in case any of it malfunctions. Unfortunately, such concepts can be quite hard to grasp without a scientific background, and I’ve witnessed such occurrences and how this misunderstanding could negatively impact us. When I was a child, I remember seeing my mom undergo chemotherapy after a GTD-induced hemorrhage. From her perspective, treatments only conjured anxiety and dread, when only a jumble of confusing medical jargon deciphered the subject matter. How could we bridge these abstruse concepts to lay people? Well, I found a solution to this in high school. I was instantly fascinated by CAR-T cell therapy after learning about it in a biology course. What could be cooler than tweaking your own immune system to battle against cancer? I was so hooked in fact, that I signed up for the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, a science video contest, in a fit of eagerness to learn and present this idea to others. Starting was always the hardest. I tried doling out the facts straightforwardly as if instructing a lecture, but it seemed bland and unappealing. Words were never my sole medium for making sense of the world, so why should I limit myself now? I recalled how I scrawled stickman doodles all over my notebook when revising convoluted historical facts after my lessons. Guitar notes conveyed my emotions as I slowly strummed out “astronomia” on my acoustic; sometimes, I’d record it. I’m particularly fond of watching action movies in my spare time, seeking the thrill of plotlines packed with espionage and fight sequences. So I reimagined CAR T-cell therapy as a story, telling a tale that would reach anyone regardless of their level of expertise. I found that T cells shared many similarities with the protagonists of spy films: vigilant, adaptable yet specific in target, defending our body against malicious tumors that were akin to the hero’s elusive enemies. The medical process unfolded before me as a Mission Impossible-esque skit, and I even gave the leading character, a T cell, a nickname- “Carl”. Channeling my doodling skills into making hand-drawn animated scenes, and using my experience of touching up my guitar covers with software for video editing, I created a 3-minute animation of Carl, comically narrating his transformation via CAR-T cell therapy into an invincible agent. I think human beings are unique in the sense that we tell stories to record our history, and try to find a likely explanation for why our universe is the way that it is. That’s why every culture has its own myths and legends, predating recorded history. The topic of CAR-T cell therapy per se is rather complicated and requires a lot of background knowledge on immunology, genetic engineering, biochemistry, and molecular biology, but here, I could make it work as a spy story. Knowledge is infinite, and I can never claim to know everything. Yet, learning is a pathway towards recognizing and confronting inadequacies, and then finding ways to overcome them. It’s a lifelong process of taking and giving. When I look for an “all-rounded education”, I don’t just determine it upon what I could read from a book or what I could answer in a test– I’m searching for the meaning behind it, for ways that could challenge me to think outside the box and see how everything in this grand universe is connected.

I am the proud bearer of several firsts in my family: the first to go to college, the first to study abroad, and the first to pursue an education for a professional career. This is all thanks to my family, who recognized the importance of education, and my mom, who tried her best to provide for me as a single parent. My passion for science and advocacy began with witnessing my mom undergo chemotherapy when I was a child. When recounting her experiences, she’d always tell me that her limited medical knowledge made her feel anxious and dreadful about treatments, when the subject matter was only decipherable in professional terms. The experience made me understand that medical solutions to diseases could give patients physical relief, but providing them with mental assurance is just as important. Unfortunately, a knowledge gap often exists between medical researchers and administrators, as well as the broad public, which only aggravates healthcare disparity, harming underserved demographics and the access to quality care that they deserve. This is what drove me to pursue higher education in the United States. Aside from the breadth of opportunities that the US offers in the field of biochemistry and biotechnology, what was especially enticing was its emphasis on interdisciplinary studies, because I’m committed to learning about the different perspectives and ideas that constitute our world. When I think of medicine, I don’t merely think of drug molecules, cells, or medical devices, I see the people and communities that could live healthy, fulfilling lives because of it. I’ve always been fascinated by the workings of the body, those intricate biochemical pathways and how they could be modified. As an aspiring biomedical research scientist, I am striving not only to create cures and innovative treatments, but also to improve the holistic well-being of its end users through a human-oriented approach. My ultimate goal is to promote health equity and literacy, through democratizing information on medical issues and making medicines more affordable to financially disadvantaged individuals. Aside from committing myself to laboratory research, where I will seek optimal treatments for currently incurable diseases, I will devote my time to making my research as open as possible. It’s extremely crucial to keep the public informed about common medical terms and issues, as well as the rights of patients in knowledge and decision-making— because I believe that information is the key to empowerment. However, reaching this dream is costly. Though I’m planning to pursue a Ph.D. in the future, my family cannot pay for my college tuition in full, so I am funding my bachelor’s degree with my own means, such as by working and taking out student loans. For this reason, I’m eternally grateful for the opportunity to apply for the Pierson Family Scholarship, as $5000 would be more than sufficient to pay for my room & board, along with a meal plan for a whole quarter, given that I sometimes struggle with food insecurity due to tuition and living costs. Yet, I’m determined that one day I can provide for my family and give back to my community. Finding a cure for illnesses is just the starting point. With my education, I aim to become a pioneer for change in the healthcare industry, bringing forth a mission for equity by leveling social disparities that disadvantage one’s access to care.

