Home > Current Students > Current Students by Last Name > T-W > Trinh, Michael
I graduated from the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) in 2010 with a B.S. in chemistry. As an undergraduate, my time at Cal has cultivated my research interests in chemistry and public health. I immersed myself in the Hammond Laboratory of UCB’s School of Public Health and in the Human Exposure Lab of the University of California, San Francisco’s School of Medicine in order to broaden my understanding of both chemistry and public health principles. I was a research assistant and headed projects concerning involuntary exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke. My role as a chemist allowed me to demonstrate my analytical chemistry abilities and sampling techniques for measuring and evaluating patient risks due to airborne exposures to irritants and toxins found in secondhand smoke, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and nicotine. The privilege of doing firsthand research in these labs led me to realize why it is important to learn new methods for improving the population’s well-being. Since then, my future goal has been to ameliorate public health problems by being a part of multidisciplinary research teams. It excites me to have the opportunity to make this a reality by embarking on a new academic endeavor through the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program and doing research in pharmacology.