Tasnia Sadat
2023 Hoyas for Science Recipient
Creating great social groups with people who are supportive of your goals and want you to succeed will help you get to where you want to be.
About Tasnia
Tasnia Sadat is from Frederick, Maryland. Before coming to Georgetown Biomedical Graduate Education, she earned a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology with a minor in Arabic Language and Culture from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
How do you approach challenges in your life?
When approaching challenges in my life, I remember that the best way that I will overcome them is through remembering the goal. The struggle is going to be temporary, and once I reach another checkpoint leading to it, it creates a memory of the hard work I have done to reach them. The payoff makes these challenges and setbacks feel worth going through in order to get to the point of my dreams.
What led you to pursue graduate studies?
After I was able to finally take the courses that I was actually interested in, during my undergraduate career, I realized that I never wanted to stop learning about them – specifically, my biology and chemistry courses, which intertwined with medicine. My future goals of becoming a physician have led me to continue into graduate education to reinforce concepts in more detail and meet like-minded individuals in my field. Surrounding myself with those who share similar aspirations inspires me to be the best that I can be. I enjoy having insightful and intellectual conversations with my peers, and would like to be absolutely confident in the topics that I have been learning in my graduate studies in order to pass some knowledge along.
What advice would you give to future BGE students?
Something that I would advise to future BGE students is to never compare yourself to others. So many aspects of our field are so competitive, and you must keep your head up and focus on your individual struggles and weaknesses when trying to accomplish at your best!
When you are comparing yourself to your peers and those who have achieved something that you haven’t, it may feel discouraging. My motto to combat this is remembering that “my competition is only myself.” When constantly comparing yourself to others, you also are overlooking different circumstances that others may have had when reaching that achievement of theirs. Creating great social groups with people who are supportive of your goals and want you to succeed will help you get to where you want to be.
If you could meet one scientist, who would you want to meet and why?
Of the many scientists who I would love to meet, I want to have a conversation with chemist Dr. Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin. Being a woman in her field, at the time that she discovered one of the most important biomolecular structures to exist, must have been very challenging. With my background in RNA and protein crystallography research, what she pioneered was very influential to my interests in the field of medicine. Her contributions have changed the face of biochemistry and treatments of bacterial diseases. As a woman in the biomedical field myself, I would like to chat to her about her experiences as a successful scientist and how she was able to reach her goals.