Daniel Zhang ‘22 

Daniel designed a computational framework to identify genes that are important to Alzheimer's disease. His research found potential novel treatment targets for Alzheimer's, which he is working to validate at various labs.

Why did you pursue this project?
My name is Daniel Zhang. Aside from science research, I enjoy math, computer science, playing piano and violin, swimming, and video games.

My research direction seemed obvious to me. I’ve always been interested in computer science since I was little, and my parents do research in biology—it was natural that I was interested in computational biology.

For my most recent project, I decided to study Alzheimer’s mostly because of an orchestra trip to a senior nursing home. I noticed that some of the residents were even able to attend our performance and enjoy our music. Since then, I started to pay more attention to age-related diseases. I eventually learned that Alzheimer’s is the most common type of dementia, and there are no effective treatments. I decided to apply my computer skills to try to advance research for Alzheimer’s treatment.

Competitions
Tri County Science and Technology Fair 2021: First Prize in the category of Math/Computers

Westchester-Rockland Junior Science and Humanities Symposium 2022: Second Place in the category of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics

Upstate Junior Science and Humanities Symposium 2022: Second Place in the category of Physical/Computational/mathematics

Westchester Science and Engineering Fair 2022: First Place in the category of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics

New York State Science and Engineering Fair 2022: Second Place in the Category of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
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