My Journey Thus Far

Hello Everyone!

My name is Timmy Le and I am a Biomedical Science Ph.D. student at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Today, I would like to share my academic journey as a scientist who happens to have a physical disability known as cerebral palsy along with a seizure disorder.

Being a first-generation college student whose parents immigrated to the U.S., I had to overcome some challenges in my scientific career to get to where I am today. One of the big ones was the language barrier that my family faced and the other one was the doubt that my earlier educators placed on me when I was younger. I do not blame them for this since it is common practice to put a child with cerebral palsy in a non-mainstream classroom so that they can receive individualized attention, but it is the doubt and possibility of not being able to work to my potential that made me wonder what my life would be like if my mother did not fight for me to put me in a mainstream classroom. What life would be like if that one educator did not take a chance on me? These are the people who made my academic career possible and I will forever be thankful for the opportunity that they hard-press fought for me to have. Without them, I would have never realized that I was interested in science enough to challenge myself in pursuing an understanding of it. 

This realization led me to earn my B.S. in Biochemistry from The Catholic University of America, where I had aspirations of becoming a physician. However, as I reflected upon my academic journey, I came to realize that I had a strong desire to learn that I could not fully satisfy by simply learning from books. It is at this point that I came to the realization that a research career would satisfy my appetite to learn. Unlike most Ph.D. students I know (including the majority of my professors in college), I did not start my Ph.D. directly out of undergrad., but rather I did a Neuroscience Master's program at the University of Hartford before the start of my Ph.D. 

I believed that doing a Master's program before my Ph.D. would allow me to see if a career in research was indeed the right career choice for me because I want to see if I enjoy doing it before fully committing to a Ph.D. program. Also, I felt that it would give me a stronger foundation in conducting research that would develop me into a better Ph.D. student since I did not take advantage of the numerous research opportunities that I was offered during undergrad...OPPS! Lesson learned! It was at the University of Hartford that I developed a keen interest in a subgroup of brain cells called, "glial cells." These cells comprise the majority of the brain, yet they have long been ignored in playing a role in neuropathology. Currently, I am interested in understanding how glial cells interact with one another, particularly at the synapse, and how these interactions are possibly implicated in neuropathology. 

I am excited to have this opportunity to make science more accessible by sharing my Ph.D. journey with y'all on my various social media platforms! 

Gait Lab Analysis at the age of 8 years-old at Shriner's Hospital.