Meet Jasmine Thompson
“I was trying to figure out what I wanted to major in when I did go to college. BioBuilder was super accessible and easy and fun. It was a weekly thing that I went to and it just kept me coming back. It was my first time doing like wet lab science and chemistry and just putting what I was learning in the classroom like to use. And it was my first time doing research projects and talking to other like-minded students who were also interested in that sort of stuff. That’s kind of how I found Biobuilder and why I kept going back.
We talk with Jasmine Thompson about building a biotech career from the ground up, starting with BioBuilder and expanding into biomedical engineering, lab research, and software engineering. She shares how research habits, teamwork, and communication skills transfer across internships in biotech, pharma, and tech.
- early spark for science through school, movies, and staying busy
- discovering the BioBuilder apprenticeship and getting first wet lab experience at Ginkgo Bioworks
- learning practical lab skills like pipetting, protocols, calculations, and cell culture
- creating the Reject Rejections project to address bone marrow transplant rejection using synthetic biology concepts
- building research instincts through literature review, experimental design, and thinking through immune pathways
- presenting a poster and growing confidence in scientific communication
- interning at Blueprint Medicines and measuring drug lipophilicity using lab workflows and UHPLC
- joining Amazon via the Amazon Future Engineer scholarship and shipping software engineering work
- using research and teamwork habits to handle high-pressure, customer-facing code
- adding business and networking skills through the Takeoff Institute fellowship
- advice to students on mistakes, curiosity, questions, and saying yes to opportunities
Learn more about BioBuilder’s programs for students, educators, and industry professionals here 👉 https://biobuilder.org/
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