I joined Dr. David Truong's right as I started at NYU (I actually reached out to him before I was 100% committed to NYU because I was interested in his research). My goal for my M.S. was to hit the ground running so I could build on the skills I developed at Arzeda but simultaneously take a step further by applying them towards new projects in regenerative medicine as opposed to enzyme engineering. All of my synthetic biology bacteria and yeast experiences translated into the Truong lab work but with new applications and a more academic outlook. During my time here I've been able to learn so much about stem cells and the methods used to engineer as well as what the impacts of that research can be. I've learned to look at and work on technologies that are decades away from ever reaching the market and this has widened my world view on the impacts of research.

I have also been able to work on computational biology projects, with a focus on applied genomics through NGS data analysis and the nuances of it. I am currently co-mentored by Dr. Truong and Dr. Manpreet Katari for my thesis and upcoming manuscript on identifying transcription factor targets for directed differentiation via genetic circuits.

I have also been working on a genetic circuit that will differentiate M0 macrophages and another which can be used to polarize M0 macrophages to M2 macrophages. For this, I have also been performing conventional macrophage differentiations from hiPSCs and THP-1 monocytes using cytokines. I am also assisting other group wide projects on differentiating Neurons and Dendritic Cells with circuits.

My work at Arzeda had 3 main aspects to it. The majority of my work was molecular biology lab work and digital information related LIMS work. This was closely followed by business development work.

In the laboratory, I was working as the only Associate Scientist in a team of all scientists. I supported their experimental work in many ways but most significantly by producing high quality and freezer friendly electrocompetent P. pastoris/K. phaffii cells. I also assisted by quality controlling their reagents by repeating failed experiments and optimizing SOPs, such as when we were onboarding the MAD7 CRISPR system for use alongside lambda red recombinase to integrate and knockout genes in E. coli. 

About 8 months in, my team became stretched thin to meet all of our performance goals. At this time, I stepped up and took charge of an OKR that was originally assigned to a scientist. It was to design, assemble, and sequence verify a library of 80 plasmids and then store them as both DNA and cloning strains for future use.

Outside of directly supporting my scientists, I independently collaborated with other teams to coordinate experiments, design, test, and investigate synthetically engineered strains of P. pastoris/K. phaffii and E. coli for genotypes of interest for the production of our de novo proteins in various workflows for 4 company wide projects and over 10 platform development projects. These included the projects that were being done in partnership with Unilever, AAK, and others.

In my role as the Sapio Lead or LIMS Lead of the Strain Design team I built automation tools to integrate strain design work flows into the company's LIMS initiative. Before I joined, the Strain Design team was notorious for not using the company LIMS. I also worked closely with the company's computational designers to better track relevant data and my work led to the creation and adoption of an entirely new data type in the Arzeda database that benefited both the strain design team by improving the practicality of our data tracking and the company by improving the accuracy of the language of planning for projects going through our pipeline.

In my business development work, I communicated with senior protein designers and scientists to identify new applications for our enzymes and identify new directions for our collaborations with partners. One of my proposals completed shifted the experimental process of one of our major collaborations.

I aided Dr. Hongxia Fu in taking care of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) and performing experiments investigating the responses of von Willebrand factor (VWF) under various pathophysiological conditions such as shear stress in blood flow.

I independently designed, printed, and cast 3D PDMS channels. I bound those channels to glass slides and then cultured cells inside them to create models of blood vessel conditions. I used these same techniques to assist Dr. Jiajia Lin in her investigations.

After flowing platelets through such channels under a microscope, I worked with a fellow undergrad to quantify platelet binding and rolling.

In my first year I was an undergraduate researcher in the Wetlab subteam and collaborated with a team of 20 undergraduates to develop a chemically induced dimerization (CID) based biosensor using E. coli bacterial cells. Our project won silver at the International Jamboree in Boston.

In my second year I was a co-lead of the wetlab team and a wetlab recruiter. The project we decided to pursue was developing a probiotic that would enable people to consume water poisoned with heavy metal ions without detrimental health outcomes. Essentially, genetically engineering gut bacteria to sequester heavy metal ions like lead and cadmium before they could damage the body. 

Unfortunately due to COVID-19 the wetlab team was mostly working on literature review because we lost access to our lab space. I later left the team to join the Fu Labs after it became apparent we would not be allowed back into our lab space for an extremely long period of time.