Tell me about yourself. What is your hometown? 

My name is Shiva Kazempour and I’m an incoming Ph.D. student in the IBMS program. I’m originally from Tehran, Iran. I got my undergraduate degree in Statistics from University of Tehran. I was always fascinated by biomedical sciences so I decided to get a masters’ degree in Biostatistics. My research focused on statistical genetics which opened many doors later in my career. Besides work, I enjoy doing yoga and playing piano.

Why did you choose UT Health San Antonio?  What drew you to your program? 

Right after my master’s graduation, I got an offer from UT Health San Antonio to work as a Computational Biologist. Therefore, I moved to San Antonio and started my journey at UT Health San Antonio. I could use my computational and programming background and apply it to life-changing fields such as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. I gained so many experiences and saw my improvement over short period of time by working there. As a result, I decided to apply for the IBMS program to gain even more knowledge in the biomedical field. One of the reasons that I chose IBMS was that this program is multidisciplinary in nature which I found to be a good fit for me regarding my background. Besides, the program is dynamic and let students learn basic concepts of biomedical sciences from different angles and then choose their favorites. And lastly, by the way the program is designed I figured out that there is a wonderful supporting system that help students at every step of the graduate school. I was looking for a program which could help me reach my full potential and I believe I made the right choice.

What are your career goals?

Studying a multidisciplinary program let students to have more options in terms of choosing a career later. My goal for the future is to work in the industry, for example working in big pharmaceutical companies as a computational biologist. I believe that wherever we end up working, either a professor at a university or a scientist at a company we should constantly continue updating ourselves by conducting and following up cutting-up research.