I was born and raised in Puerto Rico before moving up to Philadelphia to pursue my graduate studies in 2016. I received my Bachelor's degree in Cell and Molecular Biology from Universidad Metropolitana, Puerto Rico. As an undergraduate I performed research across a broad spectrum of fields such as neurobiology, enzymology, and cancer biology at the University of Vermont, Iowa State University and the University of Pennsylvania respectively. At my home institution I performed research for two consecutive academic years under the mentorship of Dr. Oliva Primera-Pedrozo at the Nanomaterials Science Lab. I worked with two totally different spectrums of science, going from synthesizing water-soluble cadmium selenide quantum dots, to testing for their potential bio-imaging applications by performing cytotoxic experiments. Upon graduation, I became particularly interested in the collaborative work of Dr. Andrei Thomas-Tikhonenko and Dr. Yoseph Barash. My inherent interest in new technologies led me to eventually explore and commit to the field of Bioinformatics, with the intent of deciphering gene and splicing regulatory networks. I'm currently a PhD student co-mentored by Dr. Yoseph Barash and Dr. Kristen Lynch in the Cancer Biology sub-program within UPenn's Cell and Molecular Biology umbrella PhD program. The main focus of my research is to integrate a collection of computational methods for pattern recognition in highly dimensional splicing data and to elucidate the role of alternative splicing in acute myeloid leukemia.