Note: this isn't a word-for-word transcript. It's my own retelling of a conversation with Tehreem Fatma, based on notes taken while we talked. Her answers reflect my understanding of what she said, not direct quotes.

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Tehreem is a student at Columbia pursuing a dual degree in computational biology and creative writing. She also works in quantum machine learning, writes poetry, runs a startup called Qinteik, and built her own literary archiving platform. I wanted to know how she holds all of that together.

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If someone asked what you're doing right now, what would you say?

She said she doesn't like being framed as a dichotomy — not STEM versus humanities, not scientist versus poet. She said that to actually understand something as a whole, you have to pay attention to the specific details too. Looking at the big picture and paying attention to what's happening in the moment aren't separate things for her — she needs both.

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Where does your interest in research even come from?

She said it went back to a fern plant in her garden when she was really little, maybe first grade, and the way it would curl up. She got curious about it, asked her mom to take her to the library, and looked it up in an encyclopedia — she even made her own table of the plant's properties. She said it wasn't about proving anything, just about answering a question she had. That's the same instinct behind her research now, which has earned her recognition including second place winner at the Yale Undergraduate Reserach Conference.

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Would you want to run your own research lab someday?

Yes. She said she might even call it "Fatima Lab." She wants it centered on the sciences, but with room for humanities too, though she mentioned that getting funding for humanities research is harder than for science.

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You move between a lot of different identities — Pakistani and American, science and humanities. Do you see those as connected?

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She said existence is full of paradoxes, and brought up Einstein as an example — a physicist who was also a violinist. Her point was that people don't fit into just one category.

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Tell me about your startup.

She started Qinteik with another Pakistani student. The idea is to combine discovery and investment into one place instead of needing several different platforms. She mentioned how in Pakistan, a lot of families mainly invest in land, which she said makes sense, but she wants people to consider other investment options too.

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Does being a young brown woman affect how people receive your work?

She said it's hard to break into that kind of space, in the U.S. and in Pakistan both, and that women are often expected to navigate conflicting expectations. Her advice for young girls was: closed mouths don't get fed — meaning it helps to get comfortable speaking up even when it feels uncomfortable. She also said she doesn't think being humble means staying quiet about accomplishments — there's a difference between humility and not acknowledging what you've done.

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She also said that moving to America doesn't automatically make life easier. Her dad worked as a taxi driver earning minimum wage, and they lived in an apartment; by some measures, life in Pakistan might have been more comfortable for her family. Being the eldest daughter, she said, taught her to handle several responsibilities at once.

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Tell me about Zehen.

Zehen is the platform she built to archive Pakistani literature and writing from the diaspora, including voices that don't usually get much attention. We talked about how archives and libraries in Pakistan are often disorganized, and how that affects the way history gets taught — usually centered on partition and colonization, without much on what came before that.

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She agreed, and said humanities deserves more attention alongside STEM, since recorded history usually reflects the experiences of a privileged few. That connects to why she loves Urdu poetry — she called Urdu a language that belongs to poets.

I brought up her piece "Your God Is a Brown Man," and noted that it felt connected to what she'd said about Urdu and recognition — how contributions from the Global South and South Asia don't always get the credit they deserve. 

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Five years from now, what do you want to be known for — the startup, the writing, the research, or something else?

She said she just wants to make an impact, even if it's just on one person — that would be enough. She said she tries to look at things from a bigger picture.