2022: I Like to Learn Deeply

2022 felt like a return — to curiosity, to community, to the reason I started any of this.

What I Did

• AACR — Cancer biology meets computational science. A reminder of why the problems we work on matter.
• ISMB — The premier bioinformatics conference. The best talks are the ones that make you realize you’ve been thinking about something wrong.
• Alaska — Home. There’s nowhere quite like it. The kind of place that resets something in you.
• IGVF — Exciting work on functional genomic variation.
• Thanksgiving and Christmas with family — the year’s most important meetings.

What I Learned

I have a tendency to try to learn everything at once, which means I often learn nothing deeply. 2022 was the year I started deliberately choosing depth over breadth.

There’s a difference between knowing about something and understanding it. Deep learning, regulatory genomics, the statistical mechanics of gene expression — I spent 2022 trying to actually understand the things I’d only previously known about.

Music

Guitar has become a consistent thread through the PhD years. Some recordings from 2022:

• Gravity
• I Bet That You Look Good On the Dancefloor

Up next: 2023 — It’s showtime →