I am currently a Research Scientist at Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. My research interest is in developing and applying novel experimental techniques such as microfluidics, time-lapse imaging, DNA sequencing, mass spectroscopy, and bioinformatics in order to probe microbial diversity and function at genomic, transcriptomic, and phenotypic levels. I currently work with faculties from Stanford, Berkeley, and UCSF to establish a microbiome initiative focused on understanding how microbial communities affect human health. The goal of the initiative is to approach the problem from an engineering perspective by building experimental and analytical platforms that enable high throughput anaerobic culturing and multi-omics. Faculties associated with the CZ Biohub Microbiome Initiative include:

Jill Banfield
Michael Fischbach
Kerwyn Huang
Sandy Johnson
Katie Pollard
David Relman
Justin Sonnenburg
Peter Turnbaugh

Another role I have at CZ Biohub is to facilitate the sample submission and data delivery process for the high throughput sequencing platform. The sequencing platform highlights instruments from Illumina (iSeq, MiSeq, NextSeq, and NovaSeq), Oxford Nanopore, and PacBio. We work with groups in the three bay area research institutions in collaborative projects directly funded by CZ Biohub. The genomics platform website can be found here.

Prior to CZ Biohub, I completed my Ph.D. in the Quake lab at Stanford University, under joint supervision of Dr. Stephen Quake and Dr. Mark Horowitz. One of my main research projects involves developing a microfluidic-based metagenomic method to identify novel microbial phylogenies. Another project studies cyanobacterial physiology at the single-cell level using a microfluidic cell culture setup. Before Stanford, I attended Caltech and received my B.S. in Electrical Engineering. Under the supervision of Dr. Yu-Chong Tai, my research there focused on designing and fabricating MEMS (microelectromechanical system) check valves for various biomedical implants.