<p> We are complex biochemical machines. With advances in science and medicine, we have taken to pharmaceutically hacking ourselves. Hackers are in a unique position to understand the way we design and use drugs to manipulate disease states and to hack microorganisms that are attempting to hack us. With drugs we send chemical instructions to biological processes to change what they do. How do these instructions work? How can we tweak them? With thought-provoking examples, a pharmacy student shows how the hacker perspective is applied to our biochemistry to improve our quality of life. </p>
<p> <strong> Jennifer Ortiz </strong> is a pharmacy student at Creighton University, PharmD class of 2012. She graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a B.S. in electronic media arts and communication and a minor in computer science. She worked for five years in web development and is now working at a hospital as a pharmacy intern. </p>