Dr. Adams and I at the Annex

Author: Jack Green | Major: Finance | Semester: Summer 2023

This summer, I jumped into a research experience like I never believed I’d be able to participate in. It all began when a man named Dr. Rich Adams, a professor from the Agricultural Data department, introduced himself during my entomology class. As a freshman in the business college, I thought there was never a chance that someone with almost no history with any of the work he spoke about would be given a second thought. However, when I emailed him, he was happy to meet with me and talk about what we could do. To my surprise, Dr. Adams decided to give me a chance, and when summer came, one of the most interesting experiences of my life began.

As someone without any experience in coding, data science, or biology, studying the potential drawbacks in estimating tree phylogeny using A.I. we coded ourselves was a journey outside my comfort zone. However, working with Dr. Adams and the Adams Analytics group, I was able to help write a research paper and learn countless useful skills along the way. I threw myself headlong into whatever I felt I needed to learn to be an asset to the research team. Dr. Adams worked with me personally, helping me to understand the code we were building, which culminated in me being able to contribute some advanced code to the project. We would talk through the research papers he thought would most help me with my understanding of the project. We also worked with and manipulated, or ‘wrangled’ large-scale genetic datasets. While the phylogenetics of trees likely won’t be what the future holds for me, I think I’ve gained invaluable experience for my hopeful career as an A.I. copyright lawyer. As an individual hoping to succeed in a legal environment overrun with artificial intelligence and data, I can now proudly say that I have a skillset that can match and overcome those types of challenges. And data wrangling is just a valuable asset no matter where you go in life. I may not have worked with every dataset, but as Dr. Adams says, “Data are data are data.” Now that I know the basic skills, I can work with practically any data confidently.

I cannot stress enough how unqualified I felt to even try to join the research team. But over the course of the summer, I found that a willingness to learn and a desire to improve can make up for any lack of experience. Taking chances, even longshots like emailing a professor about joining a research project despite any limitations you feel are holding you back. If I hadn’t been willing to shake things up and go outside of my normal day-to-day, I could never have known how great it felt to struggle and push myself, then look back on my summer and see how much I’ve grown and learned. Nor would I know how amazing the science behind estimating the genetic relationships between trees is. Having said that, I am certain that the greatest lesson I learned this summer wasn’t technical experience in data, genetics, and A.I. It was that when I see a chance, no matter how slim, taking it could be the best choice I can make.