Molecules and Machines

Hello, my name is Anya! I’m a high school junior passionate about biology, computer science, and solving real-world problems in medicine.

This blog will chronicle my independent research project over the next 8 months, where I’ll be diving deep into the intersection of genomics, cancer biology, and machine learning. It’s a mix of curiosity, challenge, and the hope that a student like me can contribute — even a little — to the world of science.

What I’m Working On

Over the next year, I’ll be building a machine learning model to try to predict whether a breast cancer patient is high-risk or low-risk for poor outcomes based on the activity of their genes.

Specifically, I’ll be studying something the Transcriptional Regulatory Networks (TRNs): the networks of genes and gene regulators that decide how genes are expressed. In cancer, these networks often break down. My project asks:

“Can we use patterns in these networks to help predict which patients are likely to do worse — and might need more aggressive treatment?”

This idea brings together public cancer data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), machine learning tools like Random Forests and XGBoost, and network-based biology using tools like GENIE3 or pySCENIC

I’ll be doing this independently with mentorship, learning the tools of computational biology as I go: from Python and Jupyter notebooks to scientific writing and data visualization.

Why I’m Doing This — and Why Now

I’ve been fascinated by biology since middle school — not just the facts, but the patterns behind them. Over the years, my interests expanded into neuroscience, genetics, and most recently, how complex systems like the human body can be understood with data and models.

But this project is personal, too.

I’ve seen family members affected by cancer. I’ve read the survival statistics. I know that even with decades of progress, we’re still far from being able to predict which patients will respond well and which won’t. And I have kept wondering,

“Could we do better if we looked not just at individual genes or mutations, but at how entire gene networks behave?”

This summer felt like the right time to begin. I’ve just completed AP Biology and some advanced math and coding work. I’m a Junior Health Scholar at a hospital, where I’ve seen firsthand how unpredictable cancer can be. And I want to take all that inspiration and start contributing to science myself.

What This Blog Will Cover

Every week, I’ll be writing a short post:

• What I learned that week

• What I built or coded

• What questions I’m still wondering about

From posts about survival plots or gene networks to complaints about debugging Python code at 11pm, this is where I’ll share the journey.

Future goals

My hopes with this project:

• Learn how real biomedical research works

• Deepen my understanding of cancer biology and AI

• Share this journey through blog posts and visualizations

• Eventually enter a science competition or publish what I find

Whether you’re a student, scientist, mentor, or just curious, I’d love to have you follow along!

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