People say inspiration is sparked in unexpected places. I found mine near a dumpster, one scorching afternoon in April 2019. 14-year-old volunteers, distributing care packages to sanitary workers, huddled together before a refuse collection site as they listened to a street cleaner bemoan her unhygienic work environment. The sun was unforgiving, the stench of rotting food unbearable. As I reeled from the pungent smells around me, I pondered, “Is there something to make the cleaner’s livelihood at least slightly more tolerable?” My imagination raced for answers until it lingered on a mundane memory of my mother placing dried teabags on the shoe rack. Something clicked. When a school invention competition was held, I decided to showcase my idea: making an odor-absorbing, biodegradable mask from tea leaves. I leafed (pun intended) through research papers and articles to prove the “why” in its design, finding out that catechins in tea leaves could deactivate bacteria and act as a deodorizer. Yet, there were more ideas I couldn’t wrap my head around, like how to build my ideas into a prototype. I was stumped— this first contact with complex academic terms and mechanisms was so intimidating. Yet so enthralling, I felt as if I were a tiny sailboat in a vast sea of knowledge. I knew I needed more from these unfamiliarities. In course after course on biology and chemistry, I fervently sought an explanation for those bewildering concepts, deriving satisfaction from grasping scientific enigmas and putting them into my arsenal of knowledge. But that spark of inspiration remained, urging me to search for a meaning behind the words and ideas. That spark grew into a flame when I promptly signed up for an international video contest, after learning about CAR-T cell therapy and having an inkling of what to make of it. “Cancer treatment” wasn’t a stranger to our family: whenever my mother recounted how she was rushed to the hospital from a GTD-induced hemorrhage when I was 4, starting chemotherapy soon after with no comprehension of the process, her helplessness was palpable. From her perspective, treatments only conjured anxiety and dread, when only a jumble of confusing medical jargon deciphered the subject matter. “How can lay people be bridged to abstruse concepts?” My inexperience in video-making imposed an obstacle, though I couldn’t be deterred, instead turning to tutorials to actualize my ideas into reality. Learning the hard way from inventing the tea-leaf mask made me all the more determined to create, and create I did. There it was, my first practical creation: a 3-minute spy-themed comedy, reimagining CAR-T cells as vigilant spies wiping out sneaky, malicious tumors. I finally heard my mother laugh in relief when “cancer therapy” was brought up. And I laughed along with her. But my greatest delight was found in a university lab as a rising senior in high school, where I truly realized the possibilities of what I could create with knowledge, while conducting tests on a professor’s developing cancer drug along with post-doctorates. Between conversations, they told their experiences of conceptualizing, trying, failing, learning, repeating… which echoed mine. I looked back to that hot April afternoon, when I first found purpose in knowledge, and back to those researchers, where I caught a glimpse of my future. Science applies to many things. To me, it represents the intersection between the imposing barriers of the unknown, and the power of knowing and learning. That spark of inspiration has guided me thus far, presenting me no greater joy than reconciling with the happiness from overcoming great challenges, and my duty to help the community through creation.