Taylor Szasz Green
If you鈥檝e ever wondered what it takes to study the prehistoric giants lurking in Southern swamps, meet Mississippi State doctoral student Taylor Szasz Green, a computational biologist dedicated to decoding genetic secrets.
鈥淓xplaining computational biology can be tricky because it鈥檚 such a broad field,鈥 said Szasz Green, originally from Ontario, Canada, but transplanted to Myrtle, Mississippi, when she was a toddler. 鈥淚n simple terms, it uses tools from statistics, math modeling and computer science to answer questions about biological systems. People often expect my work to be evenly split between biology and computation, but 90% of my time is spent staring at a computer. The rest is what I call 鈥榮quishy science,鈥 or bench work.鈥
After earning her undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering from MSU, her interest in computational biology began at Washington University School of Medicine, where she worked in a research lab studying genetic mutations affecting children with bacterial infections. It wasn鈥檛 until she returned to 熟女少妇in 2021 to begin a Ph.D. program in computational biology that she found her true calling鈥攊nvestigating the evolution of genes regulating meiosis, a critical process in sexual reproduction.
鈥淎lligators were a natural fit for me,鈥 Szasz Green said. 鈥淭hey were once on the endangered species list due to habitat destruction and overhunting, but what intrigued me was whether their slow evolutionary rate would impact their ability to recover from low population numbers.鈥
Szasz Green鈥檚 research, which received a 2022 Honorable Mention from the National Science Foundation鈥檚 Graduate Research Fellowships Program, focuses on the genetic diversity of alligators and whether inbreeding could be a problem as their populations rebound. So far, she has found that despite a large modern-day population, alligators have higher levels of inbreeding compared to their American crocodile cousins.
鈥淢eeting Mississippi alligator hunters and getting on the water with them was incredible,鈥 she said. 鈥淚t deepened my connection to the alligators and the people who respect them.
鈥淏iology is so much more than just a path to medical school,鈥 Szasz Green added. 鈥 It鈥檚 for problem-solvers and creative thinkers. The skills you gain are highly transferable. You can become a patent lawyer, software engineer and so much more.鈥
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