Intern Anniversary Series: Hussain Ather

Hussain Ather

2014 intern with Zhangjun Fei while a freshman at Indiana University in Bloomington

Now: As a junior at Indiana University, Ather is working on a BS in physics and BA in philosophy while writing about science for the Indiana Daily Student.

How did your experience at BTI affect your career path and what is your current position?  

I’m a junior majoring in physics and philosophy and I’ve continued performing research on computational biology and neuroscience. BTI helped me understand how much I loved computational sciences, especially work on genomics, phylogeny and similar areas. My internship specifically gave me the freedom to look creatively at different tools and software that would help me in what I choose to do.

What are your future aspirations?

I plan on pursuing a masters in philosophy followed by a Ph.D. in computational neuroscience. I hope to study the mind from both a scientific and philosophical point of view.

Would you recommend this experience to others and why?

I’d definitely recommend the internship to other students because of the friendly faculty, exciting projects and amazing location.

More information on the Plant Genome Research Program summer internship and its history is available here.