Joselle O'Brien ’13

Having spent a year thus far in grad school, I am already aware of how fruitful my Mathematics education at UNE has been; it offered a substantial time for the honing of my mathematical capacity, particularly through the variety of classes and opportunities for collaborative research. I was always supported by your faculty, who did not hesitate to help in this expansion of my experiences. Considering I also majored in Medical Sciences, along with the Math, my prospects have been incredible, and thus far I have been able to perform optimally, and know that I will continue to do so. Math is valuable regardless of the career path chosen, and I've found this to surely set me apart in my current department, with my balance of math and biological knowledge, especially when it comes to using statistics as a bridge between the two.

I've found Biostats itself to be an incredibly intriguing field, beyond my expectations actually. I've taken quite a few electives already, which have led me to believe in the wide and varied scope of this field... Throughout the semester, we learned the theory and implementation of different mining techniques for analyzing large data sets. I immediately enjoyed the hands on nature of the course (we use the statistical software R) and halfway through the semester, the professor, asked me to join the research project of which she is a part. I am working with ovarian cancer metabolomics data, aimed toward helping to develop a profiling strategy for detection.