Waqar is an undergraduate intern at the Patti Lab currently working towards his Bachelor of Science at Harvard College. He is fascinated by human biology and is pursuing Harvard’s Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology concentration, with plans to graduate in 2025. Waqar was born and raised in Brownsville, TX, a rural city in the Rio Grande Valley, a region suffering from disproportionately high rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes (T2D). The strife of his community has driven him to pursue medicine and explore the underpinnings of metabolic disease. Combined with his South Asian ancestry, he is all too familiar with the role of epigenetics in predisposing one toward metabolic disorders, and he is eager to explore this domain of research at the Patti Lab. He also hopes to use his time at the lab to further clarify his career goals. Whenever Waqar is free, he enjoys reading non-fiction pieces (mostly medical writing), folding origami, listening to R&B/hip-hop, playing basketball/cricket, rewatching scenes from shows (usually Breaking Bad and House MD), and spending time with friends. He is always up for a plan to eat out or stroll through the city. Being a registered EMT, he enjoys rotating in the ambulance and looks forward to doing so during his time in Boston.