I am a current PhD candidate in my last year at Caltech in the lab of Kaihang Wang. I work on a range of projects from megabase scale genomic engineering to synthetic circuits. As 1 of 2 students in Kaihang's first PhD cohort, I have built the lab from the bottom up and facilitated its growth as a lab manager, Biosafety Officer, and mentor to over 20 undergrads and rotation students trained. I assist my PI in strategic grant-writing and have helped in raising over $2,00,000 so far via grants. I have TAed 6 classes, including 2 new intro to entrepreneurship classes where I helped develop course curriculum and support the creation of viable business plans.

I work within the Biotechnology Club to help organize on-campus events where we bring in members from the biotech community to speak at Caltech. I have lead in the creation of a a biotech venture capital panel with practitioners from three biotech venture capital firms. In addition, I help plan networking opportunities for students to meet local biotech organizations, and support the local Nucleate chapter.

I worked to launch the LA chapter of Nucleate Bio and develop a sustainable leadership structure for longevity. This student-led entrepreneurship program helps academic biotech startup founders transition their ideas out of their labs into companies. The program pairs current PhD students with MBA students from USC, UCLA, Caltech, and other LA based institutions and puts them through a industry mentorship and expert workshop program to refine their strategic startup plans based on their university IP. As one of the Co-Managing Directors for 3 years, I oversaw all organization activities, including recruiting 150+ industry professionals to serve as mentors or experts, scouting and managing 20 academic startups through the program (7 have incorporated after program completion), interacting with community partners in academic, government and non-profit organizations, hosting 50+ events, fundraising >$50k from 14 different sources, and developing leadership talent. Our program culminates in a Final Pitch Showcase, which I've hosted at LA City hall, UCLA, and BioscienceLA, and which typically have 200 attendees including VCs, academic faculty, and students eager to learn more from their peers about life science entrepreneurship.

In my 4 year tenure as the leader of the Caltech Entrepreneurship Club, I have organized over 30 events related to entrepreneurship education on Caltech's campus. From entrepreneurial meetups to large (100+ attendees) venture capital panel discussions, I have helped foster a budding professionally oriented community on Caltech's campus through hosting 400+ unique students at my events. My duties also included supporting Rocket Fund, a non-dilutive grant giving body at Caltech which funds sustainability oriented startups, which I did through serving on the Technology Advisory Committee and through the design and hosting of 2 Rocket Fund Alumni Venture Capital Pitch Showcases to highlight previous awardees achievements.

As a university analyst, I reviewed over 250 pitch decks from a variety of startups and provided analysis to Plug and Play's investment team. The decks have a focus on health tech, but the topics range from commerce to smart tech. Since the conclusion of the program, I have an ongoing startup sourcing agreement with Plug and Play. I have been selected as a moderator to help lead this next years health tech section of the university analyst program.

Many important drugs and therapeutics are derived from metabolites produced by microbes. My work explored how signaling interactions between two microbes might elicit the novel production of secondary metabolites, such as antibiotics, in co-culture. To identify such interactions, I constructed a series of chemiluminescent reporters of Bacillus subtilis that I utilized in a high throughput screen to identify activators of said metabolites.

I was selected in a cohort out 54 students out of approximately 2,500 applicants to become a Birthright Excel Fellow. This 10-week experience included leadership development and an intensive internship. At Pontifax, a biotechnology venture capital firm with over $1.2 billion under management, I was tasked with partaking in the due diligence for assessing potential investments. The majority of my work entailed thorough investigation into the scientific feasibility of novel technologies, the probability of clinical success, and likelihood of profitable exit strategy. I also worked with the CFO to prepare investor presentations and understand investment structures. Scientific fields covered include but are not limited to pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and gene therapy. An ongoing business relationship has been established where I provide consulting work on a project by project basis.

Paid intern in the InVitro Cell Pharmacology department. Part of an early discovery project where I helped develop and execute high throughput screens and follow-up assays to discover antibacterials with novel modes of action. Here I discovered a possible new structural class of antibacterials! The internship culminated in a site wide poster presentation.Experience with:• Preparation of fully integrated multimillion dollar automated biotechnology machinery• High throughput screening of thousands of bioactive compounds per day• Fluorescence based reporter screens• Automated liquid handling workstations (Biomek)• Minimum inhibitory threshold concentration assays via spectroscopy • Various strains of E. coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and MRSA• Large data workflow processing software• Agar dilutions to determine minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC)• Frequency of resistance assays and follow-up mutant selection• Cross resistance of mutants with known antibiotics to determine overlap in modes of action• Kill curve assay to characterize bactericidal and bacteriostatic properties• Spiral plating techniques• Gel based enzymatic assays to validate possible targets

Developed a specialized tubing that prevents biofilm attachment to its interior. I personally wrote the entire provisional patent for the generalized devise which prevents bacterial adhesion to surfaces, which has been submitted to the US Patent Office. This device was presented at Finals of the Conrad Spirit of Innovation Summit (an innovation and entrepreneurial challenge with submissions from 75 countries) which was held at NASA Space Center, Houston. I was the head spokesman in a product presentation to the Vice President of Nutrition at PepsiCo. Since then a full non-provisional patent has been created and filed application 20150283278. It has recently been approved, awaiting formalization.

Two years of independent researcher, mentored by Dr. Sophia Gershman (researcher at Princeton Plasma Physics Lab). First year was focused on determining methods of easily assessing cell viability following electric field treatment. The second year was dedicated to establishing a protocol for determining the effects of various ions on electropermeabilization for small molecules and cell viability of electroporated cells. Research was presented at the Northern New Jersey Regional Science Fair (2013 and 2014) as well as the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, both at Rutgers University.