Tanya Cashorali

Research: I’m in Dana-Farber’s cancer biology proteomics lab, creating a Web site to help researchers track and analyze their experiments and enhance data capture. I’m also doing protein research. The big picture is to identify proteins in order to get a deeper understanding of the biology of cancer. I will be one of the authors on a paper our lab is submitting for publication.

Lessons learned: My work at Dana-Farber has confirmed that I want to get a PhD after I graduate from Northeastern, most likely in informatics. A doctoral degree requires a lot of research and papers, and now I know I can do it.

Research advantage: My research at Dana-Farber, and being an author on a published paper will improve my chances of getting into graduate school.

Additional research: Prior to Dana-Farber, I received a five-month research grant funded by Northeastern’s provost’s office and the College of Computer and Information Science to continue research I’d started at Boston’s Children’s Hospital.

Education value: My outside research has shown the practical application of my course work, and has really tuned me into things in class. My courses are more interesting to me now.

Future in focus: After my research at Children’s, I considered specializing in neuroscience. However, the atmosphere and work at Dana-Farber have defined what I want to research in greater depth: cancer.