passed!

I just passed my qualifying exams for the computational biology program!  So happy!

What made me especially happy is that my mentor said, That is the most enthusiastic reception I've seen - ever  - to a math talk by a biology audience, particuarly a clinical audience.

The chair of the committee and head of the computational biology program, upon inviting me back into the room after the deliberation of the committee, told me, Sorry to keep you waiting so long - we were singing your praises.  Congratulations, you've passed - with distinction!

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I am so glad! I've been working day and night for the past month to put together my thesis proposal and presentation.  More than the hard work, though, is that I've wondered pretty often whether trying to study both computational biology and medicine was overreaching, too much to learn in a really short time, or just maybe a dumb idea to begin with - particularly trying to develop a new project collaboration from scratch rather than leaning on the expertise of my advisor and choosing an existing project.  Definitely I've spent a lot of time wondering, "Maybe I'll just be a really mediocre physician and incompetent mathematical biologist," especially as I spend a great deal of time around brilliant and accomplished mathematicians, computer scientists, and bioinformaticians as well as biologists and clinicians.  It definitely can be overwhelming how much there is to learn.  I've certainly wondered whether there was a place for me.

But this is a good reinforcement that there is a place for people who spend time in the biology/clinical world as well as the mathematical/computational.  I think there's often a major disconnect between the often technically fabulous work that's found in mathematical biology journals that never is communicated to a biology audience - sometimes because the assumptions are different, sometimes because the questions aren't relevant, and often, likely, because it's hard  to read math journals.  It's been really hard to try to connect all these worlds, and in doing so I literally circulate amongst three desks in three different locations (in the math building, with the bioinformatics group, and recently, in the epidemiology office) as my meetings and commitments dictate.

So my place, I think, can be to connect the different disciplines and figure out what questions are important to ask, and specifically, how math and computation can assist in answering important questions in biology and medicine.  While I may not have the skills at the moment to answer those questions, I definitely can find people who are experts to help answer those questions.

This is the niche I want to fill and that in some ways I have always dreamed about being - a scientist (in training) on the interface of multiple disciplines, applying methods from one area to solve important questions in another.

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That's a really  long way to say, I'm happy I passed and am glad that it did turn out to be a good idea to study medicine and mathematical biology!