Research Assistant, and UW Fellow for Academic Excellence 

PhD in Pathobiology program

Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

I am a first-generation college student who was born in Millis, Massachusetts, however I was raised in Greater Seattle. I completed my Associate's in Biology at Cascadia College and my Bachelor's in Biology at UW, Bothell. I have always wanted to study infectious disease research and took a wide variety of positions to increase my research experience. Previously I worked in a eukaryogenesis laboratory at UW Bothell to study co-evolution trends between mutualistic archaea and bacteria. After I graduated, I joined Proteios Technology Inc. to work on their protein purification R&D, and lastly I joined UW Seattle on a PREP Fellowship to study the cell biology of Giardia lamblia.

Why did you decide to attend the UW for graduate school?

I strongly preferred UW to work closely with Public-Health centered research institutes like Seattle Children's or Fred Hutchinson Cancer Institute. There are not many graduate programs in the country where I could work directly with multiple nonprofit companies. In addition, family is very important to me and I wanted to stay in close proximity if possible.

What are your research interests?

I love to study the interactions of intracellular pathogens and their host cells. I am primarily interested in single-celled parasitic research on the human host, such as liver-stage malaria research, but virus and bacteria both have cases where they reconstruct host cells and manipulate cellular pathways we have utilized as molecular tools or medicine.

What are you enjoying most about your graduate program?

The Pathobiology Ph.D. program is extremely interdisciplinary, the intersection between translational and basic science is exactly where I want to be. I get to work with pre-med students, research scientists, and other graduate students who also have a Public-Health mindset, and potential to join industry or science communication.