A PATH IN SCIENCE by Dr Adrian Baez-Ortega (2020), Junior Research Fellow
Dr Adrian Baez–Ortega using a Laser Microdissection Microscope
Dr Adrian Baez-Ortega is a Nevile Research Fellow in Biological Sciences at Magdalene, and a postdoctoral researcher at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. His doctoral work has received various international awards, including the 2021 Science & SciLifeLab Prize for Young Scientists.
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his coming October will mark two years of my admission as a Junior Research Fellow of Magdalene College. It will also mark seven years since I was admitted as a PhD student in Biological Sciences at Cambridge, and ten years since I began my postgraduate studies in Computer Science at the University of La Laguna, on my native island of Tenerife. It often gives me pause to consider how my life has changed over those ten years. I may even argue that the Adrian who landed in Stansted in 2015 (equipped with two bags of clothing suitable for the cruellest Siberian winter), and the Adrian who defended his PhD work before the Master and Fellows of Magdalene in 2020, were in fact significantly different people. In my childhood I kept a broad range of interests, which made it difficult for me to decide on a subject for my undergraduate
6 Magdalene Matters
degree. In the end, I opted for computer science, perhaps due to a preference for solving problems rather than memorising facts. I never felt a serious inclination to study natural sciences or follow in my parents’ entomological footsteps. To some extent, I had the impression that plenty of work had already been done in zoology, and that a younger and less settled discipline might hold better opportunities. To me, applied computer science is the art of communicating with the most sophisticated human-made machines, and implanting in them one’s own mental process on how to approach a particular problem, such that the machine can solve the problem with superhuman efficiency. It follows, of course, that the greatest advantage of speaking the language of computers is that one can coerce them do all of one’s work – certainly the best definition of my current situation
