I am a researcher in a biology lab at Brandeis University. The research I am conducting pertains to gene expression in eukaryotic organisms and explores how partial or full expression of previously silent genes can affect the organisms phenotypically. Many other projects in our lab conduct similar research and one in particular wanted to write a piece of code to find the rate of occurence of a type of mutation called a quasi-palindrome within the entirty of an organisms genetic code. Having a particular interest in technology as well, I found this idea to be interesting and wanted to help. As such I have found that I want to combine techniques in both computer science and biology in order to open new avenues of biological research. For now I am tackling a different project to help another friend with an idea he had. I am taking the project I am working on now as a foothold to gain much needed experience in using Python for database access, data acquisition and analysis, and hopefully machine learning.