Gai’s advisor is Eleazar Eskin, associate professor of computer science and human genetics. His ZarLab focuses on solving computational problems associated with the study of the genetic causes of disease. Though only in her first-year of graduate study, Gai already is involved in several research projects on analysis of human genetic datasets.
Gai received her B.S. in mathematical and computational biology in 2014 from Harvey Mudd College. She already has substantial research experience, using a population statistics technique for an epigenetics study during a summer program at Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and for a program at Duke University where she used comparative genomics in a study of the genetic basis of vocal learning behavior.
The Microsoft Research Graduate Women’s Scholarship is a one-year program for outstanding women graduate students and is designed to help increase the number of women pursuing a Ph.D. This program supports women in the second year of their doctoral studies in a computer science, electrical engineering, mathematics, or bioinformatics/information science program. The scholarship includes an award of $15,000 toward graduate tuition and a $2,000 stipend for travel to conferences.