Although McMahon Lab alumnus Alex Qiuyu Guo is now Senior Scientist for Discovery Biomarkers at Amgen, he admits that he didn’t start off being devoted to science.
“I was more interested in history,” said Guo, who grew up in Beijing as the son of an engineer. “But my academic performance was always pretty good, and a career in STEM was highly regarded in China at the time, especially as a way to support yourself.”
As an undergraduate at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, he majored in biological science and biotechnology. In addition to learning scientific facts, he joined a plant biology and development lab and gained an appreciation for science on a much deeper level.
“I started admiring science and the way that scientists think,” he said. “Science is really how you think about things, how you apply logic, how you design controlled experiments to validate your hypothesis and your evidence-based work. So that was a cool way to think about things as a person, not necessarily even as a professional. And I believe it’s the right way of thinking about things.”
To read more, visit https://stemcell.keck.usc.edu/cirm-scholar-alumni-alex-qiuyu-guo.