Scientific Article: Systems Biology

Recently, I completed my first scientific paper, "Network motifs come in sets: correlations in the randomization process". This was a project that I started in the winter of 2008 at Columbia University in the City of New York. This was during my Field Work Term, the academic term (and requirement) of Bennington College where we find an internship for 7 weeks. For those 7 weeks, I lived the life as an academic--setting my own hours, working late into the night in the library, taking Fridays off to see a show, and working from the motivation to finish my discovery.

The biggest challenge was that this was my first research project, and I wasn't well acquainted with the subject matter when I started. I had to learn the graph and network theory, statistics, and biology behind the project, all the while producing new results. The project was suggested by my supervisor, and having no better suggestion, I took it.

Secondly, even though I was working on the project, I needed a lot of help to find the right direction and understand the significance (if any) of my results. Had I taken on this project alone, I would have asked the wrong questions and prioritized my time inefficiently. Thankfully, I worked with Andrew, a graduate student also working under the same supervisor. Although I did the rough work, including some coding, Andrew was the one to give the project life, direction, and to sustain it while it went on hold for a while.

My main contribution was to run all of the tests we could think of, and then to accidentally present the discovery to Andrew that formed the basis of our future investigation. He caught the discovery, devised ways to move forward, and eventually developed the tool we used to more rigorously analyze our discovery.

This was definitely a valuable experience. I have a long way to go before I too can lead a research project like Andrew did with me. I did have one question arise out of this work, and hope to pursue it in the future.

You can find the paper here: http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.4680