Achievement

As a member of the mentoring committee, IGERT co-PI and BioFrontiers faculty Robin Dowell has observed tremendous growth in the entire cohort. Dr. Dowell notes: "I am particularly impressed with first year graduate student and IGERT Fellow Joey Azofeifa. He began the year secure in his knowledge of biochemistry and unsure of how adventurous he wanted to be going beyond this comfort zone. His first rotation with Natalie Ahn was chosen based on this comfort. Natalie pushed him to pursue a highly computational and quantitative project. Joey fell in love with the more quantitative aspects of protein biochemistry. His second rotation, with William Old, further pushed him to develop computational skills and by the third rotation (in my laboratory) he was seriously considering pursuing Computer Science as his primary field of doctoral study. The ability of a student to 'discover' entirely new fields and actively pursue them is, in my opinion, one of the great successes of this program."