Michael J. Akinyemi

I’m Michael Akinyemi, a rising senior at the University of Central Florida pursuing a B.S. in Biotechnology. My personal experiences with the shortcomings of modern medicine have instilled the belief that we need researchers with a truly interdisciplinary understanding of both computer science and molecular biology.

I had the opportunity to integrate both in the DeKosky Lab at MIT, where I improved their immune receptor sequencing platform by working to generate a cell line optimized for higher-efficiency library uptake, decreased the runtime of supercomputer analysis pipelines by >80%, and designed probabilistic models to detect sequencing errors. At my home institution, I independently developed a suite of scRNA-Seq analysis tools and investigated approaches to integrating multimodal datasets under the Nguyen Lab.

After losing a loved one to an autoimmune disorder, I’ve become determined to contribute to the global efforts of equipping researchers with the necessary tools to combat any disease they encounter. My past research involves generating an optimized cell line to assist researchers in studying potential antibodies for vaccine development.

I’m a proud McNair Scholar and, having faced much discrimination in my own academic career, I want to advocate for other underrepresented students who have been told that “they don’t belong.”

In my free time I enjoy game development, biking, and exploring natural landscapes :)

You’ll often see me biking and playing/developing video games. For de-stressing, I love to sit down and play with my two adorable guinea pigs.