Hello!

My name is Christian Waronsky and I am a rising senior here at the University of Pittsburgh.

Coming into college, I didn’t have any intentions of pursuing research. However, as time passed and I decided to pursue dentistry, I didn’t have much choice. So I embarked on the mission of finding a lab and, lucky enough for me, I found a wonderful home : the center for craniofacial and dental genetics (CCDG) under Dr. Rebecca Green.

Soon, I was chugging away at the data analysis of a previous honors’ thesis project on the interaction between folic acid and craniofacial development. When I first heard that was my project, I was admittedly overwhelmed. All my life, I’ve been dedicated to studying classes and learning things that someone else already knows. But now I was thrust into a world of the unknown…it was my job to explore it…and it was a challenge.

In many times in my life, overcoming problems wasn’t too difficult because I was familiar with the landscaping in which I was solving. But rarely in life do we find ourselves working in the land of c folic acid interaction and craniofacial development . The depth and detail of knowledge I needed to explore was unlike anything I’d ever sunk my teeth into. Further, I had never worked with the R programming language or the pipelines I was using. At many times the palms of my hands met my face.

But when life gives you lemons, and you don’t know how to make lemonade, life will also give you someone who does. Working under Dr. Green has been both wonderful and formative. She has given me the leeway to explore and fail all on my own (failure is my favorite teacher), all while being a reliable and understanding safety net for when I was completely lost. If not for her, I would not be here, nor would I hope research to be in my future.

I find research to be a wonderful, never ending challenge. I think it can be easy to get caught up in the routine of student life and we often lose curiosity as a result of it. Trying to answer these extremely difficult questions not only makes an impact on your personal and academic growth, but also the world around you. Making both of those impacts in one experience is quite special.

After months of dry analysis, this summer I’ll be finally getting into the wet lab to further the findings of my dry-lab analysis. I’m super excited to get some answers while having this opportunity with the honors college!

I’ll see you all at the end of July!

Christian Waronsky