Introducing Horizons: a blog about graduate school, bioengineering, and humanity

Last summer, when I was just about to start at BU, one of the things that most excited me about starting my PhD was to transition from someone who knew enough about the field of synthetic biology and bioengineering in general to be excited about it and know of the potential to someone who had done the deep dive and actually made a contribution to the field, aka the transition from excitable and wide-eyed recent college grad to a bitter, jaded, and hardened graduate student. As I thought about how interesting this transition would be on my personal outlook and life perspective, I thought to create a blog that would chronicle that journey. And so I created Horizons, a blog where I hoped to write about my graduate school experience, my thoughts on the field of synthetic biology, and how all of this would go on to impact the course of the human species.

And then first year hit me like a brick and I managed to eek out a few posts in the Fall. Well, with classes over I am looking to bring Horizons back to regular postings and I also wanted to share the relevant content on here, the GSC blog. The current plan is that I will preview each post here and then provide a link so you can read that post and others on the Horizons website. For this first post, I wrote a reflection on a public science engagement event I attended at the Boston Museum of Science a few weeks ago. Here, I discussed ethical issues surrounding gene therapy and germline engineering with members of the public and had a great time learning how to listen to others and learning when and how to provide the scientific background to inform the debate.

Check the post out here and look forward to future posts from Horizons!

Enjoy!

Mark