Mentor: Pamela Chang

Education:

University of California, San Diego – Bachelor of Science, Chemistry and Mathematics/Applied Science (2021); Minor: General Biology

Awards and Honors

• NIH Intramural Research Training Award Summer Student Fellowship; National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Bethesda, MD (2021)
• Caledonian Society of John Muir College, UC San Diego (2021)
• Charles L. Perrin Summer Research Fellowship, UC San Diego (2020)
• Provost Honors, UC San Diego (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021)

Research Experience:

• June-July 2021: NIH Summer Student Fellow, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Bethesda, MD
• Sept 2019-June 2021: Undergraduate Research Assistant (w/ Valerie Schmidt), UC San Diego; research in organometallic catalysis.
• June-Aug 2018: BioChemCoRe Summer Intern (w/ Rommie Amaro), UC San Diego; computational chemistry and biophysics research.
• Sept 2017-2019: Undergrad Research Assistant (w/ Rachel Dutton), UC San Diego; research in bacterial genetics and metabolomics.  Also w/Rommie Amaro – structural bioinformatics research.

Current Research Activities:

Humans are colonized by a diverse and dynamic community of microbes whose metabolism modulates a variety of physiological processes, including inflammation and protection against injury. My research utilizes a combination of biochemistry, synthetic chemistry, and chemical biology approaches to study the gut microbial enzymes that carry out these processes and how these enzymes affect human health.