Curriculum Vitae

Education

2017/09-2023/01             Ph.D., UC San Diego, Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
                                        Chancellor’s Dissertation Medal

2014/09-2017/06             B.S., UC San Diego, Bioinformatics
                                        Magna Cum Laude

Research Experience

• 2023/01-current             Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center Fellow @ Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
  • Co-mentored by Drs. Paul Blainey and Caroline Uhler.
  • Developing novel machine learning models and experimental techniques for systematically understanding rewiring of biological programs upon genetic perturbations.
• 2018/06-2023/01           Ph.D. Student – Dr. Trey Ideker
  • Building a visible machine learning system to discover targeted treatment solutions in cancer.
  • Developed novel machine learning approach to infer cell structure across several orders of physical scale from fusing confocal microscopy images and protein biophysical association data.
  • Developed method for boosting signals in the genome-wide association study data using protein interaction network.
• 2018/03-2018/06         Rotation Student – Dr. Pablo Tamayo
  • Constructed and evaluated the signature gene sets for immunotherapy.
• 2017/12-2018/03         Rotation Student – Dr. Jill P. Mesirov, co-advised by Dr. Bing Ren
  • Analyzed bulk and single-cell RNA-seq data to delineate intricate cellular states in glioblastoma.
• 2017/08-2017/12         Rotation Student – Dr. Trey Ideker
  • Inferred a hierarchical yeast model from single cell imaging data.
• 2015/09-2017/06         Research Intern – Dr. Tariq M. Rana
  • Analyzed single-cell RNA-seq data of cerebral organoids.
  • Studied cis-regulatory mechanism of long non-coding RNA in innate immune response.
  • Studied dynamics of microRNA regulatory network, N6-adenosine methylation, and transcriptomic landscape in host during Zika virus infection.

Honors

2026              Eliana Hechter Memorial Travel Prize, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
2024              Asia-Pacific Leaders Under 30, Asia-Pacific Entrepreneurs Association
2023              Fifty Years Fifty 50
2023              Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia
2023              Chancellor’s Dissertation Medal, UC San Diego
                          - Recipient for Jacobs School of Engineering.
2023              Siebel Scholars, Thomas and Stacey Siebel Foundation
                          - Academic/leadership award given to 85 students worldwide annually from top graduate programs in bioengineering, business, and computer science.
2022              Friends of the International Center Fellowship, UC San Diego
2021              F99/K00 Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Transition Award, NIH/NCI
                          - Competed and nominated by UC San Diego (one nomination per institution).
                          - Total ~$480,000 supporting tuition and salary for pre- and post-doctoral training.
2021              Next Generation in Biomedicine, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
2021              Cancer Systems Biology Training Award, Cancer Cell Map Initiative
2014-2017     Provost Honor, UC San Diego

Poster presentations

2023         NCI F99/K00 Awardees Annual Meeting
2022         NCI Junior Investigator Meeting
2022         ISMB
2022         The Biology of Genomes Meeting, Cold Spring Harbor Lab
2022         9th Annual Winter Q-Bio Conference
2022         UCSD Bioinformatics Exchange
2021         Cell Bio Virtual 2021
2021         Cancer Systems Biology Consortium Annual Meeting
2021         ISMB/ECCB 2021
2021         Cold Spring Harbor Lab Network Biology Meeting
2020         Cell Bio Virtual 2020

Mentees

• 2025/06 –                       Vernon Lin, MIT undergraduate
• 2025/01 –                       Jacob Cobb, MIT undergraduate
• 2024/09 – 2025/01         Kien Phuong, MIT undergraduate
• 2020-2022                       Ximena Gonzalez, UC San Diego undergraduate
  • Awarded TRELS scholarship (Summer 2021)
  • Now attending UCSF medical school

Teaching & Outreach

2024         Organizing Committee, CellMorph-2-Function Workgroup
                      - Monthly Broad workgroup meeting featuring ongoing functional genetics research.
2023         Committee Member, NCI F99/K00 Awardees Annual Meeting
2019         Medical Scientist Training Program Bootcamp, UCSD - Instructor
2019         CLRE 255 – Data Management & Informatics, UCSD - Teaching Assistant
2018 – 2019         Internal Director, UCSD Graduate Bioinformatics Council
2015         BICD 100 – Genetics, UCSD - Instructional Apprentice

Peer-review Activities

Journals for which I have reviewed manuscripts:
Bioinformatics Advances, Biomolecules, Cell, Frontiers in Genetics, Genes, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, International Journal of Bioinformatics and Intelligent Computing, Journal of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Journal of Chemical Informatics and Modeling, Journal of International Medical Research, MedComm – Future Medicine, Nature, Nature Cell Biology, Nature Communications, Nucleic Acids Research Genomics and Bioinformatics, PeerJ, PNAS, Vaccines, Viruses