Biography

My interest in structural biology began in high school, where I studied peptide segments that form the core of infectious prion fibrils by x-ray crystallography. This research experience culminated in my giving an invited talk at the 2019 CCP4 Study Weekend in Nottingham University, UK. My exposure to science at an early age led to my pursuit of a B.S. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale. In college, a particularly meaningful research experience was when I worked to understand membrane protein insertion at the endoplasmic reticulum. This experience led to my fascination for the remarkable diversity of membrane proteins. At Cambridge, I will study how the mitochondria, an essential organelle in nearly all eukaryotic cells, imports more than 1000 proteins from the cytosol. This project could lead to a better understanding of how defects in mitochondrial metabolism cause various human neurodegenerative and metabolic diseases and to the design of novel therapeutics targeting mitochondrial metabolism. The Gates Cambridge Scholarship will give me the incredible opportunity to pursue my passion for interdisciplinary projects at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology with some of the world’s experts in the field.

Previous Education

Yale University Molecular Biophysics & Biochem 2022