Growing up as a Palestinian refugee, I was exposed to the misfortune and hardship of my family living in the refugee camps of Lebanon, where resources for education and medicine were scarce and inadequate. It was through this hardship that I developed a desire to deliver medical care to those in greatest need.  Working in Professor Elliot Hui’s lab I was drawn to the idea of developing low cost medical technologies to help people regardless of their financial situation. In addition, working with Professor Chang Liu inspired me to broaden my horizon by venturing into new scientific fields such as synthetic biology.  Thanks to this experience, I decided to pursue graduate school in bioengineering at Caltech and work on developing new molecular tools for safer and more effective immunotherapies. Ultimately, I hope that my work will help provide safer and more accessible treatments that can help alleviate the burden of cancer on patients regardless of their location or financial status.