Matt Suntay’s jump into the PINC computing program

Matt Suntay is one of the students in the PINC program and also a research student in my lab in the E. coli / drug resistance / machine learning team. A few days ago he gave a speech at our PINC/GOLD/gSTAR graduation event. I thought it was a great speech and Matt was kind enough to let me share it here both as a video and the text for those of you who prefer reading.

“To those of you who may know me, you all know I’m pretty adventurous. For those of you who may not know me, first off, my name is Matthew Suntay, and I have jumped off planes, cliffs, and bridges – and each time was just as exhilarating as the last. But, let me tell you about my most favorite jump: the leap of faith I took for the PINC program.

I call it a leap of faith because when I first heard about the PINC program, and specifically CSC 306, I thought, “Ain’t no way this could be for me. I may be stupid because I can barely understand the English in o-chem and now I gotta understand the English in Python? Maaaan, English isn’t even my first language… But they said I don’t need any prior computer science knowledge, so why not? It’s Spring ‘21, new year, new me, right?”

And let me tell you, it definitely made me a new me. I went from printing “Hello World!” to finding genes in Salmonella to constructing machine-learning models to study Alzheimer’s Disease and antibiotic resistance in E. coli. These are some pretty big jumps–my favorite, right?–and they weren’t easy to make. However, I was never scared to make any one of those jumps because of the PINC program.

When I think PINC, I don’t only see lines of code across my screen or cameras turned off on Zoom. I see friends, colleagues, mentors, and teachers. I see a community.

I see a community willing to support me in my efforts to develop myself as a scientist. I see a community providing me the platform and opportunities to grow as a researcher. And most importantly, I see a community that shared hardships, tears, laughter, and success with me.

I can confidently say that the PINC program was, and still is, monumental to my journey through science. Thanks to the PINC program, many doors have been opened to me and one of those doors I’m always happy to walk through each time is the one in Hensill Hall, Room 406 – or the CoDE lab. It was here in this lab that I met some of the most amazing people who want to do nothing but help me reach new heights. I’m so grateful and lucky to have them. So thank you, Dr. Pennings, for believing in me and continuing to believe in me. Thank you to everyone in the CoDE lab for supporting me and laughing at my terrible jokes – and real talk, please keep doing so, I don’t know how to handle the embarrassment that comes after a bad joke.

If I haven’t said it enough already, thank you so much to the PINC program. If you were to ask the me from a year ago what his plans were for the future, he would tell you, “Slow down, dude, I don’t even know I’m trying to eat for breakfast tomorrow.” But now if you were to ask me what my plans for the future are, I’d still tell you I don’t know what I’m trying to eat for breakfast tomorrow because I’m too busy writing code to solve my most current research question, whatever it may be.

For many students, including myself, one of the biggest causes of an existential crisis is, “What am I gonna do after I graduate?” To be honest, I’m still thinking that same thought, but without the dread of an existential crisis. One of the coolest parts of the PINC program is the exposure to research and the biotechnology industry, and learning that research == me and not just != the stereotype of a scientist.

Dr. Yoon, thank you for taking the time and effort to push me and my teammates forward, because even though our projects were difficult, we learned a lot about machine-learning and ourselves, like who knew we had it in us this whole time? You definitely did and you helped us see that. Professor Kulkarni, you also helped us realize that we should give ourselves more credit. 601 and 602 showed us we can be competitive and that we’re worth so much more than we make ourselves out to be. Also, I would like to give a quick shoutout to Chris Davies and Chun-Wan Yan for the wonderful seminars because those talks gave me hope and inspiration for the future. Knowing that there’s something out there for me makes going into the future a lot less scary and a lot more exciting because who knows what awesome opportunity is waiting for me?

And one last honorable mention I would like to make is to Professor Milo Johnson. He was my CSC 306 professor, and I don’t know if he is here today, but he was an amazing teacher in more ways than one. He helped me turn my ideas into possibilities and I have him to thank for helping kick start my journey through PINC. When I thought “I couldn’t do it, this isn’t for me,” he said “Don’t worry, you got this.”

So, once again, to wrap things up, thank you to everyone who’s helped me out this far and continues to help me out. Thank you to all my friends, mentors, and teachers that I’ve met along the way. And thank you to the PINC program, the best jump I’ve ever made.

Matthew Suntay – PINC graduate 2022

The Code Lab visits Tel Aviv!

