Personal Biography:Born to Irish parents in Dublin, Jia Cassidy grew up in Ireland, where both parents were professors at the University of Dublin. She enjoyed a diverse and intellectually stimulating childhood. A marvelously adept student, she breezed through the 2 private schools where she attended primary and secondary school. She was found to have an eidetic memory (visual photographic) at the age of 12. She was immediately provided with specialized training to develop the capacity. It was always her desire to be a physician and later she developed a distinct interest in alien species. With her eidetic memory, she was easily able to excel in school, college and medical school. She has written numerous professional papers even as a fairly young and new physician and her credentials and expertise promise to lead her to a highly successful career. Personally, Jia Denise Cassidy is a soft-spoken woman with a courageous passion for healing. She is the youngest of three girls born to an Irish father and a mother of Slavic heritage, but Irish citizenship. While neither parent was affiliated with Starfleet, two of her 2 uncles and an aunt are officers of the Fleet, and her 1st cousin, Steven, is a professor at the Academy facility on New Darwin Colony. Jia is an extremely casual person, unpretentious and not impressed by status or influence. She was reluctant to join Starfleet because of the rank and chain of command structure, but her interest in exploration and further experience with inter-species medicine prevailed. She has found the structure to be less restrictive than she expected and has adapted quite nicely. Her experience, thus far, has been that those who are endowed with higher authority have justly been awarded that privilege based upon quality leadership skills and integrity. Jia has adopted the spiritual practices of a discipline known as Shimkara, which stresses non-violent co-existence and cooperation between species, humanoid and animal. The practice involves contemplation and meditation, the acknowledgement and pursuit of mental/emotional/spiritual unification with all life forms, sentient and non-sentient. Jia has never married. She had a Denobulan boyfriend during her time there, but it did not lead to a permanent commitment, though his parents currently provide a welcome home to her little mutt dog, Kelsey. Education/Training:Areas of Specialty: Comparative Human/Alien Physiology, Regenerative Medicine and Accelerated Healing. University: Starfleet Academy: Jia entered college at age 17, moving quickly to pre-med and medical school, graduating near the top of her class from ANU. Following graduation, she was invited to Vulcan to the So’Vock medical institute to pursue study of specialized regenerative medicine and accelerated healing techniques. While there, she completed practical internship and a 1 year residency. While still a medical resident on Vulcan, she was approached by Starfleet. Upon completion of residency requirements at So’Vock, she moved to San Francisco, and subsequently Jupiter Station, for a total of 2.5 years of Starfleet training, during which time she completed a 2nd year of residency while at Jupiter Station. At the end of that time, she was granted opportunity to travel to Denobula to study at the Tessora Foundation for training and research in comparative human/multi-species medicine. Concurrently, by special arrangements and periodic terms of extended study at Jupiter Station, she completed her Starfleet training and remained at Tessora on Denobula until being offered a position as CMO at Forrest Outpost. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
