Lauren Ha

Lauren Bic Ha

Goals

• help enable the creation of biological works
• find the meaning of her life

Bio

Lauren was born in Saigon, Vietnam and came to the United States in 1975, arriving with her large family in Columbia, South Carolina to start a new life. She attended the University of South Carolina on an academic scholarship to study to become a doctor and quickly began to realize that medical practice seemed far too primitive of a profession for her, (to the unexpected relief of her mother, who responded upon hearing the news that Lauren decided not to go to medical school, "I never quite pictured you with your hand up people's *** all day".)

Set adrift with a somewhat useless undergraduate degree in Biology, Lauren decided to move to Boston, Massachusetts to try and experience life in the "big city" and to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. There, she landed quite by accident in a research lab at the Massachusetts General Hospital's Department of Molecular Biology. It was there that Lauren found something she liked to do: administer labs.

Fast forward a decade later and she found herself running a new research institute in Berkeley, California and living with creative friends in the East Bay Hills. After 7 years of the ups and downs of trying to sustain and grow a small start-up, Lauren decided to move on to something new. Here's where the story briefly pauses.

What I Did

Molecular Sciences Institute (1997-2005)

Massachusetts General Hospital (1993-1997)

What I Learned

Biology, University of South Carolina (B.S. 1992)

Projects

• Creative BioWorks
  • supporting the unique creation of biological works
• The BioBricks Foundation
  • more responsible people who are working to engineer biology and constructively apply biological technology