Last year, Darren Zhu was in his sophomore year as a chemistry major; this year, the former member of the Yale Guild of Carilloneurs is marching to a different tune as he launches a biotech start-up company in Palo Alto, California. The 2,600 mile transition was facilitated by Zhu's selection as one of the recipients of the 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship, sponsored by Peter Thiel, a prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist who is perhaps best known as the co-founder of PayPal and the first investor in Facebook. The son of a professor and an engineer, Zhu cultivated his interest in science and technology through science fairs, classes at the North Carolina School of Science and Math, and research experience during his senior year of high school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At Yale, he dabbled in chemistry, mathematics, economics, computer science, and biology. However, he realized that his true interests lay at the intersection of science, technology, and business after helping start and run Yale's team in the International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) Competition. While working with this group of students to engineer E. coli to churn out a new anti-freeze protein, Zhu became immersed in the field of synthetic biology, an area with a diverse array of applications in biotechnology. "Founding a biotech start-up became a dream of mine, but I didn't think that it would be accessible until much later in my career," he explains.
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