Miracle St. Kitts is a rising senior at Columbia University majoring in Biology, and will graduate in Spring 2026. In addition to her studies there, she serves as a Representative-At-Large on the Student Governing Board, a student group which represents clubs of different religious, political, and ideological backgrounds, and as a member of the Veritas Forum, a Christian club that seeks to place Christians and non-Christian perspectives in dialogue with one another on a range of topics by organizing forums. Miracle is currently a member of the Dietrich Lab at Columbia, where she studies the lactate and glycolate metabolism and biofilm formation of the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. While her academic and research interests primarily now lie in this particular area, she is more broadly interested in genetics and molecular and cellular biology in addition to bioethics and science policy. She intends to matriculate to a PhD program with a microbiology or molecular and cellular biology focus.
While Miracle was raised in Georgetown, Guyana, with a Pentecostal background and subsequently went to a non-denominational church upon immigrating to the U.S., she began going to an Anglican Church, Christ Church NYC, during her freshman year of college. She became a member of the church after getting baptized there in 2023 and now serves in both the Children’s and Hospitality ministries. Some of her favorite hymns include “Come Ye Sinners Poor and Needy,’ “Come Thou Fount,” “Be Thou My Vision,” “I Asked the Lord (that I Might Grow),” and “In Christ Alone.”
I have had very little personal experience with the field of bioethics outside of brief discussions in some classes and my own personal reading, so everything I have learned about thus far in the CBHD internship feels new and exciting to me. Based on some of my initial reading, I would have to say that I am most interested in beginning-of-life and end-of-life ethics. I like the conversations surrounding these topics because it causes necessary reflection on the meaning of life– particularly a life well-lived– and the duty we have to one another as human beings. One current theme that I really want to parse out more for myself is the significance of our embodiment as human beings made in the image of God and the implications that come from that. To add to that, specifically with end-of-life ethics, I am also fascinated by the meaning and role of suffering in our lives and the role that medicine plays in alleviating it. Additionally, I am really interested in research ethics and how it relates to policymaking. This is primarily because of my own background in research, which was rather lacking in any substantive teaching on the kinds of ethical questions one must consider as a researcher. I had the opportunity to take science policy class during my sophomore year in college, which really opened my eyes to the importance of letting sound science inform policy and having sound policy to regulate the ever expanding boundaries of our scientific capabilities. It was really important for me to realize that research does not exist in a vacuum but is involved in complex interactions within political and social spheres. Therefore, I want to consider how to make those interactions more fruitful by beginning with a study of the ethical frameworks that ought to shape why and how we do research.
In the near future, I would like to pursue a PhD in Microbiology or other related fields like Molecular or Cellular Biology. Before starting this internship with CBHD, I spent two months working in a microbiology laboratory at Columbia University studying Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and I have absolutely fallen in love with the work I do. Learning about the incredibly complex and often puzzling metabolic processes these bacteria partake in has filled me with even more awe of God and His creativity. It has also been an incredibly humbling experience working in a lab as I continue to realize more and more how very little I know, but what I am also very grateful for is that concurrently I find myself excited about the prospect of learning rather than just being discouraged by my insufficiencies. I find that in this way my work in the lab has also been very sanctifying because of how very closely this parallels how our attitude ought to be towards our pursuit of relationship with God. And for this reason, I feel even more strongly that this is what I am meant to be pursuing. That being said, I am also really interested in bioethics and science policy, and I want to more seriously engage with these interests in the future. I just do not yet have a plan for what pursuing these interests would look like, but I hope to bridge it with a career in research.
For my internship with CBHD, I plan to more generally explore the field of bioethics and build up my foundational understanding of the different ethical frameworks that exist. This primarily entails engaging with content that CBHD has published and with bioethicists at the Center in addition to reading works published by prominent scholars such as O. Carter Snead and Gilbert Meilaender. Furthermore, I will delve more specifically into research ethics and policy making, seeking to answer the questions of what ought to be considered when developing sound research ethics, the relationship between research ethics and policymaking, and what makes for excellence in ethical research practices.
I was drawn to a partnership with CBHD based on prior engagement I had with their content in the past. I found their website a few years earlier when I had been seeking a distinctly Christian ethical framework for thinking about abortion, and I was amazed by the richness of the available content. At the time, much of it was still above my head in understanding, but I was still encouraged to know that there was a space for specifically Christian bioethics pieces to be platformed and that the field was thriving. This had been at the forefront of my mind when I reached out to the Center about doing an internship with them. It had actually been a discouraging conversation with some classmates about the state of CRISPR and embryo research that was the impetus for the decision. The conversation made me realize the importance of having a solid bioethical foundation, especially as a Christian interested in a research career. So I reached out because I wanted to learn more about how to be a better witness to my peers and because the experience also made me want to more seriously consider bioethics as a career path.