NHGRI, MAGGIE BARTLETTI still remember the moment I first realized I wanted to be a biologist. My high school biology teacher was showing us a time-lapse video of a developing frog embryo and I wondered, how could a single spherical cell become a whole tadpole? I was hooked.
My undergraduate and master’s degree programs in my home country, India, did allow me to do some basic research on limited funds. For the most part, though, my early education consisted mostly of book learning–based exams. While my fellow students and I complained at the time that these tests weren’t adequately preparing us for our futures in research, such studying taught us the value of understanding detail. Understanding the basic biology I learned at that time continues to help me today. As I swim in the ocean of large genomic data, this fundamental knowledge keeps me afloat and helps me to segregate truly useful data from junk.
Like most Indians of my generation, I looked westward for the pursuit of a higher degree. But I ...
