What is your academic background? What research experience did you have before grad school?

I completed my undergrad in the University of Tokyo in 2016, with BS degree in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology.
During my undergrad, I worked on large scale off-target effect analysis of CRISPR/Cas genome engineering.

What is your research area and why is it exciting?

I am trying to understand the non-coding regulatory mechanism of human genome, and use that to better understand rare diseases.
As we have heard, 98% of our genome is non-coding and >90% of our GWAS finding is on non-coding region!

Why did you choose BIG?

Because there are so many excellent research institutes around — Broad / DBMI / HMS / MGH and more.

What was your favorite class and why?

STAT120. Learning Bayesian way of thinking was amazing.

How do you like living in Boston? What do you do when you are not working?

Boston is great! I enjoy playing soccer outside!

What advice would you give to college students who are interested in a PhD in genomics/bioinformatics?

I think you're making the right choice!