The presentation was by a biochemist named Joseph Desiri. In this presentation, Joseph discussed about new ways to diagnose different types of viruses. He proposed using certain “DNA strips” and correlate them with the virus. This would allow the scientist to figure out the exact area of the DNA which the virus attacked, and thus be able to combat that virus. He tested his method on a variety fo viruses including herpes, polio, and the common cold. Desiri continues to test his strips on many other viruses including malaria, SARS, and much more. His work may influence the medical field and thus further our understanding of these viruses and quicken our path to finding effective treatments. This talk really interested me because I am interested in pursuing a career in college related to biology or medicine. I also really find the idea of using these DNA strips to diagnose our viruses and thus help the medical field. In the future, I might be a scientist engaged in similar research. Or I might be a doctor making use of this important information to diagnose patients. Thus, I find Desiri’s presentation extremely interesting and informative and also really interesting.
Joseph Desiri received a B.A. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 1992 from the University of California Santa Cruz. He then received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Stanford in 1999. He is currently a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator which is an extremely important job. He is responsible for researching different medical information and furthering the cause of the medical field. He is also the Vice Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, and also works at the California Insitute for Quantitative Biomedical Research. He has also published many scientific journals currently published in the Public Library of Sciences journals. DeRisi has also done work studying colony collapse among honeybees. Currently Desiri is continuing to work on his improvement of his DNA strip innovation. He is a unique leader in this field because of his huge contribution to the scientific and medical field. He has many other positions already detailed above which make him a very qualified scientist in the field.
As for my own life after high school, I’m not exactly certain what I want to major in. However, I am really looking at going into some sort of biology field or medicine. I am open to any field such as biomedical, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, or just straight up being a doctor. I am most likely thinking of doing biochemistry in college as my major, as that is the major that most people intersted in the medical field seem to take. I then hope to go to some sort of high ranked medical school such as UCLA or Northwestern, or any other. I haven’t really looked into any internships either, but I would really be interested in some sort of medical or biological internship. Doctors Without Borders is one internship which I have looked into mainly because it allows you to work directly with patients in the field. Thus, I think it would be very beneficial to pursue this internship opportunity to get some critical job experience, and thus improve myself.
I think this is really cool because it helps us diagnose and understand viruses better which is obviously important. I think you cover his speech really well. NICE JOB!!!
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