In February, 10 of us from the Code Lab visited Adi Stern’s lab in Tel Aviv, Israel. It was stressful to organize the trip (filling out so many forms, waiting for permission, finding reasonably priced tickets…), but now that we’ve done it I think it was totally worth it. The trip was really good for the lab and for our research. We are grateful to NSF for funding the trip (as part of a collaborative grant between the two labs), to everyone in Adi Stern’s group for hosting us and to the folks at SFSU who helped us (and are still helping us) with the administrative side of this trip!

Here are the best things from the trip:

1. We bonded as a lab!

Emily: One of the things I enjoyed the most about our trip was getting to know and meet people. There are many different individuals in our lab who I don’t know very well and this trip was a great opportunity to spend time with them!

Anjani: We were mostly together as a group during the trip and it made our bonding stronger than what we had when we left SFO.

Jasmeen, Anjani, Caroline, Geo, Stuart, Ryan (all SF)

2. We got to know our current and future collaborators from Tel Aviv and learned about their research.

Caroline: One thing I really liked about the trip was how welcoming and organized the Stern lab was even though we arrived sooner than initially planned. I got really excited seeing the HeLa cells and hearing about the different projects revolving around them. Olivia: I really enjoyed talking to Talia about her research on the Tilapia virus. This virus is found in both wild and farmed tilapia. I found the questions she was asking interesting because it affects people all over the world.

Ryan: Everyone was very cool and super nice.  

Caroline Solis (SF), Talia Kustin (Tel Aviv), Moran Meir (Tel Aviv), Anjani Pradhananga (SF), Jasmeen Kaur (SF).

3. We presented our work and got useful feedback.

Olivia: Sometimes it feels like I haven’t been able to finish or see a product, but I used my old poster that I had created for the COSE showcase (…) and found that I actually accomplished the aims/next steps. It was a nice feeling to learn that I have done something as I was updating my poster.

Kaho: I really enjoyed talking to Adi, Maoz and Sherry about research. The discussion we had was helpful and gave me clearer directions for the next steps of my research, and it was great to find out we have such cool collaborators!

Ryan: I also loved meeting the Tel Aviv lab because it made me see out research, not only from the dry lab perspective, but also from the wet lab side too.

Oded Kushnir (Tel Aviv) and Ryan Winstead (SF) look at a poster.

4. Visiting new cities and a foreign country

Emily: I was glad to see that Tel Aviv had a vibrant and openly queer community.

Getting to see the historical sites was equally important to me. Though I am not a fan or organized religion, (…), I learned many of the stories from the old and new testament, so seeing the actual places where they occurred was really cool. My grandma would have been so happy to see my pictures and hear about everything, and though she is gone now, she was in my heart the whole time.

Ryan: At first, I was very nervous about traveling so far from home. However, as soon as I was on board the plane, I felt excited about it. Tel Aviv was an amazing city and seeing it and the university was rewarding.

The Code Lab with our Tel Aviv guides Danielle Miller and Omer Tirosh from the Stern Lab. Clockwise from Anjani (taking the selfie), Caroline, Olivia, Geo, Emily, Danielle Miller, Omer Tirosh, Ryan, Stuart, Jasmeen, Kaho.

5. We enjoyed the food!

Stuart: Trying out new foods and deserts were a blast at dinner.

Shakshouka is a dish of eggs poached in a sauce of tomatoes, chili peppers, and garlic, commonly spiced with cumin, paprika, cayenne pepper, and nutmeg.

What we didn’t like as much

There were only a few things we didn’t like. Some of the students had never had a jet lag before and they hated it. We also didn’t like when we felt cheated by taxi-drivers or bartenders and we were sad to see and feel the tension between different groups in Jerusalem. One thing that we’ll keep in mind for our next trip is to schedule more time for the posters.

But all in all it was a fun, interesting and memorable trip!

The Code Lab and the Stern Lab. Front: Pleuni Pennings(SF), Yaara Ben Ari (Tel Aviv), Gal Goldman (Tel Aviv), Jasmeen Kaur (SF), Kaho Tisthammer (SF), Adi Stern (Tel Aviv), Tal Zinger (Tel Aviv), Olivia Pham (SF). Standing: Danielle Miller (Tel Aviv), Sherry Harari (Tel Aviv), Talia Kustin (Tel Aviv), Maoz Gelbart (Tel Aviv), Oded Kushnir (Tel Aviv), Caroline Solis (SF), Ryan Winstead (SF), Stuart Castaneda (SF), Anjani Pradhananga (SF), Geo Pineda (SF), Emily Fryer (SF)