Bianca Torres

Bianca Torres: The Enigma in the Data

She wasn't supposed to get this far.

Bianca Torres was born at the periphery of a corporeal ghost town. At an early age, she learned survival is watching the time and never speaking. Her father—a has-been, something akin to a figment of memory—vanished before she could articulate words. Her mother was a seamstress who struggled with nerves that trembled like her hands as she sewed garments whose seams were always falling apart because rather than throwing them away, they used the scraps. They lived, junkie-like, from eviction notice to eviction notice, from one hidey-hole of poverty into another.

At 14, Bianca discovered a pirated computer at a public library, felt a sense of calm wash over her whenever the computer screen glowed, sensed a promising stillness between her needle and thread, while a steering wheel hummed in her mind, almost like an old song no one remembers—or wants to remember. Numbers spoke to her in ways people never would. They didn't care that her hand-me-downs came from thrift stores, or ways she placed herself, professing hunger with her eyes open wide.

At night, after everyone else went home to sleep—she taught herself to code. Fingers tapping away like the message in Morse code and with all the true creativity that accompanies the breaking down of numbers in the solitude of the night.

So why did it have to happen? A scholarship to improve her resume solidified when fast-track wealth reminded her it was still on its way to make better decisions on her behalf. Now, she slept on couches, sold plasma, and swallowed pride like a bunch of stale pills. But the Universe gives little warnings to those who look for them. A chance meeting with a professor in the middle of details—the computer lab she was trying to debug, and the firm grasp of tears that made her look untrained—but he saw the ash and the ember.

And now, she is a Genomic Data Analyst demystifying DNA. In between rates that haunt in bright orange, calculating morbid advances linking genes to complexity. By night, she is something else. A woman who wears her scars like a silk purse, fondling them in shame. She knows what all of this weight looks like in a silent world. Her Instagram is a beautiful mess of lab coats and leather, and helix sequences followed by smoky eyeliner.

You could follow her. But don't blame me when this lady doesn’t give you answers. She leaves trails. 🧬✨

“The most powerful data points are the ones that bleed.”