Embarking On a New Journey: TRIP by Danny Nguyen

Hello everyone! My name is Danny Nguyen and I’m a junior at Julia R. Masterman High School. I was born and raised in North Philadelphia throughout most of my life. In my free time, I enjoy watching horror movies (no… like I LOVE watching horror movies). My favorite is The Conjuring…even though I fell off my chair watching it for the first time. When I first heard about TRIP, I knew I had to apply because it was a great opportunity to meet new people and see what the biomedical field was like. At TRIP, I want to challenge myself in learning a whole new field and see the fun of experimenting with fruit flies. Fun Fact: I have a fear of birds and flies so hopefully I’ll learn to overcome those things too!

I’m also involved in school activities and other extracurriculars. I started a coding club named Power In Code, where we teach students basic web development and coding skills to over 40+ students. I also started an ACS Chemistry Club chapter at my school where we do labs, workshops, and chemistry activities to nurture a passion for science. The most memorable thing we made was creating different shades of substances from food coloring to form a rainbow and creating DIY slime from glue and borax! I’m also a part of my school’s Science Olympiad team where I won 3rd place in Disease Detectives at the Girls High Invitational! However, one fun thing I’m most proud of was winning a business competition where I led my team of 4 in pitching an app prototype called Wanderer and received a $2,000 award! Wanderer is an exploration app that lets users explore places of interest around their area. You can access our prototype here! 

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Apart from that, I was a former 4 sport athlete for 2 years where I played soccer, lacrosse, basketball, and ultimate frisbee (I also did Track and Field for a short moment…). I was the starting point guard for my school’s JV basketball team and was on the Varsity frisbee team since freshman year. I love playing pick-up basketball with friends and enjoying the intensity of the game as well as competitively playing ultimate frisbee. The most exciting moment in my frisbee career was going up against the 3rd ranked team in the nation, Wissahickon High School! Although we lost, that was the game where I fell in love with frisbee and gained a competitive nature for frisbee.

In college, I want to major in chemical engineering with a minor in A.I. After high school, I want to pursue biotechnology and the biomedical field where I want to specialize in computational chemistry, bioinformatics, and A.I. complemented with skills in wet-lab to be a well-rounded researcher. I believe what I do at TRIP will help me achieve my ultimate goal; which is to develop a treatment/drug that will positively impact people worldwide. I aspire to be a research scientist at a Biotechnology company and be involved in developing treatments and medicine that’ll aid others in battling major diseases like diabetes, cancer, and other life-threatening diseases. Like many great scientists before, I dream of curing diseases in millions, if not, billions of people globally someday.