On July 25th, 2021, AYLUS held its first national conference. Chapel Hill Branch member Kevin Chen participated in four sessions. Please find his report below.
Med/Healthcare Panel
Guests Professor Charney and Dr. Xiu both introduced themselves and what their job was like. Dr. Xiu works in cancer biology as a translational research scientist, and Professor Charney is a professor and a kidney doctor, a nephrologist. He studies different and new drugs to use for kidney diseases. Professor Charney started with science and would eventually go to Medical School, where he’d specialize in kidney diseases. He would continue doing this work for many years with people such as students and other professors due to the opportunity to teach something. Dr. Xiu didn’t expect to become a translational researcher, as her original dream was to become a doctor. She would first join a pre-dental program but would discover that she didn’t like being a clinician. This would lead her to learning and studying genetics. Dr. Xiu believes that staying in the field, helping others, and contributing to science is her own form of success in her career. Professor Charney believes that being able to teach, help, and communicate with other people is his own success. To be able to wake up, and look forward to doing your work is success on its own. Dr. Xiu would later give advice on traits necessary for people who want to learn and succeed in healthcare. She believes that you do need knowledge on the topic, but it’s important to spend time on topics outside of science as well, to keep your personality. Professor Churney believes you need to be a great person, have charisma, and be able to influence others in a positive way to succeed in healthcare.
Law Panel
Guests Scott Lin and Leslee Cohen introduced themselves and their profession. Scott Lin was a lawyer and Leslee Cohen worked with small businesses and is currently working at a law firm. Mr. Lin would describe his career path: ever since 8th grade, he wanted to become a lawyer. He would continue reaching for that goal and would succeed in doing so. Ms. Cohen on the other hand expected that she’d become a lawyer due to the majority of her family pursuing that career. However, once she had gotten into her dream Law School, she would realize her passion wasn’t there and would end up in corporate law instead. Mr. Lin would describe a regular day as busy. You would have a schedule full of zoom calls, and would normally work with around 7 clients at a time. He would also have to speak with other lawyers and spend the majority of his time reviewing and analyzing business and legal documents. As for Ms. Cohen, her typical day would consist of writing constantly and working with lawyers and clients themselves. Mr. Lin claimed that for him, the biggest challenge was the numerous essays he had to complete. He believes that to work in Law school you’ll have to learn to think logically and be able to express your thoughts in an organized manner. Ms. Cohen agrees with Mr. Lin on those statements but believes her biggest challenge is finding new clients to work with.
STEM Panel
The guest speakers for this session are Alice Yang, a software engineer, and Dr. Hualiang Shi, a hardware engineer. Ms. Yang described her career path to be full of mathematics. She would end up taking some coding classes and now works for Facebook as an engineer. Her biggest challenge was thinking that everyone was more accomplished in life than she was, making herself feel inferior to others. Dr. Shi’s career path wasn’t much different, but he claimed his biggest challenge was making decisions. Dr. Shi believes that success from being a hardware engineer is being able to delight your customers, and being able to save costs. Ms. Yang thinks that success for a software engineer involves keeping track of trends that are happening and being in a position that can help you grow. Both believe that in order to pursue this career path, you need to have a growth mindset, good teamwork, leadership, and creativity to thrive.
Total participated hours: 3 hours
Reported by: Kevin Chen