Sam (Shang-Yang Chen) is the director of the logistics team of MTBS this year. He is a 4th year Ph.D. student in the Driskill Graduate Program (DGP) from Northwestern University studying in the biomedical informatics track. Sam’s research focuses on investigating the functional genomics of macrophages in different tissues and diseases. As an aspiring computational biologist, most of his work involves analyzing next-generation sequencing (NGS) data, including but not limited to scRNA-seq, RNA-seq, and ATAC-seq. One of the remarkable achievements of Sam is that he received an American Heart Association (AHA) predoctoral fellowship! He proposed a project involved in comparing the transcriptional and epigenomic landscapes of cardiac macrophages over the course of myocardial infarction using mouse models. He is excited about sharing his experience of applying to the fellowship on March 13th with everyone!
Sam first came to the United State for his undergraduate degree. He obtained his bachelor's from Stony Brook University on Long Island, NY, majoring in biochemistry. He was in an ecology lab where he investigated seasonal variations in the behaviors of fruit flies. Outside of the lab, Sam likes to watch baseball games and travel/explore new places around the world.
This is Sam’s third year participating in MTBA. He was an attendee of the first MTBS, then he was inspired and became a core member of the logistics team for the second MTBS. He enjoys collaborative teamwork as he is always willing to help people. He enjoys organizing MTBS with friends who embrace the same goal. He thinks MTBS is a community that establishes meaningful connections and foster a collaborative environment for young Taiwanese biotech professionals in the Midwest. His career goal is currently leaning towards the industry to become a data scientist but he is open to all possibilities if opportunities present!