Performed SARS-CoV-2 sampling for the community of Watsonville, CA and Pacific Elementary School in Davenport, CA to respond to the pandemic. Data was used by County Public Health to implement COVID mitigation efforts in the county.

Protein Engineering: January 2021 - March 2021Protein Engineering Lab: March 2021 - June 2021Mentored Research in Synthetic Biology A&B: June 2021 - September 2021

Informally mentored the 2020 UCSC iGEM team on their project to develop a biodegradeable plastic derived from bacterial cellulose. Formally mentored the 2021 UCSC iGEM team on their project to develop a prokaryotic gene removal system utilizing CRISPR Cas 9 and phase propagation for use in Shiga Toxin producing E. coli. Both teams won gold at their respective iGEM Giant Jamborees.

•Project: To engineer a thermostable vaccine formulation for Newcastle Disease with Intrinsically Disordered Proteins from tardigrade extremophiles in order to break the cold chain in vaccine delivery and storage. •Worked in collaboration with the Silver Lab at Harvard Medical School, the Pielak Lab at UNC Chapel Hill, and the Boothby Lab at the University of Wyoming.•Used techniques such as cloning, protein production and purification, RT-qPCR. Performed BSL2 work with aseptic technique in vitro virus propagation, cell culturing, hemagglutination assays, and plaque assays.Continued work in the Bernick Lab at UCSC

Microbiology June 2020- July 2020

Continued the work of the UCSC 2019 iGEM team on developing a thermostable vaccine formulation in Professor David Bernick's lab at UCSC. Worked on developing viral quantification, propagation methods for verifying the thermostability of the novel formulation.