Sofia Forslund
She/Her
I am trans, queer, and bi and I am a computational biology principal investigator. //
I just founded my research group doing computational high-throughput systems biology of cardiovascular and metabolic disease, antibiotic resistance, and host-microbiome interactions. When I applied for that I still used my birth-assigned name. By then I’d spent decades thinking I had no gender, and was spending more and more energy coping with stress I now recognize as dysphoria. Finding the right role models, at last I had the concepts to work with, realizing I could live my life as a transgender woman scientist instead of as an unhappy and anxious cloud-of-impersonality scientist. With every boundary crossed toward self-realization, I experience more and more agency and presence in my life, and I am deeply thankful for the support I have. I’m privileged to be in positions where I get to learn from these challenges rather than be broken from them. In terms of other role-model aspects, I am also polyamorous and interested to some extent both in men, women, and non-binaries.