[egd]

A few reasons! First, the field is absolutely fascinating - the complexity is incredible, and I'm really enjoying learning about it. It's also clearly "What's Next" - the synbio space in particular has a real "early computers/early internet" feel, in that the capabilities are becoming apparent, but the tooling & infrastructure's not quite there - it feels like it's about to take off in a big way, and that's exciting. On a broader level, I think climate change is an existential risk, and the biotech/synbio toolkit is the best bet I can see for how we both mitigate and repair the damage and shift our energy consumption patterns, so I want to be part of building it.

Go Slugs! The UCSC campus is still the most beautiful place I've ever lived. I'm sad I wasn't more of an outdoorsy person while I was there - it was just an incredible place.