Alvin Cheng

There are many reasons why someone chooses to pursue medicine as a career.  For Alvin, it is personal.  This Molecular and Cell Biology major at Sixth College hopes to become a physician, trained in end-of-life care, as a result of his personal experience as a child when his father died of cancer.  “Cancer shaped my childhood views of medicine as not an exact science, but a continuous battle against uncertainty.”  His interest in disease goes beyond the scientific perspective to include the humanistic side of medicine, and for that reason he is minoring in Literature/Writing.

One of Alvin’s proudest achievements today comes from his writing.  He read a lot as a child and realized that storytelling is a powerful tool.  “Stories have the power to shift people’s perspectives on situations, raise awareness on key issues and improve doctor-patient communication.”  He is currently writing a manuscript for a science research publication, which he and his team hope to publish soon.

Alvin is striving towards a career in computational biology, never losing sight of his interest in biological systems, by applying data analytics and machine learning to medical treatment.  While volunteering for the American Cancer Society, doing health advocacy in the Asian American community for hepatitis B awareness, he realized that personalized medicine is the right balance between improving patients’ livelihood and his interest in biomedical research.

Alvin is still deciding which graduate degree to pursue, whether a Master’s degree, PhD, MD, or even an MD/PhD; however, his goal remains the same: “to take an interdisciplinary approach to research – combining stem cell biology with computational skills to reveal how certain diseases like cancer act and use this knowledge to treat them.”  Regrettably, last summer, Alvin was forced to put these plans on hold when he learned that he had a rare brain tumor.  He took a leave of absence during the spring quarter for surgery and treatment and plans to be back at school for the 2023-2024 year, albeit with a new-founded interest in neuro-oncology research.