From Introvert to Innovator

Milit Patel stepped foot on the Forty Acres as an introvert. At orientation, the only person he talked to was his adviser. Coming to The University of Texas at Austin with big scientific ambitions, Patel was worried he would fall prey to lots of independent time working in the lab, and he knew he needed to push himself out of his comfort zone to meet new people.

"I went to my first class, and I sat next to two people that I didn't know. And then by the end of the class, I was friends with both of them. That changed some type of chemistry in my brain," said Patel. "Honestly, I was just like, 'Oh, I need to start making more friends. This is just an amazing feeling.'"

In his first year, Patel was part of the Freshman Research Initiative, a program in the College of Natural Sciences that provides early access to supported intra-curricular research experiences for undergraduate students. As a student in Josh Beckham's Virtual Cures lab, he gained experience in wet-lab and computational approaches to protein modeling.

"To be honest, I didn't know if I would like research," he said. "I thought that it was going to be such a solo, siloed environment where I'm just doing lab experiments at like 9 p.m. on a Monday night. But it was so much more than that."

What he once thought of as an isolated experience ended up being the place where he met many of his closest friends.

"It's the social aspect of research that changed it for me," Patel said. "Whether that's between lab meetings or just working with my peers within the lab, I think that's made it such a fun experience."

Four years later, Patel has spent countless hours in the lab. The biochemistry major worked as a researcher in Jeanne Kowalski-Muegge's cancer clinical genomics lab at Dell Medical School. His favorite project he's worked on in the lab leveraged computational methods and artificial intelligence for oncology research.

Earlier this year , Patel was lead researcher on a paper published in one of the world's most-cited cancer journals, Annals of Oncology, for his research on using machine learning to reveal the most important drivers of cancer survival in countries across the world.

After graduating in May as a Dean's Honored Graduate with Distinction in Research, Patel plans to work at an AI-native biotech company that he co-founded. Throughout his time as a Longhorn, he has become an accomplished researcher, but the friendships he has made here are what help him stay motivated.

"All my friends truly just ground my research," Patel said. "Cancer is such a widespread disease. The fact that that might be someone in my circles in the future, and I could be able to potentially help people that I love. It's just something that makes me feel great inside."