1. My name is Victoria, I am an undergraduate at Drexel University studying Biology and Computer Science. I am a first-generation American and the first of my family to attend a University. This inspired me to invest myself in education and use the opportunity given to me to find something I am passionate about. What motivates me is being able to support myself and leave a meaningful impact on what I invest myself in. If I could do anything with my life, I would try to understand how I can use my experience and skills to help those in need. For example, I was lucky to have an internship in a biotherapeutic research lab which was characterizing molecules to become therapeutics for a rare disease. We had the opportunity to meet with patients with Pompe disease and hear their hopes for finding a cure. This experience brought tears to my eyes and motivated me every day at work to fully understand and invest myself in finding as much as I can. When I returned to school, I was extremely motivated to continue learning about biotechnology and biochemistry to continue to help those in need. Another motivator for me is conserving the environment. Growing up in Pennsylvania, I was able to experience the natural beauty of the national and state parks and round off my knowledge by taking courses in Environmental Science and Ethics. This motivated me to join environmental activist groups such as EcoReps and the Sierra Club, where we were able to help keep Philadelphia and surrounding areas clean and set up opportunities for sustainability. I also educated labs about proper waste disposal. 2. What excites me about STEM is the impact it has on the world. There are so many important fields in STEM, from medicine to research, to data science, and so many more. Growing up, I thought STEM was only IT or medicine since that's all that was taught in school. Now, having real-world experience, I see how large of an umbrella STEM is and how many opportunities to leave a meaningful and positive impact on the world through a STEM career. After my co-op in biotechnology, I felt a new passion ignite within since I was able to personally contribute to culturing and characterizing new therapeutic molecules (proteins that deliver lipids) and realized it would be very helpful to add a Computer Science minor to complement my Biology degree since there is an entire branch of biotechnology dealing with informatics and data science. This has allowed me to participate in things such as investigations at large pharmaceutical companies to help create more vaccines and optimize processes by presenting correlations and statistical outcomes from large datasets. The impact this has both on environmental and medical advances is amazing, and I feel lucky to have been able to help. It is exciting to know how many opportunities there are to leave a meaningful impact on the world and how much more there is to discover. Going into research and STEM there is a lot of amazing things to discover and look forward to; I hope I can create more lasting impacts and expand my knowledge. 3. The greatest challenge I've had to overcome was becoming independent. I am very close with my family, however, they had set high expectations for me (for example, becoming a doctor), and after putting a lot of effort into studying, researching, and volunteering, I realized I am very uncomfortable performing dissections and it was very difficult for me to physically complete my gross anatomy labs. I was worried I would disappoint them by pursuing Computer Science in Biology, but luckily after some time and realization of my passions, they were happy to support me and were excited again about what I can do to leave a positive impact on the world. This new career path has also presented me with lots of challenges, such as large learning curves and learning how to be independent in my personal life. I had been living alone since I began school, so I needed to learn how to support myself financially and emotionally, as well as adapt and learn fast when in a new field. These challenges have made me a stronger person and a faster learner, and since I have been able to overcome family, personal, and career challenges, I am slowly but surely building confidence in what I do and hope that that can translate to my actions in all aspects of my life. I am excited to take my experience in overcoming and dealing with challenges and help others who may also be in the same position.

Pennsylvania is the state I have spent my entire life living in, and I fall in love with its natural beauty every day. Growing up in PA, there are so many amazing parks and national forests to explore and hike in. I looked forward to going on long walks with family and friends to enjoy the fresh air and beautiful species of plants and animals and this love for nature is part of what inspired me to pursue my Undergraduate Degree in Biology at Drexel University. At Drexel, I looked forward to taking courses such as Ecology, Evolution, and Ethics, to understand the world around me and how to interact with it where I can make a positive impact. I learned about various species going extinct, the effects of human activity on the environment, and what potential risks are incoming in the near future. I thought I could use my time as a student effectively by joining organizations such as EcoReps and the Sierra Club, both organizations that focus on environmental conservation and sustainability. I was able to help organize trash cleaning days around the neighborhoods in Philadelphia, educate labs on proper waste disposal, and save wildlife that was in dangerous and messy environments. I believe that voicing my concerns and educating peers about proper waste disposal in areas of large waste producers such as schools, cities, and research labs will help conserve Pennsylvania's natural environment and help to do so in the future by implementing rules and ensuring they are correctly being followed. For example, I had the opportunity to be an intern at a large biotechnology lab where thousands of liters of water were used every day, many plastic consumables were being discarded, and lots of biological waste was being disposed of in large SHARPS containers which ultimately end up in landfills. I had been so bothered by all of the waste accumulating and being disposed of unsustainably, so I researched how to properly and most efficiently dispose of specific products around the lab and then created a small educational PowerPoint to educate everybody on how to reduce landfill waste and conserve water. We implemented soft SHARPS containers which are made from recycled cardboard and can be incinerated instead of buried in landfills, used the remaining plastic supplies and switched over to reusable glass containers which were able to be sterilized, and placed a high emphasis on recycling plastic consumables. Hopefully, these rules continue to promote fewer waste products in areas where it is extremely common. Although I am still a student at Drexel, I hope to continue volunteering to clean up Pennsylvania and the city of Philadelphia through these environmentally-conscious organizations and continue to do so with my degree in Biology in the future. Thank you for your time reading my application and for considering me as a candidate!

As a first-generation American, my family has put a lot of pressure on me when it comes to my education and career choices. My family immigrated from Ukraine in the '90s to pursue a better life in the states, and then shortly thereafter they had me. Growing up, I was exposed to a lot of financial uncertainty and got to experience my family adjusting to the culture and language. My grandparents put a great emphasis on the traditional paths to learning, such as studying math and reading lots of classic literature. I would attend a tutoring school in the morning on the weekends where I was taught mathematics above my grade level to make sure I was going to be on the track to success. I knew that my family wanted me to become a doctor and make lots of money, but I wasn't sure that's what I wanted to do. I was lucky enough to be accepted to Drexel University where I began studying Biology. During my time at Drexel, I learned a lot about myself. I was able to interact with other students from varying backgrounds and with different goals. I was also understanding what subjects I enjoyed learning and those that I did not enjoy. After a gross anatomy lab, I realized how lightheaded and queasy dissections made me feel; I knew I did not want to go into medicine. After this realization, I felt lost and confused and thought it was too late to pursue something new. This time was quite difficult for me as I knew how much my family had sacrificed for me to be able to have this opportunity and I felt as though I was letting them down. I knew I was very interested in biology, chemistry, physics, and coding, so instead of throwing my experience away, I decided to explore my options. To further my understanding of my interests I branched out and tried various careers. In addition to taking courses, Drexel offers co-op experiences, which are 3, 6-month-long full-time jobs in various professions throughout your upperclassmen years. I had tried a co-op in Chemistry, performing quality control, but I also had felt as though I was not fully invested and knew this isn't what I wanted to pursue, but was grateful for the skills and connections I had gained. Next, I was lucky to land a position at a biotechnology startup that was actively researching biotherapeutic molecules to cure rare diseases. This was something that I previously had no exposure to and had only learned about in my biochemistry courses. I felt as though I had a new understanding of what is possible with a STEM degree and would look forward to going to work every day, in hopes of discovering and characterizing the molecule which would help thousands of under-represented individuals with diseases without a current cure. I took this opportunity to reach out to coworkers and ask for career advice. My favorite part about my job was analyzing and presenting the large datasets we would gather during research, and I realized that it would be very beneficial to add a computer science minor to my degree to gain those skills and understand how to interpret data and present it to a large group of people. Since then, I have gotten my final co-op position being a data scientist in a large pharmaceutical corporation, where my interests are validated and I am learning so much about what I can do in STEM by networking with coworkers. My family is also happy that I am passionate about my degree!

Biotechnology is defined as, "the use of biology to solve problems and make useful products". This area of tech interests me because I believe that there are very important missions behind projects in biotechnology. So far, in my limited experience as a biology student with a computer science minor, I've been exposed to and able to contribute to many instances where complex global issues can be solved with biotechnology. For example, during my time as a co-op at a biotherapeutic research company, we were able to culture, purify, and characterize therapeutic molecules which were tested for efficacy in delivering medicine to patients with rare diseases. This experience opened my eyes to what is possible in the technology field and has connected me with great people who are extremely knowledgeable in bioinformatics and biochemistry. After getting advice from a colleague, I realized that what I was most interested in is looking at the big picture and the results of the research. To do this, I had to learn Python and other analytical tools such as Pandas, SQL, and interactive dashboards like Seeq, to pick out results from large datasets and be able to communicate them across the company. I also decided to minor in computer science to help me gain the skills I would need for the future. After realizing that biotechnology is the area of tech I am interested in studying, I felt a lot more confident in searching for my final co-op position. Previously, I had been uncertain of what I liked and what I could see myself doing as a career. After seeing the impact one person can have by putting in the time and effort to complete a project, taking courses in Biology and Computer Science felt significantly more important to my goals and excites me to understand since I know I'll be able to apply it in the future. There are multiple problems that I can think of already that I would like to be a part of solving in the future. First is continuing to contribute to rare disease research. Unfortunately, some diseases are very uncommon and don't have enough funding and research to find viable cures. After my experience with finding a therapeutic for a rare disease, I find the work extremely meaningful and the idea of helping an unrepresented group of people who need help is very inspiring and motivates me to continue with the path that I am on. To do this, I would need to round out my knowledge of biochemistry as well as analytical tools and methods to present the data and model/characterize the molecules. Another problem I hope to solve using technology is to make the field more sustainable. From my experience working in labs, there is a lot of waste generated, from water usage to plastic and disposables to over/underfilling the final product. A lot of this waste goes unnoticed and is not deemed important enough to spend time on solving. However, I am personally very passionate about reducing waste and was implementing rules about proper waste disposal in the labs I was in, which was very appreciated. I hope to analyze product filling to optimize the process and reduce waste and consumable usage by presenting statistics and data to the right people.